Word: ryokan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...surprising that the Japanese should be branded environmental outlaws. Although the nation embraced Western materialism in this century, one of the strongest threads in its more than 2,000 years of cultural traditions has always been a deep love of nature. Typical is the story of the monk Ryokan who slept under mosquito netting in the summer not to prevent being bitten by an insect but to avoid squashing one inadvertently while he slept. The Japanese, though, have never been passive conservationists. Consider the bonsai, the tiny trees that are shaped over generations into living pieces of sculpture. The bonsai...