Introduction Haiku are a traditional form of poetry in Japan that became popular in the 16 th century with poets such as Matsuo Bashō. Their discourse is in line with Taoist or Buddhist thought (the religions of traditional Japan) which focus on an inclusive view of what western thought calls “the natural world”. There is no conceptual separation between humans, animals, and plants. This is distinctly different from how western environmental thought views the world. In his article, Stibbe examines the ecolinguistic aspects of Haiku and how their discourse and language convey and influence conceptualizations of what western thought calls the human/nature dichotomy. Because of this relationship, Stibbe argues that we live in a world where ecological discourse happens through writing and therefore our conceptualization of the “natural world” around us is created through writing. If this is true Stibbe says, then in order to reach people and change their conceptualizations of the world around them we must reach them through the written language. One such medium is the Haiku. These poems are able to transcend the written word and “encourage relationships with nature that are unmediated by language” (Stibbe 2007). From here I decided to look at hard data from The World Bank and the Environmental Performance Index to examine Japan’s relationship with it’s “environment” (a word I use to refer to the biota of Japan). My findings were surprising and weren’t necessarily in accordance with Stibbe’s article. What is “ecolinguistics”? Ecolinguistics is a field of Environmental Studies that deals with the relationship between language and a society’s conceptualization of their ecological surroundings (the part of their environment that isn’t produced by humans). Over time, this field has evolved to include structural language as well as the rhetoric that surrounds this type of environmental discourse. The type of language we use and the way we use it influences how we view our surroundings. Ecolinguistic Discourse: Western Thought Western thought (what we in the U.S. use to talk about environmental issues), is characterized by dichotomy: “just as we separate mind from body, we divide animals from the environment and scientific from humanistic knowledge”, (Cowley 2013). We tend to separate things into precise and separate categories that can’t overlap because something “scientific” can’t be “humanistic”. Modern ENVS thought is slowly changing this in favor of a more interdisciplinary approach, however, as seen in the media and in the minds of the average U.S. citizen, this dichotomy is still very much present. Stibbe also points out our love for abstraction saying that terms like “biotic resources” or “biomass appropriation” are unnecessary abstractions that cause a marked divide between the scholarly realm of our biological surroundings and the physical realm in which we they are found. He even goes as far to say that people experience this “biological world” more through written discourse than actual interaction with it so it’s through the writing that our views towards this world are founded. Ecolinguistic Discourse: Japanese Haiku In contrast with Western Thought, the Haiku’s discourse focuses on simplicity, “It uses language to encourage the reader to go beyond language, beyond the world of intellectual abstractions, and reconnect directly with the more-than-human world” (Stibbe 2007). It accomplishes this by: Conclusion Although Haiku are a formative part of Japanese traditional culture (and therefore Japanese thought), they don’t seem to have an extremely profound effect on the country’s environmental action. When compared in terms of threatened species and EPI index scores, Japan is on relatively the same scale as other countries who use a system of western thought, such as the U.S. Perhaps the image of nature seen in Haiku discourse is important in a literary sense, but for some reason doesn’t translate to the relatively modern world of environmental thought and action. My best guess as to the cause is that Environmental Thought was conceptualized in the United States and then exported to other places in the world and it hasn’t had much time to evolve as a field independently in specific countries. Because of the high presence of globalization, perhaps there never will be this independent evolution of the field that we have seen in certain subjects such as philosophy (there is a clear difference between philosophic works from Greece and from China during the same era). It would be interesting to conduct further studies to see how globalization of thought has affected environmental thought in other countries. Ecolinguistic Value of Haiku in Japanese Environmental Thought By Esa Grigsby Using simple imagery Addressing actual encounters with plants and animals found in the local environment using a minimal amount of metaphor and abstraction The use of present tense An emphasis on individual animals and plants (instead of using an umbrella term such as “insects” a Haiku would use “beetle”) Animals and plants are agents of their own lives, living according to their natures Implicit assumptions of empathy and positive regard are built into the discourse Haiku’s focus on the local natural environment in it’s imagery allows Japanese readers to experience and connect physically with what they have read about in the Haiku. For this reason, Haiku written in Japan would have this transcendence effect only on Japanese readers. For this transcendence to work in a western context, the subjects of the Haiku would have to change to correspond our local environments and our historical background. Japan EPI Score: out of 100 Ranking: 26 of 178 countries United States EPI Score: out of 100 Ranking: 33 of 178 countries Despite the presence and influence Stibbe attributes to Haiku in Japan, the EPI scores and ranking of Japan and the United states are relatively equal. Fig. 1- The U.S. and Japan have similar numbers of threatened mammal species, however the size of the U.S. is much larger and therefore we would expect more threatened species relative to size. The U.S. count is 36 total species and Japan’s is 27. (worldbank.org). When we consider a relative percentage of threatened species (number threatened divided by the total amount of known species) we see that Japan’s threatened species are 14% of the total mammals that live there--27/188—and the U.S.’ threatened species are only 8% of total mammals living in the U.S. (data taken from worldbank.org and nationmaster.com). So really the U.S. Has a relatively smaller portion of threatened mammal species as compared to Japan. Fig. 2- The United State’s total count of threatened plant species is 270 while Japan’s is 17. Here we can attribute the relative homogeny of the map to the outlier Ecuador that has a proportionally huge amount of threatened species-1,842 (worldbank.org). Total number of vascular plant species in the U.S. is 19,473 so a relative percentage would be about 1.4% threatened plant species out of total plant species in the U.S (270/19,473) And 0.3% of plant species in Japan. Here there is a difference of 1.1% which doesn’t seem substantially significant. Fig. 2- The United States has 236 threatened fish species and Japan has 66. The relative percentage of threatened fish species out of all fish species in the U.S. is 2% (236/1154). In Japan it’s (Can’t seem to find total number of fish species data for Japan, any source recommendations?) Bibliography "Countries with the Most Number of Vascular Plant Species." Countries with the Most Number of Vascular Plant Species. Monteray Institute of International Studies, Web. 07 Oct "World Bank Group." World Bank Group. World Bank Group, Web. 05 Oct EPI Stibbe, Arran. "Haiku and Beyond: Language, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World." ANTHROZOÖS 20.2 (2007): JSTOR. Web. 06 Oct Cowley, Stephen J. "Bio-ecology and Language: A Necessary Unity." Language Sciences 41 (2013): Web. 06 Oct "International Statistics: Compare Countries on Just about Anything! NationMaster.com." NationMaster.com. NationMaster, Web. 08 Oct