“The Ecological Imagination of Hayao Miyazaki” [Orion]. The Shiratani Unsuikyo ravine is a mossy-covered primary-growth nature reserve populated with thousand-year-old yakusugi, or endemic Japanese cedars. Bright blooms and quick movements have no place in this primeval space—green and evergreen is all the eye can discern. Even the ear may strain for signals, for sound does not come often or travel far under the dense canopy. As absence becomes presence, the woods cultivate their own ambience, seeming to convey a core tenet of the Japanese concept of Shinto, which holds that the world is suffused with kami, sacred essences that embody things both living and inorganic. Rock and root. Moss and leaf. Earth and wind-whispered river water. As one of Japan’s oldest forests, the Shiratani Unsuikyo ravine serves as a grand cathedral and sanctuary for the more-than-human world. It is the space that inspired filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki in the crafting of Princess Mononoke, his 1997 environmental epic in which humanity wages war against the Great Forest and the divine gods of nature.