Governance and the Possibilities of Human Intervention in Post-Human Fūdo

Speakers

Tatsuhiko Inatani

Professor, Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University
Riken Komatsu

Local Activist / Writer
Masayuki Terai

CEO, Gomi no Gakko Inc.
Tomohide Mizuuchi (Moderator)

Associate Professor, Center for the Possible Futures, Kyoto Institute of Technology

Session 5, titled “Governance and the Possibilities of Human Intervention in Post-Human Fūdo’” revisited the question of how humans might intervene and reweave governance while relating to nonhuman entities in a “post-human” milieu. Drawing on the speakers’ regional practices and discussions surrounding legal systems, the session explored how governance can be reconfigured through entangled relationships between humans and more-than-human actors.

Governance that Continually Responds to Change: The Shift Toward Agile Governance

Tatsuhiko Inatani (Kyoto University) began by examining how modern law has sought to govern society through universal and fixed rules based on the model of the rational individual. However, amid globalization, rapid scientific and technological developments, and environmental crises, the very premises underpinning this system are becoming dysfunctional as uncertainty intensifies.
Inatani proposed the concept of “agile governance.” Rather than imposing a predetermined “ideal state” from above, this approach continuously adjusts legal and institutional systems in response to diverse visions of “how we wish to be.” Central to this framework is a polyphonic governance system—one that does not exclude events that appear as errors or deviations, but instead incorporates them as feedback. Through collective verification and revision, institutions are dynamically updated. Such processes, he argued, enhance society’s adaptive capacity in an unpredictable world.

Tatsuhiko Inatani

The Possibility of Being a Kyōjisha (共事者, One Who Shares in the Matter)

Riken Komatsu (Local Activist / Writer) reflected on his work in Iwaki City, Fukushima, following the nuclear disaster, where he has grappled with forms of knowledge emerging outside expert and institutional frameworks. Describing his own practice as “whatever arises from the amateur, unaffiliated, feral field,” he shared how, from the standpoint of neither scientist nor fisher, investigating fish contamination led to interconnected inquiries into ecology, fishing methods, and cooking. Science, he suggested, can emerge from everyday life.
Building on this experience, Komatsu proposed the idea of the kyōjisha (共事者, One Who Shares in the Matter)—literally, “one who shares in the matter.” Rather than leaving social issues solely to official stakeholders or experts, external participants may engage as co-actors. A kyōjisha does not assume heavy responsibility as a central agent, but instead remains loosely yet continuously involved, often beginning from personal curiosity or discomfort.
This perspective repositions humans not as unilateral “governors,” but as part of the relational fabric constituting society and environment. Expanding the scope of stakeholdership to include the dead, nature, and future generations, Komatsu emphasized an attitude of attunement and responsiveness—incorporating unpredictable emotions and dissonances as triggers for adjustment rather than excluding them.

Riken Komatsu

What Precedes Technology and Institutions: Cultivating Circulation Through Place and Lived Experience

Masayuki Terai (Gomi no Gakko Inc.) drew from his long experience in industrial waste management to argue that solving social issues requires more than technological or institutional updates. Without reweaving relationships among the people who use these systems, change cannot take root in practice.
As a concrete example, he introduced initiatives such as the “Meguru-wa Exchange Market” and “repair cafés”, open civic spaces that function as mediating platforms. Through repair and bartering, these initiatives seek to restore intergenerational and cross-sector relationships within the Kameoka region.
In Kameoka City as well, while technical initiatives such as the enactment of an ordinance banning the provision of plastic shopping bags—prompted by volunteer-led clean-up activities along the Hozu River—and the recycling of disposable paper diapers have progressed, parallel efforts have continued to create spaces in which different sectors collaborate and where even children can participate through storytelling and embodied experiences that foster a shared understanding of the value of circularity.
Terai emphasizes the importance of cultivating what might be called an ma (間, in-between) domain that connects technology and institutions with citizens’ everyday sensibilities and habitual practices. In other words, through media, events, and other mediating platforms, the crucial question is how to create spaces in which people can tangibly experience and internalize the meaning of circularity. Such spaces are essential for embedding circular practices within daily life.
People’s behavior is not unilaterally determined by technology or business models. Rather, Terai argues that it is necessary to create environments that enable embodied, sensory engagement through concrete experiences and material mediations, thereby nurturing pathways through which knowledge can translate into action. Only through such processes, he suggests, can circularity take root within the community.

Masayuki Terai

Discussion: Where Does “Rightness” Emerge?

The discussion revolved around whether the “rightness” that moves society originates from pre-established institutional ideals or emerges from lived practices and relationships. In response to moderator Tomohide Mizuuchi (Kyoto Institute of Technology)’s questions, Inatani noted his affinity with Komatsu’s practice, pointing to a shared discomfort with modern law’s presumption of universal and absolute correctness.
If the sensibilities of everyday life remain external to institutions, law and governance cannot function effectively. Instead, institutions must incorporate such sensibilities and evolve accordingly.
Komatsu and Terai provided concrete examples: rather than imposing expert knowledge, they invite people into experiences and relationships that create sensory entry points. Komatsu described creating entryways where even “0.1” can be taken home—particularly in Fukushima, where complex safety and political issues are difficult to address directly. Offering experiential engagement through food allows even the disengaged to begin participating. Terai similarly emphasized experiential understanding over verbal explanation in waste separation and circular practices.
From these examples, Inatani suggested that actions emerging from personal curiosity and exploration should be welcomed in democratic decision-making. Bringing such actions together and adjusting through compromise and negotiation may form the core of a new governance model beyond fixed-rule systems.
Activism and institutions, sensibility and law, practice and governance—rather than standing in opposition—can be understood as mutually influencing and continuously renewing one another.

Afterthoughts

Written by

Kahono Sugiura

RE:PUBLIC Inc.

Just when one thinks they are taking in a broad landscape, the perspective suddenly zooms in, bringing one’s own actions sharply into focus. After that moment of realization, when one steps back again to survey the world, new layers of meaning and previously unseen overlaps begin to emerge within what appears to be the very same scene. This session offered conference participants precisely such an experience.
Komatsu’s statement, “Science is not governed solely by scientists” was particularly striking. Knowledge and science emerge not only from experts but also from embodied practice and trial-and-error in the field. Scientific “facts” capture only one aspect of reality, yet we often mistake them for the whole. Hearing this, one could feel modern assumptions of singular “rightness” gently loosening.
Similarly in the legal context, Inatani pointed out that rather than attempting to resolve the crises we face immediately—primarily through technological means—we are called upon not to turn away from “trouble,” but to engage in productive compromise and ongoing adjustment within a range that does not stray too far from our ethical intuitions. That very range is itself continually shaped: broadly through negotiations within societies and cultures, and more narrowly through dialogue among local communities and directly involved parties. He emphasized the indispensability of collective practices in which, through on-the-ground dialogue, we repeatedly reexamine and recalibrate the nature of our relationships, taking as cues the responses of others and of nonhuman actors.
This stance of continually updating one’s judgments under conditions of uncertainty was evident throughout the session. It functioned not merely as a methodology for decision-making, but as a form of care for the space itself—including those listening—allowing conclusions to remain open and acknowledging hesitation rather than eliminating it. The words spoken under such a premise seemed to contain a tacit permission to continue thinking, which in turn generated a particular sense of reassurance unique to this gathering. Perhaps this sense of ease arose precisely because judgment and thought were not framed as processes confined within the individual, but as something that wavers and is rewoven within relationships. The practical processes described by the three speakers, too, may be understood as ongoing efforts to update judgment within such relational entanglements.