In the southern Ryūkyū islands, where mangroves breathe with the tides and rainforests slide into the sea, Valeria Margherita Mosca explores an ancient intimacy between humans and the living world that still endures.

Her journey through Iriomote and Ishigaki was an attempt to listen to this fragile balance, where plants, rituals, and ecosystems speak the same ancestral language.

My name is Valeria Margherita Mosca, and I am a cultural anthropologist specializing in ethnobotany, wildlife conservation, and partnership studies.

For years, I have dedicated my life to observing, studying, and protecting natural ecosystems and the cultures that coevolve with them.

I recently undertook a journey across the southern Ryūkyū archipelago, between the islands of Iriomote and Ishigaki, in the heart of Japan’s subtropical Pacific. It was a field research expedition with the aim of understanding how the Indigenous communities of these islands have intertwined their spiritual identity with plants, rivers, tides, and rainforest ecosystems for centuries.

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Frontier habitats: where the jungle meets the ocean

As soon as I arrived in Iriomote, I felt physically immersed in a primordial biological threshold. Here, the subtropical rainforest flows seamlessly into the sea. Mountains covered in dense, stratified vegetation release fresh water into a network of winding rivers that open into vast mangrove forests.

The climate is warm and saturated with humidity. Tree ferns, Livistona palms, ficus trees, and lianas build a three-dimensional structure that shelters reptiles, amphibians, insects, and endemic birds.
Mangroves- particularly Bruguiera and Rhizophora - form an amphibious world suspended between brackish water and land, their roots emerging from the mud to breathe while stabilizing coastlines against typhoons and storm surges.
In Ishigaki, the coast opens onto coral reefs of extraordinary richness.

The ocean is a mosaic of turquoise and deep blue. Seagrass meadows and coral lagoons host a biodiversity that links the tropical Pacific to mainland Japan, creating an ecological bridge of high biogeographical value.

Iriomote’s rivers and the natural nurseries of bull sharks


One of the most intense experiences was a silent navigation along the Urauchi River, the longest in Iriomote. These waterways are complex ecological corridors that act as natural nurseries for bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas).


Bull sharks possess an osmoregulatory ability that allows them to travel many kilometers upstream into freshwater. Young individuals find protection from larger marine predators in the turbid river waters and mangrove labyrinths. Here they grow, feeding on estuarine fish and crustaceans in a delicate balance of fresh and brackish water.
Kayaking through those brown waters, surrounded by walls of tropical vegetation, meant moving through an interconnected system where sea, forest, and river are expressions of one living matrix.


The many lives of the subtropical forest


Walking along Iriomote’s muddy trails revealed how real biodiversity consists largely of quiet presences. Among the canopies moves the critically endangered Iriomote cat (Prionailurus bengalensis iriomotensis), an endemic and fragile symbol of the island. In the understory lives the habu (Protobothrops flavoviridis), a snake both revered and feared. In the streams thrive fiddler crabs, amphibious gobies, and countless pollinating insects.

Every square meter of forest is a complex trophic network: termites decompose dead wood, beetles recycle organic matter, bats pollinate nocturnal flowers. Nothing is isolated; every organism participates in a wider system of relations.iriomotensis), an endemic and fragile symbol of the island. In the understory lives the habu (Protobothrops flavoviridis), a snake both revered and feared. In the streams thrive fiddler crabs, amphibious gobies, and countless pollinating insects.

Every square meter of forest is a complex trophic network: termites decompose dead wood, beetles recycle organic matter, bats pollinate nocturnal flowers. Nothing is isolated; every organism participates in a wider system of relations.

«Nature is not an external environment but a network of kinship.»

Anthropology of intimacy between plants and rituality

Only after observing the habitat could I begin to understand the local culture. The peoples of the Yaeyama islands, part of the ancient Ryūkyū Kingdom, preserve animistic cosmologies in which plants are not resources but entities endowed with spiritual agency.
Sacred groves - taki - are ritual spaces where ceremonies of gratitude to the spirits of nature are still practiced.
I witnessed a ritual led by a local priestess, reminiscent of the ancient Ryūkyū noro. The ceremony involved offerings of rice, salt, awamori, and green branches placed at the foot of a centuries-old tree. The gesture was simple and measured, yet deeply meaningful. Many subtropical medicinal plants are harvested following lunar calendars and principles of reciprocity: one never takes without giving back, never cuts without a formula of thanks.
Local ethnobotanical knowledge includes antiseptic leaves, digestive roots, febrifuge barks—and above all, an ethical system regulating interaction with the vegetal world. Nature is not an external environment but a network of kinship.



To know is to preserve: the islands as cradles of ancestral rites


What struck me most during this journey was not only the ecological balance but also the cultural continuity that still survives in these forests and coasts. Iriomote and Ishigaki are more than islands of exceptional biodiversity. They are places where ancestral rituals have long guided ecological stewardship, and where spirituality and land management remain closely connected. Rituals act as collective memory, teaching future generations how to live in right relationship with the world.

Protecting these places requires a double effort: conserving their unique habitats and preserving the intangible heritage of gestures, chants, calendars and ethnobotanical knowledge. One cannot exist without the other.
During my stay, I explored family archives and local collections containing historical photographs of Yaeyama rituals. Images of priestesses, sacred groves and careful vegetal offerings reveal a profound harmony between people and the natural world. In those faces and landscapes one can still sense composure and an awareness of limits that feel rare today.

Studying these rites is not about idealizing the past but recognizing cultural models that continue to teach reverence. To know these places is to listen, and to preserve them is to safeguard both an ecosystem and a form of knowledge.

Perhaps in these subtropical forests, among mangroves, rivers and sacred trees, we may rediscover a more balanced way of inhabiting the Earth.