Measuring artistic inspiration drawn from ecosystems and biodiversity: A case study of old children’s songs in Japan

Naoki Katayama and Yuki G. Baba

Ecosystem Services, 2020, vol. 43, issue C

Abstract: Web accessible databases of artistic work are useful tools for evaluating artistic inspiration drawn from ecosystems and biodiversity in a specific cultural context. However, to date, few studies have developed methods to quantify the degree of this artistic inspiration. This study performed a systematic keyword search to find old Japanese children’s songs related to ecosystems and biodiversity. Of 12,550 songs, more than a quarter referred to ecosystems or biodiversity in the first sentence itself. The most common ecosystem types were forest, ocean, rivers and lakes, and the most common taxonomic groups were plants and birds. Rarefaction and extrapolation methods showed that the highest number of families mentioned was that of plants. Several families served as sources of inspiration, with most of the top-ranking families including terrestrial species with visual or oral attractiveness (e.g. flowering plants). Farmland and urban birds were referred to more in songs than birds living in other habitats. These results demonstrate the importance of a variety of ecosystems and associated wildlife for enhancing artistic inspiration in Japan. Overall, our study provides a methodological approach to gain insights on how nature works as a source of artistic inspiration, which could be applied to a variety of online databases.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Cultural ecosystem services; Farmland biodiversity; Information theoretic approach; Nursery rhymes; Sources of inspiration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041620300589
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:43:y:2020:i:c:s2212041620300589

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2020.101116

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().