Celebrating JASA’s 50th Anniversary, this lecture was presented by Dr. Rachel Saunders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums., on December 14, 2023. What good is art history in our era of climate catastrophe? What productive work can the study of Japanese art do in the ground between care of the planet and visual art? Researching, exhibiting, conserving, and collecting Japanese art are activities usually undertaken in settings far removed from the living bodies and environments out of which the works themselves were produced. What are the implications of having separated ourselves from this knowledge historically, and the dangers of continuing to do so now? This talk asks how encounters with nonhuman beings—including trees, plants and animals—in Japanese art can guide us in the stewardship of the metaphorical forest of richly interconnected actions and relationships that have the capacity to help us envision our world differently.