Moving Plants

The humble Japanese knotweed, called ‘itadori’ in Japan, is native to East Asia but also notorious for its success in other parts of the world, so much so that it has been classified as an invasive species in several countries. It is feared in Europe, North America, and Australia, where it is actively eradicated. In following photographer Watanabe Koichi in his research and quest to track it down everywhere, we stray into the entanglement created by the movement of people and capital in the modern age, itself a giant moving thicket of nature, knowledge, technology, and industry that is not only intertwined on huge scales of complexity, but also reciprocally impacting.