COVID-19 has sparked a growing awareness of nature and life, alongside an interest in animism, a philosophy which remains at the heart of Japanese beliefs to this day. But what is animism? Anthropologist Okuno Katsumi describes it as a sensibility that connects humans and other life forms. He joins 2 explorers who visited Kumano, the heartland of nature worship in Japan, to talk about Japan's embrace of animism as reflected in its culinary rituals and the relevance of animism in the post-COVID world.