Spoilers Ahead

Is it still possible to live in harmony with nature without breaking the chain of life that keeps it all together? People often say that we have strayed far away from primitive ways of living in which we used to hunt for our own food and make our own cloths. Nowadays our food is made in giant factories and our clothing comes from across the globe. It is also possible to argue that all this, our modern society, is just as natural as our primitive ones since evolution gave us the gift of complex thinking which allowed us to build more advanced tools that helped us become the apex predator of the earth. ____ Preface

Reading the first volume of "Flap Your Wings, Taroumaru!" immediately makes it clear that Takao Yaguchi thinks we have progressed too far and lost our connection with nature.
Taroumaru was my first manga from Yaguchi but looking at his catalogue it's obvious that nature was his main focus.

Gentarou is a young boy who grows up in the mountains with his grandpa who is a famous falconeer. As we follow him on his journey we learn about multiple aspects of ecology and Yaguchi asks us important questions about our role in nature.

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Ideas and Values __"In this world these days monsters with no idea how to behave civilly do as they please. It'll be the end for living things before we know it. If we continue on the same path eventually it won't just be over for only birds and beasts. But the world will become an uninhabitabale place for us humans aswell." __

Passing down traditions is an important thing for Yaguchi. Not only traditions like falconry but also ideas like protecting nature. Especially in our time it is needed for traditions to be passed down to us since most of us did not grow up as near to nature as our grandparents did. They learned to respect it because they had to live alongside it. Younger generations that grow up in cities naturally do not have a chance to appreciate nature as much which sadly causes them to lose their connection to it.
Often we are so separated from nature that we end up creating a romanticized idea of it just like Yamada, a young student from Tokyo who has no real interests and decides to pursue the noble profession of a falconeer. He quickly learns that nature is nothing like he imagined and that he does not have any idea of how animals work. Quite funny how pretentious students who protest for nature eventhough they couldn't tell you how an ecosystem works are still an existing stereotype in our society.

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Falconry and the Natural Order
"Hahaha, there is a rope attached to him. The rope is the bond of trust between me and him."

It may seem hypocritical that an author who has such strong opinions on nature writes a manga about falconry, a sport in which you "tame" a falcon and use it to hunt. Yaguchi argues that falconry (atleast the version he depicts), compared to other animal-based sports, leaves the animal with the option of returning to its roots. When hunting the falcon is released into nature and is left with the option of never returning to it's "owner". The thing that keeps the falcon from leaving is not a physical rope but an emotional one, the falcon and the falconeer build a relationship based upon mutual aid and trust.

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The Chain of Nature Herbivores eat plants and get eaten by carnivores. When carnivores die they rot and become part of the soil giving nutrients to plants who can grow just to be eaten by herbivores. Ecosystems are like a ring made of chains that never breaks and maintains its balance. For Gentarou this becomes an important lesson. When he sees a fox baby, who lost its mother get saved, by its father, who blows himself up with dynamite to save it from being chained, he feels sorry for the foxes since their family was destroyed with the death of the mother. This leads to him wanting to abandon his future of being a falconeer since he would leave many animals as orphans. For us it may seem cruel to see animals suffer and die but at the end of the day this is just how nature is. The weak get eaten by the strong and when the strong die they are eaten by others. The only thing that disrupts this chain is us humans. By polluting rivers we cause thousands of fish to die and by building roads we destroy the habitat of animals.

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Conclusion
You don't have to live as a reclusive hermit on a lone mountain, to show that you care about nature, but we should be aware of the effects we have on it. It's unavoidable that we destroy parts of it but nowadays our greed knows no limit. We consume more than ever and our planet suffers from it, which will eventually result in us having to suffer from major natural disasters.
This manga was written in 1975/1976 and it's message has only become more important. I wonder what Takao Yaguchi would think of our modern ways of living.
May he rest in peace.

Thanks for reading