In rural Japan, cutting grass along roads, fields, and the edges of wooded areas is not only about keeping the landscape tidy. When tall grass and thick brush reach close to homes and farmland, deer, wild boars, and other animals can move closer to where people live while staying hidden.
Keeping some distance between wildlife and settlements therefore depends partly on how people manage the boundary between the two.
At the same time, removing every route animals use is not the answer. If wildlife can move safely from one wooded area to another without crossing roads or entering residential areas, that is preferable. Wildlife corridors can be one way to reduce encounters between animals and people.
But a corridor by itself will not keep animals out of a village.
If there is food in nearby fields, animals may still come for it. If brush runs continuously from the hills to the edge of a settlement, they may still have an easy route into human space. The point is to leave animals a way through the hills while making it harder for them to move from those hills straight into a settlement.
The harder question is who maintains that boundary.
People living in farming areas already have plenty of grass to cut around their own homes, along the banks of rice fields, and around vegetable plots and other land they manage. That alone can take a great deal of time and physical effort. Adding more work specifically for wildlife control means spending even more time, energy, and sometimes money on something that does not directly produce income.
As rural communities age, that burden becomes harder to carry. The work itself becomes more physically demanding, while the number of people available to share it continues to shrink.
Wild animals appearing in settlements are often explained simply by saying that animal populations have increased. That can be part of the story, but changes on the human side matter too. When grass cutting and management along the edge of a village become harder to maintain, animals may find it easier to approach places where people live.
And grass cutting is never a one-time job. Leave it alone, and the brush comes back.
It is easy to say that villages should keep the boundary clear and maintain good visibility. The difficult part is that the people who live there have to keep doing it, year after year.