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KJ
BLOGOLOGY
Beyond
Flower Power
(From KJ #68)
 
Ken
Elwood and his favorite working shirt...
First
published in 1968, the Whole Earth Catalog put The Revolution
right there in your hands. Not just “access to tools and ideas”
but a large-format, soft-cover, fully-integrated synthesis of everything
that Stewart Brand and his Co-Evolution Quarterly* crew considered
essential to an informed, committed and meaningful life on our finite
planet. Meta-information on the theory and practice of wholistics, in
one brilliantly cohesive publication. Plus proof that whatever your personal
quest entailed, you were not alone.
Forty years on, people are still seeking “voluntary simplicity”
and still need tools, concepts and community. The best meta-information
source these days is your own constantly-updated do-it-yourself Whole
Earth Catalog — a.k.a. the Internet. In addition, the Web has
a transcendently empowering advantage over the ink-and-paper paradigm
— by allowing like-minded people to directly share experiences and
ideas, and brainstorm common concerns.
KJ’s Rambler-at-Large Bob Brady recently visited our old friend
Sogyu’s annually-expanding off-the-grid alternative-lifestyle Yama-uto
festival (photos)
over the hills from Kyoto in Kutsuki, and wrote it up in his
Pure Land Mountain blog [archive here,
scroll down to Sept 18]. (Sogyu was interviewed in KJ’s Kyoto
Speaks double issue back in 1991).
Ken Elwood, whose blog Rewilding
in Japan is listed among Bob’s links on PLM, responded
with a thoughtful comment on his vision for the future of Japan’s
depopulated countryside: “Our Return to the Satoyama: To live without
money, oil, superfluous industry, and politicians.” An excerpt:
Without energy-intensive machinery, farming needs
the hands and eyes of internally-motivated skilled workers, and with that
kind of attention, we can get much better yields with a variety of plants
and animals in symbiosis. With a lower population density, people can
be closer to nature; hunting and foraging from habitats that are carefully
maintained to maximize human food and general abundance. Country folk
can use and enjoy the handiwork of farmers going back hundreds of years
into Japanese history... Put simply, food and water will come by way of
traditional satoyama style communities.
Rewilding in Japan features over a hundred fascinating postings on diverse
topics including “Japanese
Hippies in the Country” [Sogyu's "Ecovillage"],
“Homeschooling in Japan” [a link
to an FAQ by an advocate in Himeji], “Tune in, Drop Out, Grow Rice”
[actually a link
to a video, many comments] and “Beachfront
Mountain Properties” (on the impact of global warming
in Japan):
Imagine Lake Biwa as an ocean inlet and your remote
mountainside abode as beachfront property. Imagine where over 30 million
seacoast folks living within 10 meters of the average sea level will be
migrating to over the next 20-30 years. Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya average only
a couple of meters above sea level right now. The subways are below sea
level already...
Valuable introductions and links are also provided to various other rurally-oriented
blogs and websites. But it gets even more interesting when Elwood posts
his items to Gaijinpot.com’s
Japan Forum. On his long-running thread on Countryside Living
in Japan (which began with a request for pointers on buying rural property),
he discusses aspects of reinhabiting Japan’s inaka with an eclectic
mix of knowledgeable regulars and other visitors. All contribute additional
links to further sites / relevant material — pointing, incidentally,
to some of Bob Brady’s pieces, like “The
Country Side of Life,” as featured in KJ’s Inaka
special bookzine issue (also posted on KJ’s website), and interviews
from Andy Couturier’s upcoming book A
Different Kind Of Luxury, (see also an extract in KJ
#51, “Living the Abundance of Less”). Also mentioned, the
Chiiori Project
(also featured in KJ #51, “Seeking Shadows in Iya Valley.”)
[For an overview, there's a very vast & useful index here]
Also posted and discussed are myriad jottings on every aspect of homesteading
and natural farming in a specifically Japanese setting — a lot of
practical advice, occasional rants, and much food for thought, including
exchanges on quotes from other media sources such as The Daily Yomiuri:
The Environment Ministry defines “satoyama,” a traditionally
cultivated environment that lies between a village and mountainous area,
as secondary forests around human settlements. “Satochi”
is defined as areas that include farmland, irrigation systems and grassland.
According to the ministry, there are 8 million hectares of satoyama and
7 million hectares of satochi in Japan, which together occupy 40 percent
of the country’s 378,000 square kilometers.
Such areas have traditionally been maintained by local farmers, who tended
woods and the areas around their fields for their own benefit. In the
past, they would chop down trees for firewood and charcoal, and harvest
bamboo shoots in the spring. Mature bamboo was used to make charcoal and
handcrafted items, while fallen leaves were used as organic fertilizer
for farmland
According
to the government, as of April, 738 of the country’s 1,804 municipalities
were experiencing depopulation. These municipalities cover 54 percent
of the country in terms of area, but were home to just 8.4 percent of
Japan’s 127.8 million people.
In addition, about 60 percent of Japan’s 3.1 million farmers are
aged 65 or older.
(link here)
Among other connections: WWOOF
(Willing Workers on Organic Farms) Japan:
WWOOF Japan members can get below the veneer of
tourism and away from their daily grind, have genuine and meaningful experiences
with people, society and culture, in all kinds of walks of life, in hundreds
of locations all over Japan. Eat and think organically! More than 260
hosts nationwide represent a rich diversity of experience and adventure,
examples being organic farming, health and healing centers, pottery and
arts, building and restoring traditional homesteads, organic restaurants,
martial arts, dealing with animals, Japanese tea house, pension in ski
fields area, eco village, brewing and production of foods, fishing, bee
keeping, nature guide centre, centers for the environment, sea kayaking,
and more. Some hosts are near cities such as Tokyo and some even in the
centre of cities.
Another valuable posting: “That old NHK documentary narrated by
David Attenborough, called Satoyama,
is now available for viewing (in 6 parts) on YouTube” [with useful
Japanese subtitles...]
If the sub-theme of this issue inspires you to look into countryside Japan,
the above resources are definitely worth checking out. The possibilities,
both online and off, are literally endless.
*A lot
of classic articles from Whole Earth Review (successor to Co-Ev
Quarterly) are posted
here.
Example: Tools
are the Revolution, by Kevin Kelly, Winter 2000 issue...
more
blogology
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