Chris

In 1993, perhaps long before the term Eco Village came into popular usage in Japan, a middle aged interior designer and carpenter from Nagoya and several companions were asking themselves if there weren’t a better way to live than the extreme consumerism that was reflected in Japanese society at the time and still is today. The following year they purchased some property in the rural municipality of Fujinomiya, just south west of Mt. Fuji, and set about answering the question. While they are still at it today, they have found their answer and for them it is an unequivocal yes.

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(Photo provided by the “Kamogawa Ecological Minded Kingdom”)

On Sunday, as part of my continuing study of sustainable living in Japan, I traveled from Tokyo down the coast of the Boso peninsula, which makes up most of Chiba prefecture, to attend the Awanowa Community Cafe & Market (Japanese link), a green event timed to celebrate the rice planting and which is attended by members of the growing network of sustainable living practitioners in the area.

Connected directly to Tokyo on the east side of the city, which seamlessly spreads across the border, and extending downward to form the eastern side of Tokyo Bay, Chiba prefecture is a paradoxical mix of 20th century industrial development with areas of seemingly untouched forest and some of the most beautiful rice terraces in Japan. Apparently, this is the result of government policy during the period of industrialization in which the rail lines in the prefecture were primarily built on the east and west coasts to connect shipping facilities and industry, allowing parts of the center of the peninsula to remain rural. This is in contrast with the areas to the south, west, and north of Tokyo where rail was developed primarily to carry workers to the city and now envelopes it in a complex web of commuter lines resulting in continuous city and suburbs.

The site of the event was the “Kamogawa Ecological Minded Kingdom” (Japanese link), a farming co-op set up by the activist and organic farmer Toshio Fujimoto and his wife, the well known singer/songwriter Tokiko Kato. This spot serves as one of the cultural hubs for the sustainability movement in the Kanto plain, which includes Tokyo, Chiba, Yokohama (Kanagawa), and Saitama. In addition to booths selling organic produce and hand made goods from the various eco minded communities and individuals in Chiba, the event featured a talk session with Kato and two other eco celebrities, the macro-biotic expert and writer Deco Nakajima and the actress Ikue Masudo, followed by live music performed by several local bands. Despite heavy rain in the middle of the day, the peaceful atmosphere, friendly smiles, and often stunningly beautiful scenery provided a refreshing break from central Tokyo life.

Life is sustainable when you are having fun.

I briefly spoke to one of the event’s organizers, Yoshiki Hayashi of the NPO “Uzu”, a healthy, lean, tanned man who seemed to personify to me the image of the traditional Japanese farmer seen in the earliest photographs of Japan from the 19th century, despite the modern artistic cut of his hand made indigo blue work clothes. He described the loose collective gathered here as “Rainbow Village”, fulfilling a role to bridge the gap between sustainable Japanese traditions and the future sustainable Japanese society he envisions. He had much to say on living sustainably, pointing out that in order to invoke change in society, changing one’s own life and getting back in tune with the earth through farming was far more effective than any more revolutionary methods could be.

But the line that hit home most of all was that “life is sustainable when you are having fun”. In Japanese, it was “tanoshii koto ga jizoku kanou”, or literally “fun things are sustainable”. Certainly not everything fun is sustainable, but it is far more difficult to sustain an activity if it isn’t.

The root of the Japanese word tanoshii, or “fun”, is the Chinese character for both “happy” and “music”. In addition to the “fun” meaning, the same character is used alone to mean, essentially, “easy”, as in “take it easy”. I asked Yoshiki how much time he spent on the likely demanding task of maintaining his own rice terraces and he said that while it was hard work and obviously there were seasonal peaks, he rarely spent more than half a day in maintenance and growing his own food, leaving the rest of the day open to do what ever he liked, which in his case is art.

I thought of Japan’s famous traditional “Matsuri” festivals originally celebrated by farming communities as I soaked in the peaceful vibes and sounds of the gathering, and thought that perhaps I needed to add “fun” to my definition of sustainability.

In my post here on greenz.jp last week I came up with a tentative definition of “sustainability” as part of this ongoing series exploring sustainable living in Japan. This week I’d like to jump right into the action and introduce a Japanese organization whose aim is to share traditional Japanese values with the world in order to promote sustainable living.

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Last week I introduced a new series on sustainable living with my post “What is sustainability anyway? Part I”. This week I am going to attempt to answer that question before we start talking about how it applies to lifestyles and thus begin our journey to discover sustainable living in Japan.
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If you are reading this blog then it is more than likely that you have heard the word “sustainability” used over and over again in a variety of contexts over the past several years. Some of you may have a very clear definition, though if you shared it with other similar readers you may find some major differences of opinion, while others will have a more vague idea (it’s something about the environment, dude…) or none at all. I myself identify with the middle group because while I thought I knew exactly what sustainability meant, the more I read the more I realize how flexibly the word is actually being used.

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