Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan
Arts & Culture ( 6 )
“Just Enough” is a book of stories and sketches, depictions of vanished ways of life told from the point of view of a contemporary observer. It tells how people lived in Japan some 200 years ago during the late Edo period, when traditional technology and culture were at the peak of development, just before the country opened itself to the West and joined the ranks of the industrialized nations.
Only a few centuries earlier, the country had been on the brink of disaster, its environment pushed to the edge through overly aggressive use of natural resources. But the government and people overcame many of the identical problems that confront us today — issues of energy, water, materials, food, and population — and forged from these formidable challenges a society that was conservation-minded, waste-free, well-housed and well-fed, and economically robust, and that has bequeathed to us admirable and enduring standards of design and beauty.
From these pages, readers will gain insight into what it is like to live in a sustainable society: how larger concerns can guide daily decisions and how social and environmental contexts shape our courses of action. The book illustrates the environmentally related problems that the people in both rural and urban areas faced, the conceptual frameworks in which they viewed these problems, and how they went about finding solutions.
Included at the end of each section are a number of lessons in which the author elaborates on just what Edo period life has to offer us in the global battle to reverse environmental degradation.
“Just Enough,” more than anything else, is about a mentality that once pervaded Japanese society and that can serve as a beacon for our own efforts to achieve sustainability today.
Kodansha Int'l
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6 Comments
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borscht
Mr. Brown is a capable and intelligent writer/teacher/architect but as I read this review, I was reminded of the merry yeoman theory of history: everything was good back then, people were happy and living in harmony with nature etc. Perhaps it is the reviewer that gives this impression.
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sk4ek
Certainly Edo itself was home to a sophisticated populace, and even the traditional lifestyle of the countryside (aspects of which remain today) certainly was what we might call "in tune with nature." But vast segments of the population lived in dire poverty and despair, and by the end of the Meiji, entire prefectures were depopulated as peasants took up offers of work in Hawaii and other distant ports.
So no, not all was happy and peaceful. But I look forward to reading this book.
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GW
as sk4ek is saying it wasnt all nice & calm relaxed living, I havent read the book so I am commenting on the review here, but I seem to recall had a pretty severe top down way of keeping people in their places, now it that system were to rtn & you cud make sure is was in a nice cushy spot I might be interested
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illsayit
Edo is about recycle. What brink of disaster centuries earlier, like yayoi, when the term country was established, China moved in, and territorial fights began?
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AzbyBrown
Hello everyone, and thanks for your comments.
You're all right, it's difficult to write about the positive aspects of historical Japan without seeming like a starry-eyed revisionist. But I've gone to great pains to portray life in the period accurately, and I think my editor and I have been very good at nipping any nascent romanticism in the bud. But I would like to point out a few things.
One is that "Just Enough" focusses on how Edo-period Japan was able to reverse the environmental degradation it had caused and learn to support a very large population (30 million people) for over 200 years with a steadily improving quality of life all across the board. It's as much about design as it is about culture. I think you'll all be amazed at how well thought-out and thorough the urban recycling systems were, for instance, and how effective the regenerative forestry practices of the period were, the ways in which fuel use was economized, watersheds protected, or how extensive urban farming was.
Second, a lot of our impressions about the quality of life for urban commoners and rural peasants are colored by popular culture, and a lot of it is mistaken. There has been a tremendous amount of excellent research in recent decades into quality of life in the Edo period-- mortality, health, sanitation, transportation, nutrition, education, housing -- and in fact it on most counts it compares favorably with ours today. If you're seriously interested, I'd recommend Susan B. Hanley's excellent "Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture."
Famines occurred, but they were isolated phenomena; abuse by overlords occurred as well, but in actuality people were rarely cut down in the streets by samurai. The depopulation mentioned above was actually a Meiji period phenomenon, as people left the countryside and headed to the cities to work in new industries; until then the farming life in most regions was pretty good. The Edo period wasn't heaven, and I make no excuses for the lack of rights or social mobility. But if you read this book you'll understand what an excellent job they did of maintaining their environment.
Azby Brown
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