“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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4 Comments

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  borscht at 08:40 AM JST - 29th October

  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 at 05:35 PM JST - 29th October

  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 at 11:45 AM JST - 2nd November

  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 at 07:23 PM JST - 18th November

  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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