Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category
17
Apr
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: economics, Edo Period, transition. 1 Comment
Japan’s population is declining at a rapid rate as the average age of its citizens climbs. Having peaked at nearly 128 million people in 2004, when those aged 65 or over comprised about 20%, the population is expected to drop to 95 million by 2050, when the share of senior citizens will be about 40%.
And the rate is increasing, with 2012 marking the steepest drop ever for the second straight year, with deaths outpacing births by 205,000. For the first time, the proportion of elderly 65 and over surpassed the number of youths age 14 and under, in all 47 prefectures.
The near and medium term implications of this change are mounting. With elderly farmers dying off and those remaining having more difficulty being alone, there continues a flight to urban centers. Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya now host nearly half the entire population. If government agricultural subsidies are cut from passage of the TPP trade agreement, it is sobering to think of what that will do to the remaining small farmers and their land. The government already spends over a third of its income supporting the elderly. But can this huge outlay continue?
After all, in 1965 there were nine workers paying taxes for every retired person. Now there are just two.
Everywhere one looks across society there are impacts to be seen, economic, social, environmental. To be sure, a falling population will require less energy and consume fewer resources, but one wonders what kind of infrastructure will meet the remaining demand. Hopefully it will be a relatively soft landing, but the risks of it being hard, or at least turbulent, are huge.
In any case, the scale and nature of this demographic transition is unprecedented in the world. I believe this is the first time a highly industrialized country has faced such a persistent and profound decrease in population. And when taking into account all of its attendant challenges and implications, it is an open question whether this unfolding could possibly result in a resurgence of satoyama spirit – albeit decades hence, when the population returns to Edo-era numbers. One can only hope.
Credit: Japan for Sustainability
8
Sep
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: aesthetics, azby brown, design, Edo Period, helena norberg hodge, Pre-Industrial Japan, satoyama, sustainability. 2 Comments
In early 2001 I happened upon an intriguing book at the Kinokuniya Book Store in San Francisco’s Japantown called, The Japanese Dream Home, by Azby Brown. Published that same year, it contained a fascinating history of Japanese architecture and provided an early basis for my better understanding Japanese design and aesthetics. This closely-read book remains on my book case, sitting next to another amazing book Azby wrote years later, titled Just Enough. The latter is a beautifully written and illustrated (by the author) book that provides scholarly (but highly readable) and valuable substantiation for many of the themes of this blog, and as such, appears at the top of my list under the above Inspiration menu.
Eleven years later I happened to meet Azby when Helena Norberg-Hodge invited him to present at the March 2012 Economics of Happiness conference in Berkeley. When I mentioned to him about my enjoying his first book, his jaw dropped and he said I was perhaps the only person he’d ever met who had read it! Little did he know that it has often been trotted out over the years to show house guests about my love for Japanese design.
Continue reading »
4
Mar
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: economics, energy, resilience, sustainability. Leave a Comment
Once again, UN University’s Our World 2.0 web magazine has published an outstanding essay well worth re-posting. The Future of Food in Japan, authored by the site’s editors in their usual clear-eyed fashion, touches on a host of daunting issues and challenges facing the country’s food self-sufficiency, energy security, and lifestyle in coming decades.
The writer’s compelling analysis aside, the links alone make the piece worthwhile (see, for example, Antony Boys’ pioneering and thorough analysis of the relationship between agricultural productivity and energy scarcity written in 2000 – a paper that long ago helped shape this blog’s theses).
But what is especially interesting – vis-á-vis Satoyama Spirit’s notion of Japan’s eventual return to a resilient lifestyle based on harmony with nature – are the as-yet-unread-by-me views of Eisuke Ishikawa, a prominent author who writes about the Edo Period. The Our World 2.0 article says:
Under present trends, the food supply problem will evolve and significant difficulties will emerge. Boys himself refers to the work of Eisuke Ishikawa, a writer on the Edo Period economy, who talks about the state of Japan in 2050 (“2050 is the Edo Period”, Kodansha, 1998) and essentially describes something like a “slow crash” — dwindling imports, falling exports, economic and population decline. (While there is no English translation of this book, you can read similar works by Ishikawa on the Japan for Sustainability website.)
Ishikawa’s work (at least those translated into English, care of JFS’s above link) are undoubtedly on my short-list of anticipated readings. Hopefully, they will provide the impetus for a future post (or posts!).
31
Oct
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: biodiversity, economics, ecosystem services, sustainability, worldview. 1 Comment
In what is undoubtedly a positive development for the natural world, the concept of “ecosystem services” is poised to go mainstream. This is a good thing because the concept is based upon the idea that our status quo economic models do not properly recognize the value of so-called externalities and fail to take into account the “services” that complex and biodiverse ecological systems provide to humanity. Seeing the world through such expansive eyes – through the wide-angle lens of ecosystems – is a refreshing, and promising, departure from the conventional narrow economic mindset. As such, one might say (pun intended) that the concept is, er, “gaining currency.”
For all of its promise, however, I would argue that its worth is really as a “bridge concept” – an advance to be sure – but nonetheless just a stepping stone on our longer path toward a greater awareness of our proper relationship to Nature. To arrive where we really need to go we must expand our awareness in ways that are not easy for those of us embedded in the modern world. Toward that end, I am offering the following (lengthy) email dialogue in the hope that it might contribute to progress on our individual and collective journeys. Continue reading »
3
Aug
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: economics, energy, new paradigm, resilience, satoyama, sustainability, transition, worldview. 1 Comment
Given the inherently un-sustainable nature of nuclear power generation – to say nothing of its profound lack of resilience – I have no doubt that the future of Japan, and indeed the world, will ultimately be nuclear free, perhaps within mere decades (albeit with residual nuclear contamination persisting for tens of thousands of years, well into the “Long Now”).
But what I hadn’t anticipated until recently is the possibility of Japan shutting down all of its nuclear reactors within months. Yet it is a real possibility, and if it does happen it will propel Japan far ahead of other industrialized countries in transitioning to a more harmonious relationship with nature. Continue reading »
14
Jun
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: new paradigm, resilience, sustainability, worldview. 1 Comment
In the three months since Japan’s major earthquake in March, many evocative articles and inspiring anecdotes have been published that, taken together, could well represent the early contours of a new, emerging paradigm of remembrance of our fundamental and inextricable oneness with nature and each other.
When I began musing about the revitalization of satoyama culture it was not at all clear how we might get “from here to there”, given the inertia and entrenchment of our current paradigm of separation, but if there is any silver lining to be discerned from the horrible dislocations of Japan’s still-unfolding tragedy, perhaps it is that the Japanese people are not letting this crisis go to waste in terms of using it as an opportunity for reflection. Many observers are recognizing that Japan is undergoing a profound transformation – starting even before the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster tore its societal fabric – and now the potential for real change across seemingly disparate sectors is being revealed in increasingly practical terms. Continue reading »
2
May
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: biodiversity, community, interdependence, new paradigm, resilience, satoyama, sustainability, worldview. 1 Comment
This morning Our World 2.0 posted an outstanding new article entitled, “Japan should look to satoyama and satoumi for inspiration“.
It is exciting and gratifying to see the concepts of satoyama and satoumi being highlighted for their potential to provide a sustainable, resilient, long-term basis for a rich and dynamic culture and thriving relationship with the natural world – not only for Japan’s rebuilding strategy but also for the world.
Japan is uniquely positioned to act as a “proof of concept” for other developed countries in finding ways to remember and draw into the present long forgotten ways of living in harmony with nature – and in the process reconnecting with those tangible and intangible qualities of interconnectedness that provide true meaning to our lives and nourish our parched spirits. Continue reading »
23
Mar
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: community, interdependence, relocalization, resilience, satoyama. 1 Comment
Japan’s still-unfolding disaster offers important lessons for us all – on many levels – with inspiring stories continuing to emerge of personal courage and generosity and collective cooperation and resilience. One powerful and practical example of the importance of cultivating what might be referred to as “satoyama spirit” was highlighted today in a New York Times article, “Tight Web Saves Cut-Off Japanese Villages“: Continue reading »
15
Mar
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: community, interdependence, relocalization, resilience, simplicity. 6 Comments
At this time of nearly unspeakable calamity in Japan, words emanating from within the country are precious. Today, a colleague alerted me to the following, A letter from Sendai, published today in Ode Magazine. It is written by a woman I don’t know, Anne Thomas – a gaijin living in Japan – and it eloquently and movingly captures a profound moment – a confluence of local and global, resilience and acceptance, sharing and generosity, healing and hope – when personal concerns are transcended and our intrinsic oneness is recognized and appreciated, even cherished and celebrated, through a recovery of the simplicity on the other side of complexity. I hope you are as inspired by this letter as I was. Continue reading »
25
Feb
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: biodiversity, community, economics, ecosystem services, new paradigm, satoyama, worldview. 4 Comments
The following article appears in Our World 2.0. It is a modified (improved!) version of a an earlier post on this blog. Thank you, OW2.0, for picking this up and helping spread these ideas!
What if we changed our relationship with the natural world from one of taking what we can to one of reciprocity and mutual giving?
The International Satoyama Initiative, formally launched at this past October’s COP10 Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya, Japan, provides an important boost to preserving traditional forest and farmland (satoyama), and seaside (satoumi) ecological production landscapes around the world. Its aim of restoring a balanced and sustainable harmony between humans and the natural environment is something no one could argue the world does not need.
However, is the proposed cure for satoyama’s current degenerative state — assigning such biodiverse landscapes value in direct proportion to the “ecosystem services” (the benefits of nature to households, communities, and economies) provided — adequate to the task? Or does viewing nature in such a calculated way, and justifying its preservation based on the things it gives us, simply perpetuate the tired old (yet sadly still quite widely-held) myth of nature existing for our benefit? Continue reading »
11
Nov
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: economics, new paradigm, satoyama, sustainability, transition. 3 Comments
Inspired by the quickening pace of change occurring in Japan and around the world, a few weeks ago I began drafting a blog post tentatively titled, “Japan as Number One, Again?” in which I argue (as I have in previous posts – for example, here) why I believe that Japan is poised to once again become a world leader, not in conventional economic terms of course, but in something more elusive and subtle, but ultimately more important.
However, events and other articles have overtaken my relaxed timeline for completing my draft post and I want to share some of these recent developments right away. But first, here is a preview of my draft to provide context for what follows: Continue reading »
30
Oct
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: biodiversity, community, economics, ecosystem services, new paradigm, satoyama, sustainability, transition. 3 Comments
What if we changed our relationship with the natural world from one of taking what we can to one of reciprocity and mutual giving?
The International Satoyama Initiative formally launched at this week’s COP10 Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya, Japan, provides an important boost to preserving traditional forest and farmland (“satoyama”), and seaside (“satoumi”) ecological production landscapes around the world and restoring a balanced and sustainable harmony between humans and the natural environment.
But is the proposed cure for satoyama’s current degenerative state – assigning such biodiverse landscapes value in direct proportion to their “ecosystem services” provided to humans – adequate to the task? Or does viewing nature in such a calculated way – and justifying its preservation for the “services” provided – simply perpetuate obsolete, if widely-held, myths of human separation from nature and nature existing for our benefit? Continue reading »
18
Oct
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: biodiversity, ecosystem services, satoyama, sustainability. 4 Comments
Addressing yesterday’s opening of the biodiversity summit in Nagoya, the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD, Achim Steiner, the United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), noted something very significant and, I believe, right on target:
Japan’s ancient culture and legendary technological innovation has given the world many things. But perhaps in many ways Satoyama may prove to be among the most important exports of Japan to a world still searching for sustainability.
On a related note, OurWorld 2.0, a profoundly important webzine, just posted a selection of their short films about satoyama and biodiversity, each one exquisitely produced by the United Nations University. This selection was featured at a film festival associated with the COP10 conference in Nagoya on October 17, 2010. Do check out these “Stories from a Biodiverse World“!
5
Oct
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: biodiversity, economics, ecosystem services, sustainability. Leave a Comment
One of my favorite webzines, Our World 2.0, recently posted an article exploring the merits of developed countries paying developing countries to protect their so-called “ecosystem services.”
The concept of ecosystems providing a valuable service to humanity, and thus being worthy of protection, is a key proposition in the Satoyama Initiative’s quest to protect biodiversity. My feeling is that justifying the preservation of nature because it provides a service we recognize as valuable is adequate as far as it goes, but it’s nonetheless an old paradigm response. I’m re-posting my comment here: Continue reading »
14
Sep
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: community, relocalization, satoyama, transition. Leave a Comment
The following excerpt is from Duane Elgin’s classic book, Voluntary Simplicity. In it, Ram Dass wisely speaks to the topic of a previous blog post in which I discuss “the simplicity which lies on the other side of complexity,” except that he does so in terms specific to village life and our tendency to idealize the traditional lifestyle: Continue reading »
24
Jul
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: bridge-building, community, consensus decisions, duality, Jeffrey Irish, sacred feminine, satoyama, Shintoism. 2 Comments
Earlier this month I had the great pleasure of visiting Jeffrey Irish, a fascinating fellow in southern Japan who, as an American expatriate, is garnering considerable regional renown for his twelve years of residency in a tiny rural Japanese farming village, including two years as village head.
Jeff came to his current position in an equally unlikely way. Following college he got a job with a large Japanese construction company and showed sufficient business acumen to be asked, with two other employees, to start a U.S. branch of the company in New York City, a branch which ultimately grew to 180 employees as he moved up to become vice president.
Continue reading »
12
Jun
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: research, Transition Movement. Leave a Comment
Given its centuries of success in Japan, the satoyama socio-ecological production landscape appears in many ways to be an inspiring example of how a community of people can live sustainably on the land while enjoying a meaningful and rewarding lifestyle. As we move into a new world of energy descent and relocalization, it certainly seems the Japanese experience has much to offer the rest of the world. For one thing, not only is the Japanese government the first in the developed world to recognize the value of and take steps toward the preservation of their priceless heritage, but Japan may well be the first developed nation to actually have to go down this path in a large-scale way. Continue reading »
12
Jun
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: community, relocalization, sacred feminine, spirit. Leave a Comment
In reflecting about the Japanese government’s highly admirable pursuit of the Satoyama Initiative, I am wondering where is the discussion about culture, about community, about the underlying spiritual worldview of the satoyama and satoumi cultures. The underlying worldview of embeddedness in nature, of oneness with the environment, is clearly what undergirded and made possible the establishment and evolution of the original satoyama socio-ecological production landscapes.
Now, however, for all of the well-intentioned efforts to revitalize satoyama for the sake of biodiversity and cultural preservation, I have yet to see mention of what I believe is that glue that holds it all together. So far, I’m seeing a modern scientific worldview trying to recreate the recognizable pieces of a historically complex social and environmental ecosystem. And as we all know, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
What is that intangible quality that supersedes this piece-meal summation? What is it that is necessary for the government and NGOs to be fully conscious of if they are to succeed in their endeavors? I believe the invisible glue is the worldview of the residents themselves. A worldview of oneness, of spirit. To be sure, this worldview is ancient, but not archaic. It isn’t reflected in the modern scientific paradigm (save for quantum physics) but it is alive and well nonetheless. Growing in recognition and influence in fact.
And unless this is properly recognized as the requisite underlying reason for being of these mature satoyama landscapes, no amount of technical innovation, capital expenditure, rural revitalization efforts tied in with modern scientific knowledge, etc., will suffice in re-establishing viable, sustainable, resililient satoyama communities.
Community fabric, embedded worldview, spiritual connection to the land, and other inherently feminine qualities are largely absent from modern discussions, but for relocalization and revitalization goals to work, they must become part of the planning equation and conversation.
Of course, I’m not Japanese and I’m not in Japan, so perhaps the conversation is happening and I’m just not privy to it, or not looking in the right place. However, if the learnings of the Satoyama Initiative are going to be offered to the world in the hope that the Japanese experience can be brought to bear elsewhere, then it seems to me that an explicit discussion of worldview’s importance would be beneficial.
28
May
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: satoyama, simplicity, sustainability, transition, Transition Movement. Leave a Comment
Oliver Wendall Holmes quipped, “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I’d give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
What does this have to do with satoyama? It speaks directly to the nature of the change we’re facing as a humanity. And it suggests the value proposition offered by a satoyama socio-ecological production landscape. As we approach the limits of industrial society, constrained by the earth’s finite natural resource endowments, we are being pushed, and pulled, past our current way of thinking that falsely assumes many things, including the possibility of endless growth, the promise of endless technological progress, and that we are somehow separate from nature itself.
Continue reading »
21
May
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: biodiversity, economics. Leave a Comment
Yesterday, after reading Our World 2.0′s excellent article, Biodiversity, the world’s economic backbone, it occurred to me that we humans are being confronted by an entirely new challenge: How NOT to take nature for granted.
After lunch I took a moment to watch from our deck as the rain fell lightly onto the leaves of our persimmon tree. It struck me that so long as our decision-makers remain ensconced in their offices and meeting rooms and subways of the built world, that nature will remain an abstraction, a backdrop against which we play the game of our human project. A project whose very underpinnings are based upon such myths as endless economic growth, endless technological fixes, endless human-centered progress. Continue reading »
15
May
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: documentary, interdependence. 8 Comments
Filmed in 2004 by NHK, Satoyama: Japan’s Secret Watergarden is a gorgeously filmed sixty minute documentary, narrated by David Attenborough. Broadcast a few years later on BBC, the full film is available to view here on Google.
[UPDATE: A four-apart HD version is now available on YouTube. The first part is available here. The remaining parts appear on the right column. SORRY NO LONGER AVAILABLE DUE TO COPYRIGHT ISSUES]
[UPDATE - Aug 21, 2011: The complete film now seems impossible to find on the internet. I'd purchase the DVD if I could find it, but that, too, appears unavailable. If anyone knows a source, please post a comment. In the meantime, while the first of six parts remains off-limits, the subsequent five parts remain available, for now. Parts two-six are available here.]
[UPDATE - March 2012: Here is the complete film in HD, recently posted, not broken into parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1XNxc3CwSM%5D
This film portrays the essence of the satoyama landscape’s seamless fabric of interdependence and cyclical relationship between human and environment. Having heard about it for years, but never wanting to use peer-to-peer networks to view it, I was very pleased to finally find it available, albeit with somewhat compromised resolution.
Enjoy!
9
May
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: new paradigm, sacred feminine, sustainability. Leave a Comment
The outstanding webzine Our World 2.0 recently posted a remarkable article and video about the “ama” free divers of Hegura Island off the Noto Peninsula in the Japan Sea. For centuries these divers, all women, have been collecting abalone and other sea life using nothing but loin clothes, only adopting wet suits in 1964. Continue reading »
3
May
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: bridge-building, Buddhism, new paradigm, relocalization, satoyama, Shintoism, sustainability, transition. 1 Comment
This weekend I was very pleased to read Japan For Sustainability’s April newsletter article, Good-Bye ‘Ownership,’ ‘Materialism,’ and ‘Monetization” in Lifestyles:
A New Era Dawning in Japan, as it is a timely reflection of what I feel to be a very important, and hopeful, trend occurring in Japan, and later, the world. Continue reading »
20
Apr
Posted by Alan Zulch in Musings. Tagged: Jomon, satoyama. Leave a Comment
Satoyama and the importance of Japan’s ancestral roots
I’m very interested to know how the Jomon’s spiritual connection to nature endured and influenced the Shinto connection to the natural world, and how the Jomon legacy influenced the Japanese culture’s success at living sustainably for millennia.
Continue reading »
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