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preface to the new edition

just enough

Just three years have passed since the publication of the first English-language edition of this book, but in many ways it feels to me like that time was the twilight of a different era. I was very gratified by the early response to Just Enough, both by the many offers I received to speak on the subject in Japan and abroad and by the tenor of the many informed comments that arrived in my in-box and from audience members. Many of the people who attended my talks overseas clearly already knew a lot about organic farming, sustainable building, and other related subjects, or had immersed themselves in Japanese history, culture, and thought. They seemed hungry for the kind of information and outlook I had presented, and found the book a useful tool both for informing their own practices and for communicating the issues and potential solutions to others. I was repeatedly asked by people from different parts of the world, “Do you think this kind of thinking would be applicable in my own country?” Many of them, whether in India, Thailand, Spain, or Zambia, had good reason to believe that their own cultures and traditions had possessed a better understanding of how to live harmoniously with the environment in the past, and felt that that development and industrialization could be achieved without inflicting such tremendous costs on the land, air, water, and on their communities themselves. So many of them had already taken the first steps, and were ready to learn more, and saw my book as a useful model. As I said above, this was very gratifying.

The response from Japanese readers was even more gratifying. It has often been noted that Japanese society is peculiar in how receptive it can be to observations and criticisms when they are presented by foreigners. Japanese writers, academics, or activists can struggle in obscurity for years without being heard if what they are saying seems contrary to popular opinion, but similar words from the mouth of a non-Japanese often have the opportunity to hit home. It helps if the foreigner is informed and genuinely appreciative of Japan and its people. And this appears to have happened in the case of the message contained in this book. After months of polishing, the Japanese translation was released by Hankyu Publications at the end of February, 2011, under the title “Edo ni manabu eco seikatsu jutsu,” or “Learning from Edo’s ecological lifestyle.” Two weeks later the great Eastern Japan Earthquake occurred. As readers are undoubtedly aware, this was immediately followed by a devastating tsunami which obliterated hundreds of coastal towns and took nearly 20,000 lives, and by meltdowns in three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which contaminated hundreds of square kilometers of farmland and forest, and forced dozens of communities to disperse and relocate. It was a nightmare scenario made real, and spotlighted almost everything that was wrong about how Japan had been building its cities, managing its farmland, and providing for its energy needs. Stories about tsunami markers which had been erected in coastal villages 200 years ago but ignored by recent generations, resulting in tremendous loss of life and property, threw into relief how many sound practices of the past had been abandoned. And as residents of Tokyo, which survived the earthquake nearly unscratched, found themselves unable to find milk, rice, emergency supplies, or gasoline, and learned that radioactive iodine had been detected in the water supply, they realized how fragile contemporary lifelines really are, and how vulnerable big cities are to disruption and damage that occurs in distant water-sheds and agricultural areas. Those who thought about it realized that Edo was robust and resilient in ways that Tokyo was not. 3/11, as the triple disasters have become known in Japan, was a wakeup call to the nation, and a slap of rebuke.

The Japanese edition of Just Enough practically flew off of the shelves and was reprinted several times to meet demand. I was deluged with interview requests and invitations to speak at universities, at high-level conferences, to architects and planners, and at Keidanren, the all powerful industry group which has set the course for the nation’s manufacturing and business policy throughout the postwar period. It was hard to find anyone in Japan who didn’t see the disaster as a turning point, a moment of truth for Japanese people and their way of life, and the positive thinkers among them saw the need for rebuilding on such a vast scale as an opportunity to rethink and redesign, and to set things right. As I write this, in June of 2012, more than a year after 3/11, the rebuilding of Tohoku has barely begun, but many local governments in the region, frustrated by the lack of inspired leadership on the part of the central government, have indicated that they will try to rebuild in a decentralized way, to maximize local input and control, to generate their own power, and to seek self-sufficiency in as many areas as possible. They are actively looking to revive sound practices from earlier ages which have been abandoned. Forced to shrink by the loss of so much of their population and the aging of the rest, these towns and villages are looking for ways to do so stably and gracefully. And the lesson that so many Japanese have taken from this book is that not only is it possible to live wisely and sustainably with what the land has to offer, but that their forebears knew how to do it better than almost anyone else. So today, I see a country that is relearning how to rely on community connections for aid and mutual assistance, how to consume less energy and to treat water as the precious resource it is, and above all, to recognize again that maintaining the abundant natural carrying capacity of the land begins with maintaining the health of the forests.

With it’s education, skilled workforce, innovative designers, openness to radical experiments, and above all a national identity rooted in superlative ethical values and understanding of nature, and possessing several centuries’ worth of the kind of best practices I outline in this book, Japan has the potential to become the most technically sophisticated and artful model of sustainable design and living in the world. I don’t expect everyone in the country to get on board with this project right away. But the disaster and its aftermath have proven to be a great unifier of disparate groups with different goals and agendas, who have found a lot in common and numerous areas for collaboration. Organic farmers, alternative energy promoters, sustainable builders, activists working to raise political engagement and community solidarity, and many others have found great meaning and opportunity in the rebuilding of Tohoku and in making Fukushima livable again, working side by side, sharing information and contacts, connected with like minded people elsewhere in Japan and overseas. Twittered, blogged, and Facebooked into a far-flung community of experimenters, most of them are acutely aware that the rest of the world is eager learn from their experience.

Japan, surely, has entered a new era since March of 2011. The biggest difference in terms of society between the time before that and now is the sense of crisis which has struck the entire populace and which has become a powerful motivator. Japan has often been a bellwether for the rest of the world, a step or two ahead in social or technical developments, and that may well be the case this time too, as environmental disasters increase in frequency worldwide, exacerbated by the flaws in our manmade systems. Without the crisis of 3/11 Japan may not have seen that it was time to turn to corner; the rest of us would do well to realize that Japan’s crisis is also our own.

Azby Brown, Yokohama, November 2012