A DIFFERENT KIND OF LUXURY: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance

I haven't read "Tiger Mother"- I prefer "richness and great beauty"

2012-01-27T13:19:00.000-08:00

Apparently there's a book out called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. But I'm not going to read it. I know this is a provocative idea to put out in public, but I feel firmly about it, and I hope to persuade you.

Do either of these people look happy?

What I do know about this book comes from a review I heard on the radio, and from a caption of photograph in the NY Review of Books in which the author refers to herself as "mean me" while glaring at her daughter practicing the violin.

Apparently in "Tiger Mom" the woman contentiously brags about her daughter performing the violin at Carnegie Hall, and that she is "mean" to her daughter, pushing her to succeed. The reviewer on NPR doesn't like the methods, but expresses a wistful longing at the results and laments that she (the reviewer) will not be sending out invitations to her friends to see her own daughter perform at Carnegie hall. That daughter expressed some laziness of some kind about her violin practice.

The mother of this girl is a professor at Yale, a fact that the NPR reviewer also presents as something wondrous and awe invoking.

To me, this is a lot of "same old, same old." The question imbedded in the review is, "Is it worth it to make your children suffer, to discipline and punish them, if they achieve 'success'?" After uncounted millions of heart attacks and other stress related-diseases throughout the past century, I often wonder why we are still debating this. Is acclaim that important?

But maybe I should address why would I presume to criticize a book in public without even reading it? Here's a quote from my friend Kai's (amazing) blog. Kai quotes from "Tools for the Transition to Sustainability" in the book, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update:

Information is the key to transformation. That does not necessarily mean more information…It means relevant, compelling, select, powerful, timely, accurate information flowing in new ways to new recipients, carrying new content, suggesting new rules and goals. When its information flows are changed, any system will behave differently.

(And by the way, Kai's blog is the perfect example of not "more information" but relevant, select information".)

I know some people feel like they need to listen to Fox News so that they can counter those toxic arguments. I disagree. You are what you eat. Do we have to taste mercury regularly to be sure it's poisonous, or to build up our immunity to it? I feel it's ridiculous to spend the days of my short life drinking in ideas I feel are heinous and destructive. I want to spend my reading time with poetry and beauty, and if it's information, it should be "relevant and select powerful information" that will help me have a better life, or will help me in my work in, and understanding of the world.

The article in the Wall Street Journal is titled "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior." It shocks and saddens me that we are still mired in such debates. A Different Kind of Luxury is many things, but one of them is an extended look at the utter destruction of our souls by being over-busy, striving for success in the eyes of "the world", strangers mostly, and of course the destruction of the earth and everything for our future generations along with it. Carnegie Hall?? Is it really worth that?

I heard this quote once, I don't know who said it. It is about a famous movie director, talking about his reputation after he dies: "It's wonderful to live on in the hearts of your audience, but it's better to live on in your apartment."

Here's really fabulous quote, by Jiddu Krishnamurti. I found it on a blog called Whiskey River, which is great in itself, and really gives an example of what this quote says.

"You know, it is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off. It is good to be kind without a name. That does not make you famous, it does not cause your photograph to appear in the newspapers. Politicians do not come to your door. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and in that there is richness and great beauty."- Jiddu Krishnamurti

I will close with a short excerpt from the book. Chapter 9, from the introduction to that chapter:

Koichi Yamashita in his rice fields

So many wisdom teachings talk about humility. Yet our daily habit is to admire people with advanced degrees or important positions. We may even, if we have certain socially-recognized accomplishments ourselves, fall prey to the all-too-human tendency to get proud. Even if we don't, we tend to think of them as a safety blanket, trying to blunt the edge of our own worries by saying, "I'm established in my field." In tandem with this, many of us look down on manual labor. "Anything but!" our psyches seem to cry. But how much are we letting these assumptions choose our priorities for us? Is it possible that we are losing something nourishing without even knowing it? Koichi Yamashita has gone in his life from being a university professor to, as he calls it, "an artist of farming." He's found a living philosophy, in the true meaning of both of those words, and a feeling of sympathy with the entire life world in that most basic of acts, growing his food.

[later in the chapter]

When I ask Yamashita about his studies, he tells me that he studied the Upanishads in Sanskrit, can read classical Chinese and published the first book on Japanese grammar in English in India. With his wife Asha, he published a book of on the culture of Darjeeling and the ancient to the ancient Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim to the north. It has much of his research on festivals and folk religions, and is also a walking guide to many of the temples and monasteries there. But I can tell that he doesn't have one shred of attachment to these accomplishments, or any feeling of entitlement about the respect he should get for having these letters after his name. His voice is exactly the same answering my questions about them as it is when he tells me about raising chickens or the paperwork he has to do at the elementary school where he teaches.

Have you read it deeply?-- A letter from a Mormon reader

2012-01-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

I received a letter last week from someone I never met, someone who was touched by A Different Kind of Luxury in a profound way, as you will see reading part of her letter below. She is a Mormon who lives in Utah, and has shared the book with women in her book group, and it really inspired those women as well.

Dorothy's letter made me consider the years of time I put into exploring these 11 men and women’s lives, and incorporating what they have said into my life, and also, I should admit it, to consider the enormous labor I put into doing the interviews, translating, shaping and publishing this book. Fifteen years of my life.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of letters and emails and phone calls and the people who I’ve met at the readings, and how they have been moved by the book.

I know, as well, however, that the same forces that pull people away from themselves, that pull them away from a rich full life, that distract and waste away our lives, those same forces are still at work. Some say more so than ever. It is in this context that I hear from people who have read only a bit of the book. Perhaps there's more in this book for you yet?

One person I know has a strict policy of reading only one book at a time.

Masanori Oe,
profiled in Chapter 11 of
A Different Kind of Luxury

So, before sharing Dorothy’s letter with you, I’d like to encourage you to delve deeply into A Different Kind of Luxury. Chapters 8 and 9 and 11 are particularly profound. Even my publisher said about Chapter 11, “That one is a real mind blower.” (He’s not a man given to hyperbole.)

If you’ve read the book, perhaps consider giving a copy to a friend, there’s something called Buy a Friend A Book “the site that encourages visitors to surprise their friends with the gift of book” or a site like Pass the Book where you put a little note in the book, and hand it on to someone else. You could also write a group email to your friends about the book The ordering link from Amazon is here http://amzn.com/193333083X (You can cut and paste that link into an email).

Or you could also get it from your local independent bookseller. Another thing that truly helps is to write a review on Amazon and tell your friends about that. Reviews that are most useful have a some specific details about why you like this book, or why it was important to you.

Perhaps at minimum, just send your friends to this blog, and let them explore around themselves a bit. I'm not writing all this to boost sales, I should say. Selling this book is not how I make my living. Most of the money goes to the bookselling industry. I write this because the stories in the book have inspired and helped so many people, and the onrush of trivia and blinking distraction is so strong in our culture. You can see what I mean by reading Dorothy's letter:

Dear Andy,

I have just finished A Different Kind of Luxury and wanted to express to you my gratitude for this amazing work. It has taken me a year to carefully excavate the precious bits of wisdom from its pages and incorporate them into my own daily walk. I could have read it much faster than that, but sensed in the first paragraphs that this was something to be cherished, explored and carefully worked through, or much would be lost to me. This is not a 'reading book;' this is a 'pondering book!'

I have taken this book to book groups and shared the insights and truths with women who would never think to venture out of their role as conservative Christian housewives. I commend them for being brave enough to crack the pages; instead of something that threatened the fabric of their lives they found a feast for their souls for which they didn't even know they were starving. (I lost a copy that way--it never came back home!)

This is a sacred season for our family right now, with many changes and the growing up of children and so forth. I have felt deeply rooted and well centered during these transitions because of the offerings you have given me. For that I thank you, though I feel a bit at a loss after spending a whole year having my own inner workings nurtured, and am now wondering “what comes next?” Still, it is fitting that I seek and find the next pieces, the relationships and other bits that will continue what you have begun--as well as my own means of offering the light I have been given to those who are also seeking.

I thank you for this outpouring of self and call down the gifts of the Universe in response. Gods all bless.

Gratefully,

Dorothy Guinn

SECOND LETTER EXCERPT, IN RESPONSE TO MY QUESTIONS:

How I found your book--my teenage daughter is an absolute Japanese freak since about the age of 3 (she is now 18). She taught herself how to cook, write and speak Japanese-and shares with the rest of us. We joyfully hosted a Japanese exchange student for a few weeks right after the tsunami and then my daughter organized a fund raiser comprised of local students and raised over $3,000 for Japan. So we are always on the lookout for good Japanese-anything to satisfy her appetite, and when ordering something else from Amazon this book was suggested. I actually bought it for her but fell in love with it myself.

What do I do with my days...hmm...that is a loaded question. I LOVE to combine much reading with study, meditation, journaling and 'clearing work' of old belief systems that no longer serve me, and would gladly spend the majority of my time in this pursuit! I have lived in the Northwest, Las Vegas and Texas, though currently I live in northern Utah. Yes, I am a "Mormon," though we are encouraged to use the 'correct title of being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We are a homeschooling family. We actually share the same philosophy offered by Koichi Yamashita, on pg 259, "I teach them how to study. And after that, they can teach themselves." My husband and I have been together for 25 years and have 3 children. For our book club I ordered an extra copy of A Different Kind of Luxury to share because I was unwilling to part with mine so others could read it! Most of them ended up ordering one as well and the extra somehow got absorbed into someone's household and never made it home -which pleased me immensely as the lady who kept it had been rather narrow of heart and mind and this cracked her wide open to the ideas that people of other cultures / faiths could still be deeply spiritual in their own good ways. I have since thought of buying another copy to turn into one of those books that float around the world such as http://www.bookcrossing.com/ In the mean time, I'll probably donate one to our library. :)

About Christian ladies: as mentioned above, I am LDS as are the vast majority of people here, so incidentally the women in my book club were also. I have embraced the concepts of so many different belief systems, that I often rock the boat at church, in book club, at co-op, etc. I am a huge 'word junkie'--I love the way words feel inside of me and their power to express ideas and thoughts and new opportunities in life, just by rearranging them a bit. Anyhow, being able to do that with an underlying layer of caring allows me to introduce some pretty outrageous concepts to these straight-laced women, and they listen and surprise themselves by agreeing.

Wakako Oe
profiled in chapter 7

The first thing I introduced to them was on page 197-198 from Wakako Oe, though I admittedly tweaked the words just a bit to keep from scaring them: "So you felt the spiritual life was the reason for their vitality?" (That caught their attention as we also believe this.) "Yes, exactly. Because of this Larger Presence around them, bigger than humans, what you might call God--because they could always feel that consciousness they themselves would be lit up...Without that Presence, people can lose themselves, and not know what they are doing, what their values and principles are. They get confused. But because the eyes of God are on you, you become visible to yourself; you reexamine who you are."

They were hooked.

(I knew that this information, this different way of looking at every day life, struck a cord when one of them quoted that same passage back to me when we met the following month to discuss your book, not remembering it was the one I used the previous month when I introduced it! They loved the ideas and the slow way of working through it, almost as if it were scripture--which is the way I think of it, too. Many, many passages were quoted and with excited voices they shared the depth of what they had craved to find in their own lives. It was always there, but your words uncovered it, validated its worth and then set it in motion.)

We talked about the grain and muffins being served from the area near the nuclear reactor and the mother-activist protecting her family and community. This was also easy to relate to as daughters of Pioneers who hiked with bloody bare feet across frozen prairie stubble in order to provide for their families and escape governmental persecution.

Osamu Nakamura
profiled in Chapter 2

I explained that I had found much light and truth for myself in these pages in the concepts of recognizing time as an energy source to be cherished and cared for in its own right rather than only to be spent in the acquisition of other energy exchanges (money, material objects, etc.). Then I told them my favorite part of when you asked Osamu Nakamura (pg 57) "Why..." collect wood, cook this way, live this way, take this much TIME to do everything, etc.? His reply rocked my world and changed everything about the way I think and do things-- and the reasoning behind them. "Everything I do is because I completely enjoy doing it this way." and pg. 63 "...enjoying the pleasure of meeting his needs with his own hands..."

These two ideas added together told me that when I give enough time to any 'doing', it has the potential to become a pleasure. Drudgery comes into play for me when I feel like I have to hurry and get the meaningless stuff done so I can have enough time to enjoy the good stuff--which never happens because there is always too much every-day junk that needs to be done. When I flipped this over in my mind and invested my sink full of dishes with enough time to enjoy them, their prettiness, usefulness, the caring they offer my family, etc., suddenly the memories of shared meals they held turned them from dirty dishes to scared relics of my family's communion of breaking bread together at the altar of our very own temple/home (the kitchen table!), and I became the keeper of that flame with the opportunity to do it again with each meal prepared and shared and cleaned up.

As mentioned before, I would gladly spend my time buried neck deep in the words of books, meditations and journals, and in the past had often come to resent the daily 'work' of living. So this new way of thinking is very profound to me.

THIS, my new friend Andy, was the message to me in your book: TIME ALLOWS EVERYTHING I DO TO MATTER, TO BE BEAUTIFUL, USEFUL, NEEDED, ENJOYABLE; AND IN THE PROCESS, SO AM I.

Painting by Jinko Kaneko
profiled in Chapter 10

“Don't forsake the realistic; infuse it with spirit.”--Jinko Kaneko

I thank you for your generous gift of your time in creating this marvelous work, sharing life/time with these amazing souls and then in corresponding with me. I am honored. I look forward as the year closes to following Atsuko's wise counsel. It feels good to allow myself time to settle inside and feel what comes next, thank you for the reminder!

Blessings,

Dorothy Guinn

(a Zen-Baptist-Light Worker-Mormon!)

The Lone Wolf Parable: New Years Greeting from Ito-san

2011-12-24T18:00:00.000-08:00

Here is a New Year's greeting I received from Akria Ito some years ago, and I offer it to you all, with Ito's beautiful illustration. He wrote it from his home in the woods in the deep mountains near Mt. Fuji. The other clue to this parable is that it was sent to me as Ito himself felt his years on Earth coming towards their end.

One hundred and fifty years ago there were many wolves in these mountains, as well as wild boars and pheasants. Then in the Meiji period humans started to enter these parts and began to cut trees for sale. The wild mountain wolves were reduced in numbers. Finally there was only one left, and he began to get old. One day he caught a pheasant and brought it high up to a rock to eat. He sat on this big rock, and while gazing out on Mt. Fuji he chomped away on this bird, then, losing touch with all thought, he entered into a trance of ecstasy, and his soul departed his body, which was then changed into a rock.

Lone Wolf and Mt. Fuji
by Akira Ito

The villagers later renamed this stone 'The Rock of the Huge Wolf," and occasionally they would journey up to this stone and made offerings of pheasant to it, and prayed for the soul of this great wolf.

Read more about Akira Ito and his life in Chapter 6 of A Different Kind of Luxury.

Interview with Japanese Anti Nuclear Activist

2011-12-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

Hi. If this is your first visit to the blog, please check out the book excerpts and reviews first (above). This post deals with the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan, and is an interview of a man, Koichi Honda, who is very active in fighting the electric utilities who still want to run nuclear plants in Japan, or even build new ones. We sent this group "Sayonara Nuclear Power" $450 to help them copy posters and flyers for a series of protests at the Iikata nuclear plant in Shikoku. The money was donated by many people who attended my public book reading events this year. Thank you. You can't imagine how much this money helps.

In A Different Kind of Luxury I did not profile Koichi Honda, but he is an associate of Atsuko Watanabe, who I do profile in Chapter 3. She's been an anti-nuclear activist for 30 years, joining with with this man in many protests. I detail one of these protests in the book. If you want to help with money, PLEASE do so by sending a postal money order to Honda care of Atsuko Watanabe. Her address is Tokushima Ken, Kamikatsu-Cho, Fukuhara, Kami-Yoko-Mine 17, JAPAN 771

The webpage for Sayonara Nuclear Power (in Japanese), is here.

If you want to write to Honda, his email is hondak@mb.pikara.ne.jp But please only contact him if you are able to help out, not to just ask general questions, since he's a very busy man. If you have signatures (see below for details on this) send please in mass, not just one at a time, or emails, again in mass you can send it to his email address.

Honda served as a city councilman in Tokushima city (where I used to live) and was a candidate for mayor. He's now an organic rice farmer. I wrote about him in a blog post last year. Here's the interview:

Andy: Has the government given up on trying to build nuclear power stations?

Koichi Honda: They will never give up trying to build new power plants.

Andy: What is the situation with the power plant in Shikoku now? (Honda lives on the island of Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands, and where Andy lived for four years. It’s across from Osaka.)

Koichi Honda: Anti-nuclear activist and
former city council member in Tokushima Japan

Koichi Honda: Currently of the three reactors two are idle for “routine maintenance” and safety checks, and one is operating. By law, the prefectural governor of Ehime Prefecture must approve the restarting of a reactor after it has been idled. The power company has to ask the local government for permission. Right now, the Ehime governor doesn’t think the people will accept a restart. In February of next year the third reactor (there are three reactors as part of the Iikata complex) is scheduled to shut down. We are taking a local strategy since it’s much more difficult to get the national government to change.

Andy: What can people in the US do to help with this?

Koichi Honda: Send us a message, that the people of the world will not accept the re-starting of reactors in Japan. That we get support from people all over the world will be very helpful. Signatures of many people, if you can get them, is really helpful.

Andy: And what about agricultural products from your prefecture [Tokushima]?

Koichi Honda: Sorry to say, but there is no food in Japan that is not contaminated. None. It’s just a question of whether there is a lot of radiation, or a little. From our area, our own experts [that is to say scientists allied with the anti-nuclear movement]—the ones with very very good measuring machines—say say that the radiation in food products from Tokushima prefecture are very low, but nowhere in Japan is “0”. We have nothing to do but accept this. It is better to think that it’s time for us Japanese to accept our responsibility, our duty, and eat the foods we produce here. The very rich, the really rich people, they can afford to get all of their food from overseas

Andy: Why do you say “duty” and “responsibility”?

Koichi Honda: Because we Japanese failed to stop nuclear power. Nuclear radiation never gets extinguished. [the word Honda uses here is: “kienai” which is a term used for flame which can be put out, or not put out in this case.]

Andy: And what is happening now in Fukushima?

Koichi Honda: The government told people in certain radiuses--10 or 20 or 30 kilometers--to leave. They became refugees. But inside this radius, certain areas have higher and certain areas have lower levels of radiation.

Andy: Is the government giving them money?

Koichi Honda: Yes, but it’s very little, about $1200 a month for a family [prices are much higher in Japan of course]. And that gets too expensive for the government and the power company, so it is saying that “if you want” you can move back to certain areas.

Andy: One thing I don’t understand is that the US military ordered evacuations in a much larger area…

Koichi Honda: The US army knew the wind patterns and let their people know where was dangerous. The Japanese government knew this as well, but it hid these facts from people.

Andy: Wow. So effectively the Japanese government is being less responsible, and less transparent than the US military?!! That’s hard to believe!... So, my next question is how are ordinary people in Japan responding? Will this change politics in Japan?

Koichi Honda: Ordinary people are being told by official scientists, and government ministers and by the official media, and the large corporations who own the media who have ties to the power companies, all of them are saying every single day to people that it’s going to be safe if the radiation is at “this level”. We [in the citizen’s movement] can find out on blogs that certain children are suffering, that blood is coming out of their noses, and not stopping, but if you don’t follow these blogs, perhaps you don’t know. For example, there was an area where all the elementary schools were evacuated, and when the government said it was OK to return if you want to, 2/3 of the students returned, and 1/3 did not. So many people are not changing their views, and the government and the ruling parties are all solidly pro-nuclear.

Andy: So what is your group’s strategy? What is the plan for the anti-nuclear movement?

Koichi Honda: There will be a large nationwide parliamentary election in 2 years. The Jimin party, the Minshu party and the Komei party are all pro nuclear. [respectively, the “liberal democrats” in power for most of the post-war period—hard right; the “democratic” party, currently in power, but only marginally to the left of the liberal democrats; and a large nominally Buddhist party] Only the Shamin party and the communists are against nuclear power. So our strategy is to work individually on each candidate to have them make their stance on nuclear power clear, and to tell them that we will not vote for them individually if they are pro-nuclear. But they are getting huge payoffs from the electrical companies.

Andy: but why, why do Japanese people still believe these lies?

Koichi Honda: I myself don’t understand. Why hasn’t there been a big change after such a big accident? They hear the news on NHK [the national broadcasting service, like the BBC] and they think whatever is said there is correct. The politicians say “we must continue our research and improve our technology and nuclear power will be safe.” It’s really incredibly unfortunate and sad.

Andy: Are people cutting back on electricity use?

Koichi Honda: The government said that starting Dec 1, everyone should reduce their electricity use by 10%, it’s a national campaign, and that people should heat with kerosene and not electricity. The large outdoor neon signs for the pachinko gambling parlors are dark.

Andy: Only ten percent?! Japan is the most electricity intensive country in the world that I have ever seen!

Update on Nuclear Situation in Japan

2011-09-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

I just spoke on the phone with Oizumi. He's asked us to buy him some radiation meters, and we've finally been able to find ones that are appropriate. I'll tell you how he's going to use them below, but first, here's what he reported about nuclear power in Japan.

San Oizumi, anti-nuclear activist
profiled in Chapter One of
A Different Kind of Luxury

"There are 54 nuclear reactors total in Japan. Only 14 are currently in operation. Since the earthquake and tsunami and the meltdown at Fukushima, they [the government or electric companies] have not been able to restart a single one. All the planned reactors that are in the pipeline to be built have been halted."

I asked Oizumi if he thought that if the conservative party [the LDP] got back into power that they would be able to restart those plants.

He said, "That's not going to be so easy to do, the citizen's movement is too powerful."

So that's good news. And I should say, Oizumi (who you can read about in Chapter One of the book) is not at all prone to wishful thinking or blind optimism.

Still, of course, there is terrible nuclear poisoning that has happened in Japan, and good and trustworthy data is very hard to get. (Remember the government and Tokyo electric swore that there had not been any radiation at all released in the first week after the tsunami. In fact, there were three full meltdowns.)

Oizumi said that he and the others in the local citizens movement (Oizumi lives in Central Japan, near the city of Nagoya which is between Tokyo and Osaka) are forming a group to monitor radiation levels, and have gotten a very large and sophisticated radiation monitor. The seven devices that we are buying for him and sending there will be sent to Fukushima, to Miyagi prefecture, and to the plant in Hamaoka.

Oizumi with his second daughter

The best news however, is that through conservation and the reduction in electricity use in Japan since the disaster there have been no power outages. Oizumi said, "By turning down air conditioners and reducing power usage, Japan has had enough power. And that means that we do not need any more nuclear power stations, and that we do not need to restart any of the closed ones. We have enough."

The people, their art, the land, the way of life: a slideshow

2011-09-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

The photos are beautiful, but their words, their way of thinking, and their choices in life are so much more. You can order the book here.

Paper or Plastic?

2011-08-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

Just recently, I made a bet. A large, money bet. I never bet, but I was very, very sure. I made the bet with my dear friend Matt Stevens, the simultaneous interpreter from Japanese to English (who, by the way, helped to translate much of the difficult work of Masanori Oe in Chapter Eleven, and translate it brilliantly.) The bet was for a thousand dollars. (!)

It started this way. Matt said to me, offhand, “Soon you’ll be reading all your books on a Kindle.”

I said, “Oh, no. Definitely I will not.”

Matt disagreed fervently, so I offered him a bet, and I made it big, to indicate I was serious. And instead of five years, I gave him ten years. I know I cannot lose this bet. I will not be reading all of my books on a Kindle.

Nepali Papermaking Process
Woodblock by Akira Ito

Before we go on, let me ask you question: Do you feel like you A. Spend too little time looking at a screen? B. Spend just the right amount of time looking at a screen? C. Spend too much time looking at a screen?

Me, I’m in category C. I bet most people reading this blog (Yes! A blog on a screen!) would answer C.

I could ask the same thing about paper or plastic. Do you more enjoy holding paper in your hands or more enjoy holding plastic in your hands?

Aside from the feel of paper in our hands, (that alone should be enough) aside from the longevity of a volume on a shelf, aside from how many electronics we already have, if we really believe that this current system of energy use is "unsustainable", by a strict dictionary definition, and thus cannot and will not continue, do we really feel like "publishing" for an iPad or Kindle is something that will "live on"? Do we feel it is more environmental? Something that requires electricity to read?! I mean, that’s absurd. Haven’t we had enough nuclear disasters? Coal disperses mercury. Oil and gas require wars and drilling.

Handbound book on
Handmade paper from Nepal

Let me say it: Paper feels good. Unless it burns or rots, it sticks around. It does not need a power source, a server, or a credit card. You can make notes in the margin of your book. You can turn down the corner of a page. You can make your own beautiful hand-bound book. You can take a paperback to the beach. You can go into any library and pick up a book printed *one hundred years ago* and just open it up and read it. Sure you can look that book up on the internet and see and read those same words, if you can find it, but it’s not the book itself that was printed a hundred years ago. Try these out in your mouth: “The rare book room.” “The rare digital text downloaded from a server.”

What about the trees, though? First of all, I’d say that if anything deserves the resources of this green earth to be used on it, it’s good writing, poetry, and splendid fiction. That is after food and shelter, of course. (Although I know a man who lives outside, under a bridge. But he is never without a book. Last time I saw him he was reading Pliny the Elder.)

Secondly, people are recycling paper. Thirdly, trees grow and replenish. Fourthly, I just got ten pads of paper today made from sugar cane. If we really want to take the destruction of trees for paper seriously, let’s declare a WAR then on junk mail, let’s make our own published writing as beautiful and important as we possibly can, and let’s not give a red cent to publishers who print dumb books.

Then what about the convenience of downloading books? The line usually goes: “All I have to do is want the book, and in seconds it’s in my hands!”

All I can say to this is, “Do we really need even more instant gratification in this world?” Has it made people any happier?

Ok, if you just want to check the weather, or find out what’s happening in the world political scene briefly, and you don’t want to buy a whole newspaper full of ads that you will just chuck in the recycling bin, then OK, check it online if you are one of the privileged people on the planet who have a computer and internet access. But a fine literary magazine? A book?

It's true that some people read books like people eat potato chips, perhaps an electronic version is better in some sense. Or if you are just extracting information out of them, then perhaps you’ll want a Kindle, I really can’t say. But I can’t imagine losing books, books on paper. One of the great joys of meeting a new friend is to go into their apartment and look at the books they have on their shelves. What are they interested in? Who is this person?

Here’s an excerpt from A Different Kind of Luxury. It’s about a beautiful hand-made book, made on hand made paper from Nepal, by Akira Ito (please read more about this wonderful man in Chapter 6).

But of all the quite different works at the exhibition, the most moving for me was the smallest: a hand-sewn volume that fit into a box about the size of two packs of cards. The book, a loving documentation of traditional Nepali papermaking processes, displays Ito’s affection for the ways of life of traditional rural peoples.

See detail, below

“I made this,” he told me, “as a way to try to support their way of life at the time that industrially produced paper was coming into Nepal from factories in other parts of the world.

Akira Ito

The paper itself is baby soft, and so pleasing to the touch that I felt myself relaxing just holding it in my hands. In the gentle images on each page, I find women walking mountain pathways with straw baskets on their backs, while the trees, the river, the yaks, the clouds, and even the rocks of the mountain themselves vibrate with Ito’s energetic line. Nepali men in woolen caps harvest branches from saplings which, on another page, are soaked in a rushing river and then beaten against rocks. Like the meshed fibers of the supple paper, the people seem completely woven into the energy of the landscape.

In this book I can feel what Ito cherishes. The entire process of boiling and pounding the fibers, sieving the pulp in screens under a thatched roof, drying the individual sheets in the sun or by the fire, are rendered in such an intimate and inviting style.

Ito manages to have the book “say” (without saying) that in these mountain villages of Nepal, the daily life of the people, their artisanal craftwork, the specific local culture and the entire life-world are enmeshed into one single fabric.

As Ito says, “The good things of the past, that’s what we must preserve. They have passed through the hardships of history to become a tradition, and we who are alive today must treasure them, and take care of them for the future.”

Akira Ito with author Andy Couturier, showing
this book.

In a rare moment, Ito expresses some of his frustration with what's happening with this earth. “For the sake of money, and for the sake of ‘economic activity,’ people try to change things, products, works of art—everything—as quickly as possible. To win at competition, everyone tries to make new things as quickly as possible. The acceleration of transportation, mass movement of merchandise, the forced cultivation of vegetables in all seasons, excessive lighting and air conditioning, and limitless information: the change is much too violent and intense. The human body and spirit cannot withstand this kind of acceleration. This is what I hate the most. For the sake of this changing, the world is being ruined. I don’t want to get involved in it. It’s better to be poor.”

Akira Ito, craftsman

Here’s another excerpt from A Different Kind of Luxury. It’s also about hand-made books but this time sewing together other people’s writings, by Mr. Osamu Nakamura (please read more about this wonderful man in Chapter 2).

Nakamura shows me a number of books that he has bound by hand, and explains the Japanese method of sewing together the cloth-and-paper covers. I look at each of them and shake my head imagining how much time and care went into making them. Given how much labor they take, I realize that it is only possible to make a few copies of each, and that only a few people will ever see them. It seems a lot of effort for very little reward. But then I think that in contrast to a book published by machines in a factory, the simple potency and beauty of a hand-sewn book gives the reader pleasure of an entirely different order.

Osamu Nakamura with a handmade book on handmade paper

One of the books Nakamura has bound comprises a few photocopied pages on how to weave sandals from rice straw. Spending time with Nakamura, I see that the process of making something like straw sandals or a handmade book cultivates humility while connecting us with something fundamental about our humanity: the interaction between the remarkable capacity of our own human hands and the ingenuity of our minds.

Now, picking up the book on how to make sandals from straw, its pages only photocopies, I understand that through his binding them in a cover of black and red Nepali cloth, they have become something of beauty where something functional would easily have done.

As Nakamura says, “Making things with one’s own hands cultivates a generosity and openness of heart.”

School tells teacher not to warn school children in Fukushima

2011-08-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is from an article in the Japan Times [excerpts]

Fukushima teacher muzzled over radiation

By TAKAHIKO HYUGA

Bloomberg

As temperatures soared above 100 degrees on a recent July morning, schoolchildren in Fukushima Prefecture were taking off their masks and running around playgrounds in T-shirts, exposing themselves to a similar amount of annual radiation as a nuclear power plant worker.

Toshinori Shishido, a Japanese literature teacher of 25 years, warned his students two months ago to wear surgical masks and keep their skin covered with long-sleeved shirts. His advice went unheeded, not because of the weather but because his school told him not to alarm students. Shishido quit last week.

"I want to get away from this situation where I'm not even allowed to alert children about radiation exposure," said Shishido, 48, who taught at Fukushima Nishi High School. "Now I'm free to talk about the risks."

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Tohoku region, the central government evacuated as many as 470,000 residents, including 160,000 because of radiation risks from the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 power plant. More than 2 million people, including 271,000 children, remain in Fukushima, the third-biggest prefecture by size.

The government is closely monitoring radiation levels, said Yoshiaki Ishida, an official in the education ministry.

"We don't think we are at a stage to tell Fukushima people to evacuate at the moment," Ishida said.

Kiyoharu Furukawa, 57, assistant principal at Fukushima Nishi High, said the school told Shishido not to spend too much time talking about radiation during his classes because some students and parents had complained. He confirmed Shishido resigned.

Radiation can damage human cells and DNA, with prolonged exposure causing leukemia and other forms of cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association. Children are more susceptible as their cells grow at a faster rate.

"It's all invisible. The trees are still trees, people are shopping, the birds are singing and dogs are walking in the street," said Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences, who visited Fukushima recently to provide information on health risks. "When you bring out the (Geiger) machines, you can see everything is sparkling and everyone is being bitten by invisible snakes that will eventually kill them."

Shishido will leave Fukushima for Sapporo on Aug. 8 to join his wife and two children, aged 13 and 10, he said. The teacher aims to create a network there to help the 3,000 evacuees from Fukushima find jobs.

Shishido said he was instructed by school officials not to tell his students that they should wear masks or about how radiation would affect their health. He deleted some comments from his blog after receiving those orders in May.

"I saw little boys playing baseball in a cloud of dust, and I wondered who can protect their future," said Kanako Nishikata, a 33-year-old housewife with a son, aged 11, and daughter, aged 8. "It's shocking to learn a teacher is quitting because he can't protect the students."

A group of parents and children from Fukushima plan to visit education minister Yoshiaki Takaki on Aug. 17 to ask him to evacuate children from the prefecture, she said.

Fukushima Nishi High, which has 873 students, had readings of 0.07 microsieverts per hour in the school building and 1.5 microsieverts per hour in the playground on July 14, still within the safety limits set by the prefecture and central government, said Furukawa, the assistant principal.

The school continues to hold gym classes and sports club activities outside, he said.

"I don't think the children are safe either, and I know the radiation level is still high," Furukawa said. "These days, they are wearing short sleeves and no masks."

More than three-quarters of the schools receive radiation readings of 0.6 microsievert per hour, said the network, a group comprising 700 parents. That's 10 times more than the readings in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, on average.

Miyuki Sato, a 36-year-old housewife who evacuated to Kyoto last week with her two children, attended a town hall meeting with government officials in Fukushima on July 19. She said that even after leaving her home, she still has a ¥120,000 monthly mortgage to pay off.

"You may say we should keep children at home if we think it's dangerous, but kids need to play outside if they want to pick flowers or collect beetles," said the mother of a 9-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.

"Please get all the children out of Fukushima. Please offer financial aid for us."

Three 100% meltdowns, workers highly irradiated, cleanup 50-100 years

2011-06-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, famed nuclear physicists Michio Kaku said that Fukushima is "Still a ticking time bomb."

Kaku discussed some recent revelations about the disaster's impact, and noted that Japanese officials still don't have control at the site. "In the last two weeks, everything we knew about that accident has been turned upside down," Kaku says. "Now we know it was 100 percent core melt in all three reactors...now we know it was comparable to the radiation at Chernobyl."

Among Kaku's other distressing notes: Fukushima workers are exposed to a year's dose of radiation within minutes of entering the site, and cleanup will take between 50 to 100 years.

I suppose there are lots of things you can do, having read this, but one very important way is to forward this news to anybody you know who still thinks that nuclear energy is a safe or even reasonable alternative. Oh, and turn off your air conditioner. (Unless it's medically necessary, I should add, of course). I know, it's less comfortable. Please re-read above passage.

Another thing, take a moment to just be plain sad about it, if you are. Just plain sad.

"Andy mirrors the lushness of the countryside with his own rich prose"

2011-06-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

In a wonderful new interview and review, author Susan Audrey profiles A Different Kind of Luxury. Here's the link for the full review, but check out this nice quote I pulled out here:

In the book, Andy mirrors the lushness of the mountainous countryside with his own rich prose and reflects the Zen-like simplicity of his subjects’ lives in minimalistic photographs of the surrounding nature, their humble homesteads, lovingly tended farms and fields, finely crafted artwork as well as poignant shots capturing the inner essence of the 11 men and women profiled.

Come right on back now!

What we don’t need

2011-06-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

Nakamura's Kitchen

Nakamura doesn’t use any dishwashing soap. At all, for any reason. I found it hard to believe when he first told me, but it’s true. For those pots and plates and cups that didn’t have anything oily on them, he uses plain water. For oily things, he mixes the water with sifted wood ash from the fire. That’s it.

I should mention that he washes all his dishes immediately after he finishes eating. He uses a vegetable bristle brush. Oh, and he doesn’t eat any meat.

Since I was a child, I have always washed the dishes with dishwashing soap. If I were to calculate all the meals I’ve eaten in more than four decades, I’ve used an ocean of detergent! Think about all the supermarket aisles full of different brands, colors, fragrances ... and think also of all the plastic bottles.

Multiply each year you have been alive by 365, multiply each day by 3 meals, and think of each cup and plate and frying pan and bowl and each one squirted with ... with what? What is in that stuff?

Even eco-soap is not necessary!

I once knew a truck driver, a guy who drove eighteen-wheelers. He said the most dangerous and toxic loads he transported were the chemicals used to make dishwashing and other detergents. He told me tales of when these trucks crash--which of course they do occasionally. He told me of the the poisoning of the nearby creeks and the liquid all over the road. He also said, “You better get out of there quick if you are in the cab. If that stuff gets on your skin, it can corrode it away. Lots of guys have died from getting those chemicals on their skin.

Toxic slop load

Now think again of the aisles in the supermarket, and all the detergent we have all used. We’ve been convinced we need this stuff to stay healthy and to be “clean.” But, as Nakamura has shown me, we don’t need at all.

But this is just one example of something we’ve been told that we need.

Example two: When I was visiting Atsuko last year, I noticed she measured the cold water she poured into the tea kettle before boiling it. I asked her why, and she said she didn’t want to waste the gas to boil more water than she needed.

I think of all the times I have happhazardly filled up my tea kettle with far more than I needed for my one or two cups of tea. I didn’t even give it a thought. But, even though I don’t think about it, if I do that tens of thousands of times over my lifetime--heating up twice as much water as I need-- I am spewing an enormous amount of carbon into the air.

Atsuko's Kitchen

Now think about oil and gas exploration, drilling and transport, and about all the lives lost, human and animal, from it. And the wars: Nigeria, Iraq, the Exxon Valdeez, the Gulf of Mexico, and think of how much of it was just not necessary.

So what to do? First we need to know it’s possible to wash dishes without detergent, or that someone in this world measures water before they boil it. And then we have to exercise our will to change our behavior. And then--really important-- we have to keep it up.

I know that what I'm speaking about is more trouble sometimes. But so is working in a cubicle for cash income. And then there’s that thing about extinction of thousands of species from the earth, forever.

And then what about what you’re missing out on? The inner development of your person and spirit that comes from more conscious living, and doing it by yourself.

Maybe living more intentionally is not such a difficult choice after all!

Bookstore events in June: tell your friends!

2011-06-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I've got a big book tour planned for this summer with ten dates set. If you have friends in Oregon, Washington, or Northern CA, please share this link with them, if you would! Thanks. Andy

June 15 (Wed) Darvill's Books in Orcas Island WA 7 PM Link:

June 17 (Fri) New Renaissance Books, Portland, OR 7 PM ($12) Link:

June 18 (Sat) Elliot Bay Books, Seattle WA, 5 PM Link:

June 20 (Mon) Bloomsbury Books, Ashland, OR, 7 PM Link:

ALSO some Northern CA events this summer:

June 22 (Wed) Radio Appearance KSVY FM "Health Matters" in Sonoma CA, 1-2 PM Listen online
June 22 (Wed) Transitions Sonoma County, Sonoma Community Center, Sonoma CA 7 PM Link:

June 23 (Thurs) Petaluma Seed Bank in Petaluma CA, 7 PM Link:

July 9 (Sat) Rebound Books, San Rafael, CA (time TBA) Link:

July 16 (Sat) Henry Miller Library, Big Sur, CA 7:30 PM Link:

Sept 8 (Thurs) Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes, CA 7 PM Link:

About the book:

Raised in the tumult of Japan’s industrial powerhouse, the 11 men and women profiled in A Different Kind of Luxury have all made the transition to sustainable, fulfilling lives. Based on Andy Couturier's popular articles in The Japan Times, this lushly-designed volume has a wealth of stories about real people--artists, philosophers, farmers, and activists--who have created an abundance of time for contemplation, connecting with the natural world, and contributing to their communities. In their success is a lesson for us all: live a life that matters.

"Aren't they just existing on the basic 'Survival' level?"

2011-05-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

At a book store reading I gave last year there was a very concerned-looking woman standing at the back of the audience. At the end of the talk, she raised her hand and said, "Aren't these people you are writing about just existing at the basic 'survival' level?"

I asked her what she meant and she said, "I'm originally from the Philippines and over there millions of people are just existing day to day with barely enough to eat. They live at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs." (Abraham Maslow's theory says that human's can only move towards morality, creativity and "self-actualization" after other more basic needs such as food and shelter have been met. See this chart if you need to, but don't forget to come right back!] )

The woman continued, "The people in your book don't get to go above that level of just handling their very basic needs."

This question has stuck with me. I have read that theory too when I was in college. I've come to realize that the whole basis of the thinking that produces such theories is basically wrong, because it starts by assuming a level of material affluence which only has come about through the appropriation (or if you prefer a more stark term, stealing) of the resources of the Third World and taking of aboriginal people's lands--in the US, the Native Americans, and then turning our minds to self actualization.

A warm and convivial meal at the Oe's house

What I found in meeting the people in A Different Kind of Luxury is that they haven't separated their internal and spiritual and artistic and meaning-making lives from the basic processes of taking care of their needs, and taking care of the needs of the people in their communities, or of taking care of the earth.

And there is something fundamentally modern in being able to chose different aspects of a way of life and put them together in a manner that makes sense to us. But what gets people in our current society so trapped is that are so many options available, and we don't have the internal fiber to make the choices based on a consistent and strongly-held set of principles or values.

Meeting your needs isn't separate
from a self-actualized life

Many of the people in the book didn't have to reach that far back for a lot of traditions and ways of doing things. For us in the US, and for example my grandparents and my great grandparents used cash to meet their needs, but as recently as the 1960s in Japan, in the mountains, rural people were still making almost all of what they needed without much interaction with the cash economy. So the ways of doing things didn't need to be researched in books, or re-invented. The people in this book could learn how to meet many of their own needs--which, after all, is the purpose of "an economy"--just by walking down the road to speak with a nearby older man or woman.

As San Oizumi says in chapter one:

“Of course there’s some need for money, but when

you use money to solve problems the necessity to think

for yourself disappears. You can resolve all your difficulties

by using money, or buying a product to fix it for you. Just

like being a member of a large group or organization: you

can let the group do a lot of the thinking for you. But for

me, the opportunity to think for yourself is too valuable to be wasted that way.”

Think about that, if you would, for a second. Using money wastes an opportunity you have, a precious opportunity, to think for yourself! If you ask me, that's a pretty radical way of thinking.

Radio Appearance and Lecture

2011-05-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

I'll be interviewed tomorrow (Thursday) on Radio Free Santa Cruz, 101.1 FM from 3:30-5 PM (Pacific Time). The show will be streaming live on the Internet here:

I'll be speaking about the Japanese nuclear disaster, about the people in A Different Kind of Luxury, and also about my way of teaching writing. We will ALSO be speaking with one of the people in my book herself, the anti-nuclear activist Atsuko Watanabe. If you can't tune in at that time, you can hear the archived interview here. BUT, the first half hour is another guest, so just forward to about half an hour in. I speak for about 90 minutes.

I will also be giving a lecture at the University of California at Santa Cruz this Monday night, May 23 from 7-10 PM Information about the lecture, which will be in a large lecture hall for 350-400 people (!) is here. It is part of the Education for Sustainable Living Program and I'll be speaking about ways to get out of the cycles of busy-ness, debt and overwork that so many of us are struggling with, and how to live a deeply rich and satisfying life. But the lecture is less about "tips and tricks" and more about our inner orientation, and philosophical outlook.

Information about parking and directions are here.

I will be giving about ten speaking engagements in June through September from Big Sur up to the Canadian border (Bellingham Washington). I'll post those dates here on the blog soon. If you happen to be nearby, it's nice to be able to see a LOT more photos, and sometimes I bring original artworks and hand crafted Awa Bancha tea.

"I see hundreds of books every day...Luxury is the best book I've read all year."

2011-05-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

A review that really catches the spirit of A Different Kind of Luxury. By a librarian...

I work in a library and see hundreds of books every day. I read more books than anyone else I know. So when I say that A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance by Andy Couturier is the best book I’ve read all year, you should know that this recommendation does not come lightly.

Couturier introduces us to 11 Japanese artists and farmers who have consciously chosen a rural life of little money. They’ve resisted the cultural pressures to conform to lives with salaried jobs (and this pressure is intense in Japan), and have fashioned instead lives grounded in nature, with space for their imaginations and philosophic thoughts, incredibly rich in time and inner satisfactions.

Read the whole post here.

A terrible desperate poignancy for me and my family

2011-05-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

I just got this message from a man living in Japan.

Hi Andy,
I'm just in the middle of the chapter about Atsuko Watanabe. What she said, [about nuclear power] and what San Oizumi was saying in the first chapter has a terrible, desperate poignancy for me and my family. We live in Fukushima. Hopefully, just about far enough away from the plants to be safe, but it is not something I'd ever imagined my life becoming -- the daily radiation check with a geiger counter in my potato plants.
Loving your book, but finding it all a bit sad right now. Can't wait for the happy ending!
Julian

Not bracketed

2011-04-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

Just saw this on a blog that reviewed my book and I liked it a lot. It was what I hoped to be doing when I wrote it:

I have read many books on how the various Japanese arts like Shodo, Chado, Kendo, etc. can be a conduit for spiritual cultivation. But this book was able to indicate a way for one to bring this cultivation to inform a whole different way of life, instead of having your practice "bracketed" and compartmentalized as a hobby after the demands of work, society and the family.

Also got a postal letter yesterday that said that A Different Kind of Luxury was one of this persons "most important books I've ever read." This, I believe is much more a testament to the amazing people profiled, but Yeah, I did work pretty hard on it. Please, if you have a good message for the world, steel yourself against the winds of distraction and just FINISH it. There's a lot of bad, and it's up to each of us to put out good things into this benighted world.

In celebration of occasional blog posting!
Andy

Two Organizations You Can Donate To

2011-04-07T15:33:00.000-07:00

After getting two suggestions from Atsuko, I spoke later with my old colleague and friend Koichi Honda, who speaks excellent English and uses email. His email is: hondak@mb.pikara.ne.jp . I have copied him in this email. His phone number is: 011-81-88-665-0758 Be sure to check the time difference before calling. I usually call between 4 PM and 11 PM California time. He's the best person to be in contact with. Do cc me in communications, but I may not be replying.

Here are two groups. One is a national group which, among other things, provides crucial factual information about nuclear power. Honda-san says "we check with them every day to see what's happening."

The second group is a local Shikoku group (the island I lived on for 4 years, and where five people I profiled live. Please see the map in the book.). They are fighting to close down the nuclear reactor in Matsuyama city, and their leader is Ms. Kyoko Ono. They will be protesting at a shareholders meeting in May, and they need money to fund their campaign and get the word out. They are definitely "scrappy" as you asked for. So here's the information. If you have any other questions, please CALL me, as I can speak faster than I can type an email. I'm at 510-594-1905.

The first group:

Based in Tokyo, we are the Citizen`s Nuclear Information Center (CNIC). With a network of scientists, activists, and common citizens, we work to create a nuclear free world.

Their website in English is:
http://www.cnic.jp/english/

Here's how to support them:
http://www.cnic.jp/english/cnic/support.html

People outside Japan should send an international postal money order made out to Citizens' Nuclear Information Center. Please specify the purpose of the money order as 'Donation'. Alternatively, you can ask us to send you details regarding bank transfers.
Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
3F Kotobuki Bldg., 1-58-15 Higashi-nakano, Nakano-ku, Tokyo 164 Japan
Tel: 81-3-5330-9520; Fax: 81-3-5330-9530

The second group:

Nuclear Power "Sayonara" Shikoku Network. This group is fighting to close down the nuclear power station in Shikoku. Please contact Mr. Honda about them and their work. He's an active local member. The webpage I found for them, only in Japanese, is here:

http://genpatsu-sayonara.net/?p=25

I would imagine they don't have the resources or the time to translate their website into Japanese. Also, I think using an international postal money order is the way to donate to them.

Anti Nuclear Rally in San Francisco, this Sunday April 10

2011-04-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

Please attend if you can. Thanks, Andy

Sunday April 10, 2011

Assembly 11am,

Rally at Noon and March at 1:30.

We need to shut down the 4 nuclear reactors in California

Dolores Park by the 16th and Mission BART station in San Francisco

A Different Kind of Luxury on the Radio

2011-04-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

I'll be speaking on the radio, tomorrow, Thur, 3:30-5 PM Pacific Daylight Time. The show will be streaming live on the Internet here

I'll be speaking about the Japanese nuclear disaster, about the people in A Different Kind of Luxury, and also about my way of teaching writing. (If you are not on the West Coast, calculate the time here

If you don't get a chance to listen, it should be archived, and I'll update this post later. Tell your friends! Thanks.

Just a bit more political...

2011-04-04T23:29:00.000-07:00

I've been posting a lot on the nuclear disaster, which is still continuing, and I'll be putting together another follow up soon. But I would like to get back to some of the larger themes in the book with a blog post just a bit more political. I wrote the following piece in India, and it talks in a deeper way about the sources, in our own selves, of the poisoning of people and plants and animals and fish. So here, in service of that, I offer the following:

What little girl at three years old, and tired, would refuse being carried up the stairs? When I saw her reach up to the smiling young man, I could tell that she was used to being carried. There’s nothing wrong with wanting help. Each one of us humans is related to each other, and we all depend on each other.

But there are a couple of details that give me pause. I was in India when I saw this, traveling in the relatively richer region of Himachal Pradesh. The man carrying the girl up the stairs was from another region, and he had darker skin. In this area, all along the roads, living in the roadside shanties, doing jobs such as construction, shoveling stone, carrying debris, or sweeping up trash, there are darker people. Much darker. They are not from this region, but from the desperately poor state of Bihar. I didn't ask them their caste, but I can guess. They do the dirty work, the harder work, the more dangerous work. A few days before I saw the little girl and her caretaker, I saw one of these workers get casually smacked around by a lighter-skinned local truck driver. The truck driver seemed to take it as his right. Often these workers clothes are dirty, covered in ash and their faces show the expressions of the exhausted and worried and oppressed.

A man washes tourists' dishes in India

So, back to the little girl. She was dressed in a nice white sweater, her hair was lightly coiffed, and she reached up pleadingly to her servant--perhaps it would be fairer to say her family’s servant--to pick her up. He was a 15 year old boy, and he also had ash on his clothes. I understood the relationship, and could see it being imprinted early on in the little girl's life. He carried her up the stairs.

I should state that I was there, in that town in India, not having walked there, but because of the incredible leverage of petroleum (and of course all the wars incumbent upon its delivery to some people and not to others.) Another way to say this is that something besides my own steam brought me there (i.e. the whole crazy world system). That that same system powers the computer I write this blog post on now, and sends this message to your eyes.

Now relying on others is not all necessarily a problem, because, as Masanori Oe so elegantly wrote (chapter 11), we are all alive by means of each other.

But an important message that I was hoping to convey in A Different Kind of Luxury is the deep and satisfying value of doing things for yourself. Self-reliance: there’s an ethical aspect to it.

In fact, when an Indian man of limited English asked me about my book, I tried to explain it to him in simple terms. He said, with some admiration, “So it’s a book of moral education?” I replied, a bit embarrassed, “Well, not exactly...”

Donkeys carry propane up the mountains for tourists in Nepal

I was brought up in our culture of "live and let live", and we are taught to avoid telling others how they should live. I think this is correct. And so A Different Kind of Luxury is a book of stories, not prescriptions, or advice. It is not a self-help book and it is not “7 Steps to a Simpler Life.” I resisted much pressure to not let the book become something like that.

However, every day, we are all making decisions, sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously about “What am I going to pay other people to do, and what should I do myself?”

Who cleans our toilets, cares for our yard, repairs the roof, grows the food we eat, prepares and serves it? Of course it’s a time saver for someone else to do it for us, but we have to remember to ask ourselves, case by case, "Is this right?"

I hope that in reading A Different Kind of Luxury people reflect also on their own lives, and think about who is doing things for us, and what the cost might be to them. I hope that they then try to make such decisions more consciously, and try to reduce the negative impact that our desires and demands have on other people.

And that means not getting carried up the stairs, even when we’re tired, even when we’re cranky.

Tourists have breakfast in front of beautiful scenery

The good news is that we actually can gain so much from doing things for ourselves. We build physical strength, and emotional strength, and also strength of character. By not having someone else carry us up the stairs, we also (surprise!) can build a life of deeper fulfillment. Speaking from my own experience, which I very rarely do in A Different Kind of Luxury (steadfastly not a book about me): I really love the feeling of gathering my own firewood for our cabin in the mountains, or looking at the ceiling and knowing that Cynthia and I built it for ourselves, or that when we turn on the electricity, that it comes from the tiny micro hydro turbine that we installed and maintain ourselves.

I think the best motivator for increasing our self reliance is the pleasure and satisfaction it brings. But it’s also good to remember that not having someone else carry us up the stairs is better for people born with less power than ourselves, and better for the planet in general.

"When I am by myself in the rice fields, I am simply glad..."

2011-03-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

There's been a new review of the book by K. McDonald. The full review is here, but just to give you a taste, I've excerpted a few pieces:

As serendipity would have it, I just finished reading "A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance" (2010) by Andy Couturier. ... It is a richly beautiful book that would appeal to anyone who might want to slow down, have time to know who they are and why they are here, work with their hands, grow their own food, and live simply.

photo source: flickr TANAKA juuyoh

This book is largely philosophical without ignoring agriculture, since most were self-sufficient in growing their own food.... These people chose a value-system different from the prevailing one of their modern consumerist Japanese culture, and it just so happens that they were also anti-nuclear activists. They took part in educating the public about the nuclear issues. One was successful at preventing a waste facility to be built nearby. Since the recent 9.0 earthquake and nuclear disintegration, it looks as if their nuclear concerns were prescient. Practicing what they preached, these individuals chose lifestyles that utilized little energy. One had a total of three light bulbs. Some had no refrigerators.

[Andy again] The reviewer obviously read the book carefully, and pulls out a number of quotes, some of my favorites among them. Here's one:
Yet when I'm by myself, out in the rice fields, working with the plants, I am simply glad. I understand that I myself am living, that I am in possession of a living spirit. In the rice paddy with the plants you just naturally develop a feeling of compassion, of sympathy, of love. -Koichi Yamashita

[Back to the review:] The ways of old-Japan are rich, wise, and full of lessons for us, including in the areas of art, farming, and permaculture. Best wishes to each of these individuals and their families now as they persevere, as their people have always persevered.

"They called us idiots" says Oizumi

2011-03-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

Oizumi just said to me on the phone, "We all went to the Central Japan Power Company and asked them to shut down the nuclear power stations, and they just laughed in our faces and called us idiots." After a pause, he said, "People here have really lost their minds."

I asked Oizumi if people are running out of food. "We here all have food, but in Tokyo, people have hoarded things, and there's nothing on the shelves, especially bottled water. It's not just Tokyo, but a lot of surrounding areas. People are hoarding things at their homes, and young mothers can't get any water for their children. Right now it is the infants and the small children who are most in danger." [emphasis added]

San Oizumi, Anti-nuclear activist

I asked Oizumi what else he's been doing, and he said that he's been speaking at temples and rock concerts and in fact the local high school is planning a march to the nearby nuclear power plant in Hama-Oka to ask them to shut it down. He also has just last night finished a third firing of his kiln since the earthquake. (He usually only does it twice a year.) He'll be selling the pieces at an exhibition in Nagoya in May to raise money and awareness of the problem. I'll try to put some photos of the new work up on the blog when I get them. The name of the exhibition is "Too Late."

We just sent some geiger counters to Oizumi in Japan, and he's ordered about 18 more. (My partner Cynthia has been doing a lot of the work of finding the best ones, and finding ones that are still in stock.) A few friends have sent some as well. Please if you are reading this blog and have sent, or will send Oizumi a geiger counter, send me an email to let me know at andy@theopening.org

Before we got off the phone, Oizumi added, "The ocean is getting very polluted from the Fukushima disaster. They are pouring tons and tons of high level radiation in the water and that water is going to flow all over the planet and poison the oceans of the world for years to come." Can we pause to take a minute and think about this?

If you are wondering if this is a time to get active, I would say, Yes, it is. You can expect the nuclear power industry to be cranking their PR machines into high gear. Don't believe it, any of it. The problem is not the design of this particular reactor, it's not Japanese political or corporate culture. It's nuclear power in any shape or form. And, it's our way of life. Are there any appliances on that don't need to be? Lights? How easy it is to turn them off!

In relation to this, if you have a moment, read this very poignant piece of writing by my friend Jane Brunette. It really speaks to our current situation, and what we are doing with our careless use of the earth. Before I share a short excerpt from Jane's piece, I want to say there is a real alternative to our current way of life. It's why I wrote A Different Kind of Luxury, to show that some people have been living for decades with less consumption, and a greater enjoyment. If you haven't read the book, please consider it. You can order it here. And now on to Jane's beautiful piece of writing:
—An old man at the evacuation shelter [in Japan] said, “What’s going to happen now?” And then a young high school boy sitting next to him said, “Don’t worry! When we grow up, we promise to fix it back!” While saying this, he was rubbing the old man’s back.

We promise to fix it back. That one really stung me. We have left behind nuclear waste and dangerous reactors, global weather changes, oil spills, and failing economic systems for our children to fix. I want to say to that boy and to all those who will be born in the future and inherit these things, “I’m so sorry.” Thinking of them now — the future children and the future flowers as well as the good hearts inside all of us who are alive now — I want to use this tragedy as the everyday people of Japan have been using it: to join with others and find a way to live that honors and cares for us all. Read the whole post here.

"They are very close to building a new plant here"

2011-03-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

Japan is rife nuclear power stations, and many more are being planned and built. (Obama by the way just signed a nuclear deal with Chile to build power plants.) I received an email from a expatriate who is living in Japan who is fighting nuclear power in his local area. I want to share this with you so that you can understand the concrete difficulties in opposing a power plant (read on to see what I mean.) I also want to share an excerpt from my good friend Kai's posting about his experience in Tokyo. I urge you to read to the end where Kai talks about what we can actually learn from what's happening, and what and how we will need to change. First Brett's email.

Hey Andy,
I just read and enjoyed your piece on your blog. it's getting quite scary here in Japan. We're far south (Miyazaki) of the damage but the damage doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon. Regarding nuclear plants, down in Kagoshima they are very close to building a new plant in the remote area of Kushima. Residents resisted the plant for years but now it seems that Kyushu Electric [Power Company] has put enough money into everyones pockets to buy their support. There is a small movement resisting the effort but these people (me included) all live outside the immediate area. Next month is the final voting on the approval of the new plant. A group tried to organize an event/protest within Kushima but were blocked from renting/using any public spaces. so now there is an event planned for next month in a nearby area. Most of the protesters would qualify as hippies and surfers so the general public really isn't listening to them.

But I'm hoping this latest catastrophe in Fukushima will bring a change of heart to the Kushima residents. Japan's future is not looking good at all. this disaster is bigger than anyone can imagine. what a tragedy....
[A few days later]
Since i wrote you i've learned that the vote in Kushima concerning the nuclear plant has been postponed (for obvious reasons). Also, the space that people had reserved to hold a protest event has since changed their minds and will no longer host the event. It seems they were pressured by Kushima residents upset/concerned about the attention. After all the tragedies here in Japan i'm hoping that theJjapanese (and the rest of the world) begin to seriously question their relationship with nuclear power. The stakes can't get any higher.

Brett

This is from my friend Kai's blog. He's just left Tokyo. Kai's blog is http://livingpermaculture.blogspot.com

A little more about life in a time of crisis. We finally decided to leave Tokyo and the "fun-house" that shakes constantly. More than the fear of being irradiated, it was the psychological impact of instability from the frequent aftershocks that solidified out decision. My partner is suffering from a sense of guilt, as if she "abandoned" those less fortunate. I think that is probably a relatively common feeling for those who evacuated. Its a tough situation.

3/11 was the original big earthquake (M9). We have had aftershocks several times a day since then. On 3/15, we had another earthquake (M6.4) from a different area. Supposedly, the two events are geologically unrelated. There is also a general expectation that a substantial earthquake will hit Tokyo imminently. That's a scary thought.

There was a report that many people are suffering from earthquake-sickness. I think that is what we were experiencing. The earth feels like its constantly shaking, and its hard to think clearly.

ENERGY

Planned blackouts continue throughout the region (this includes traffic signals and trains). Individuals and businesses have to plan the day accordingly, and there have already been cases of people stuck in elevators. It's an important opportunity for modern people to become aware of how dependent our lives are on centralized electricity, and how vulnerable it is to disruption.

Remember the Northeast blackout of 2003? It was supposedly triggered by powerlines coming into contact with overgrown trees, over 100 power plants shut down affecting millions of people from Ontario to Midwest and Northeast USA. When will we learn?

MEDIA

Recently, the media has started to include non-earthquake related stories. For a while, it was all earthquake devastation, nukes, and economic disruption. Now they have stories such as a planned execution of a criminal, the 634m Tokyo Skytree is almost complete, baseball games will have delays (oh, baseball disruption is actually earthquake related). Anime and variety shows have resumed their usual entertainment roles. Still, most of the media is focused on the aftermath of the devastation, stories of heroism and misery, and most of the airtime is dedicated to the current state of the nuclear disaster. I'm not sure how beneficial it is to have the news on constantly. On the one hand, we all want to know what is going on, whether things are getting worse, what we need to do in order to protect ourselves, etc. At the same time the psychological toll is not light. People are fed unpleasant news non-stop, similar to post 9/11.

It is also difficult as a media consumer to know who to believe. Its hard to believe Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power] (as they have been caught lying, deceiving, and covering things up) and the government (same charges, and they are getting their info from the news!). But, the media is also an industry, that needs to tell us something even if they have nothing really to inform us about. As a business, they need to keep our attention on their channel. Thats where "if it bleeds it leads" strategy comes in. Today, a Tepco representative was telling the media as little as they can as usual, and a reporter was persistently pushing the representative to give us some kind of worst case scenario. I don't feel either party had the citizen's best interest in mind.

STORES

Some stores have closed for a few days, some stores have closed early, many are out of essential supplies. Toilet paper, rice, bread, milk, canned goods, bottled water, gas, are hard to come by. This is what it looked like in my neighborhood in Tokyo a few days ago,

This is what it looks like in the global center of abundance. Perhaps more than actual need, these shelves were emptied by hoarding. I heard that iodine medicine to protect the body from radiation poisoning is also facing temporary shortages.

NUCLEAR DISASTER

This is the most man-made part of this disaster. It was waiting to happen. If not in Fukushima, then some other nuclear plant in Japan, or in some other country.

Nuclear energy is promoted as if it is clean, cheap, and safe. But, if you really understand the entire process, from mining, construction, and decommissioning including radioactive waste storage, the history, and complexities in safety, it is not clean, cheap, or safe. Thats a fantasy.

What it is, is energy dense. Fossil fuels are also energy dense. The unfortunate reality is that we have sacrificed human lives, democracy, safety and security, and peace for these concentrated forms of power. Both are non-renewable resources too, meaning we will run out of it. Technology will not solve our energy problems, it can delay the consequences and keep us distracted, the only real solution to our relationship to energy is to use less of it. Either we choose to do it, or it will be forced on us.

I hope this was a shocking wakeup call to everybody about the nature of nuclear power and the disproportionate risks we take for our lavish energy use. I was with Mayumi Oda (artist, environmentalist, nuclear abolition activist) when the earthquake first hit, and we were talking about how this is the time to really put an end to this madness. If we don't get it now, after 3 mile island, after Chernobyl, then we will pay greatly in the future. Slowly we will forget, get distracted with our daily life, and be surprised when another disaster happens. There is no way to eliminate the potential for computer malfunction, human error, unexpected natural disaster, or terrorism. That is the same for most forms of energy production, but nuclear is the highest risk and life-cycle cost.

The only way to stop nuclear disasters is if we stop it. Our energy situation is quite complicated. As we deal with the convergence of climate change and peak oil,there will be no easy solutions. Renewables have their downsides too, and most likely cannot produce the amount of energy we have become accustomed to. We can choose the path of a graceful decent, or we can head for collapse. For an intelligent overview and analysis of energy, and realistic steps we can take, I highly recommend (click for more info):

The Party's Over -Richard Heinberg

The Upside of Down -Thomas Homer Dixon

Transition Town Handbook - Rob Hopkins

If this event has not inspired you to action, please at least learn about risks and realities of nuclear power, and our energy situation. It will really change your understanding of our world. Plus its interesting stuff!

The nuclear disaster is timely in Japan because in a different prefecture, they started construction of a new nuclear power plant in a biodiversity hotspot. There have been persistant local protests that delayed the construction for over a year. Very little media has covered this situation, and I imagine most Japanese don't know that it is even happening.

Its hard to care about things that don't seem to directly affect your life. The link below is an overview of the situation

http://cop10.org/issues/marine/73-kaminoseki

Here is another site with a link to a petition

http://en.parc-jp.org/news/news/stop-the-reclamation-for-the-nuclear-power-station-support-the-people-of-iwai-jima-island

Recently, a Japanese documentary on energy was released which included this situation.

http://888earth.net/index.html

Lets create a new era,

where we respect life and each other.

A safe and stable world for ourselves and children.

Lets enjoy a life of inner fulfillment,

and minimal consumption.

A life where less is all we need to be happy.

One thing you could do to help-Geiger counters

2011-03-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

UPDATE, Oizumi's brother has been found, alive. SCROLL DOWN... I just spoke with Oizumi again, and he says the situation continues to worsen. (The last piece of news I've hears is that the containment vessel, which is the last line of protection, has broken at the Fukushima plant, and plutonium has been released. (This from Democracy Now.) Oizumi said, when I asked him if I could help him, "If you have one, a small one, and only an inexpensive one, made in the US is preferable, can you send me a geiger counter?"

So, if you would like to help out, please send geiger counters to Oizumi. He'd be the right person to distribute them. Here's his address:

San Oizumi

Gifu Ken, Mizunami-Shi, Hiyoshi cho 2423

JAPAN, 509-6251

Here's part of what Oizumi said to me on the phone:

"M~~y brother, his wife, all their children: eight people: I've had no contact at all. The bodies are washing to shore so mixed up it’s not even possible to tell one from the other.~~

UPDATE: Oizumi's brother and family have been found. They escaped by climbing to the roof of their house, and were rescued by helicopter. They're all safe. Oizumi seemed very very happy on the phone.

(END OF UPDATE)
There's been an earthquake near the nuclear plant at Hamaoka in Shizuoka prefecture, not too far from my house. It's not being reported.

The Niigata prefecture nuclear plant has had an earthquake, and it still hasn't been repaired since the earthquake and fire there in 2007, and they STILL haven’t shut it down. I think the men in power are actually crazy. They should shut all the power plants down.

My daughter Nako is pregnant and will give birth soon, and she lives near that powerplant, and I said to her that she should come home to have her baby, but the Hamaoka reactor is near us here, so there IS no safe place to have a baby in Japan.

It makes me think that Japan is a laboratory animal for America."

So, as I said in my book, we should simplify because it's a better life, but I should add too that we need to think how our actions could be hurting others. Are you using any electricity you don't need to right now? These aren't the only nuclear plants in the world.

This photograph is from an evacuation of a hospital near the reactors. Please look carefully at it, especially the expression on the man's face on the right.

Thank you for that.

Andy

“How can you expose your children and my children to radiation from the plant?

2011-03-12T19:26:00.000-08:00

I’ve received many emails and calls asking about the people I’ve profiled in Japan after the recent disaster. I will be blunt. The people in A Different Kind of Luxury have been fighting the use of nuclear power their whole adult lives. Most of Japanese society and the Japanese government has ignored their warning messages. And now a nuclear reactor has exploded. Just hours before this, government and industry sources were maintaining that there was no reason to worry and that everything was perfectly safe. I’m furious.

Oizumi (Chapter 1) has lost his brother in the tsunami. He and his family are preparing to evacuate to China if necessary. Atsuko (Chapter 3) and her family are safe, although her daughter did evacuate Tokyo. Atsuko said to me on the phone, “The danger of an earthquake, the danger of a tsunami, and the danger of a fire after an earthquake: these dangers are enough: but now the danger of nuclear radiation is about to hit Japan.”

It didn’t need to happen. Don’t let anyone tell you that because Japan is a “resource poor nation” that they had no choice but to adopt nuclear power. Japan had a thriving culture and civilization for thousands of years without nuclear power. Nuclear fuel itself comes from overseas, like oil coal and gas. About a third of Japan’s power comes from nukes. About that much could be saved by just eliminating waste and excess lighting and air conditioning and pachinko parlors. Japan is the most lit up nation on earth. I’ve read that one entire nuclear reactor’s worth of energy is used to run the nations drink vending machines, keeping the drinks cold and hot all over the country, 365 days a year.

And now, the Fukushima plant has had an explosion, something nuclear officials assured people would never happen. Even now officials are suggesting measures to people living near the plant as simply covering their mouths and staying indoors.

I haven’t spoken with anyone else from the book, but I do think they are OK so far since they live far from the epicenter of the quake. If the core melts down, none of us, here or there are safe. Radiation will spread all over the world, as it did when Chernobyl happened. Cancer rates shot up worldwide after this. People are still dying from it.

One of the messages in the book is that we need to go beyond tiny little lifestyle tweaks to solve this problem (more efficient light bulbs, etc.) We need to fundamentally change the way we live.

Atsuko Watanabe

Atsuko said to me, “The whole world should see Japan’s present state and turn away from nuclear power. We have to face the fact that nuclear power really is dangerous. We knew it before but we didn’t want to face it. We can’t keep avoiding looking at it.”

Before I give you a short excerpt from the book that talks about nuclear issues, I want to point out that because Yamashita (Chapter 9) successfully led an effort to prevent a nuclear waste dump from being sited near his house, he and his children are in less danger. Although social activism doesn't always work, as Oizumi well knows, it is important, and does make the world better to live in.

Here’s an excerpt from the book from Chapter One, when I’m driving with Oizumi:

Out the window I see all the familiar gaudily colored flashing neon signs, tangles of overhead wiring, blocky cement buildings next to train trestles rusting in the humidity, electrified vending machines on every corner keeping canned drinks both very hot and very cold in all weather, and steel-panel billboards advertising electrical appliances and gadgetry. And then there are the blaring lights and chrome of the pachinko gambling joints. I never cease to be amazed at how many there are. (Pachinko is a type of vertical pinball game in which a cascade of steel balls pours downward with a deafening sound through a maze of metal nails, with a full cacophony of buzzers, bells, and sirens.) The whole thing feels like a binge on electricity, on a culture-wide scale. Both Oizumi and I know that the proliferation of nuclear power stations is a result not only of Japan’s industrial production but of the Japanese public’s electricity use run amok. The plants, however, are always sited in rural areas hungry for jobs, remote from the mass of urban people who use most of the electricity. The predominance of nuclear power, along with the massive use of agricultural chemicals, is linked as well to the rise in cancer rates in this small, crowded country.

San Oizumi, Anti-nuclear activist

Oizumi says, “I myself don’t expect to live a long life: the world is too dangerous now.” If it were not for this evening’s lecture, I might be inclined to think that Oizumi’s talk of danger is somewhat overstated. But then I think back to the community hall crowded with over two hundred local residents as a researcher from the U.S. Nuclear Control Institute, Edward Lyman, [Note: Lyman currently works for the Union of Concerned Scientists] told the audience story after story of nuclear waste storage canisters corroding and leaking, cancerous substances leaching into the water table, the potential for bomb-capable material being hijacked during transport, cost-cutting by the nuclear industry, and lax regulation by the government agencies that are supposed to be protecting the public.

OizumiOizumi standing silently, listening in the back with his arms crossed over his ochre corduroy shirt. The information seemed in no way to surprise him. Nuclear accidents and spills are not uncommon in Japan (though they are rarely reported) and there are more than fifty-five nuclear reactors already running in Japan.

Oizumi says, “At any time another Chernobyl could happen.” He’s right of course, and I, like most people, prefer not to think about it. Oizumi however doesn’t let this forgetting happen to him.

“Nuclear power,” Oizumi continues, “is inconsistent with the Way of Tea.” He lets the statement sit there for some time until I ask him what he means. “The Way of Tea is one of humility and poetic sentiments, not of grandiosity and gorgeousness. The ideal behind nuclear energy is a limitless amount of free electricity lighting up every part of the planet. Also, the Way of Tea requires that one must never bring weapons into the tearoom, or anything that might be used as a weapon. Not only nuclear fuel but even nuclear waste, as you know, can be used to make weapons.”

This excerpt is from Chapter 3, on Atsuko Watanabe:

“When,” I ask her, “did you first start getting active in politics?”

“It was the incident at Chernobyl. After that I realized I couldn’t just live a humble and plain life in the mountains. I had to get together with other people and try to make changes. Actually, I think it would be much more ideal to have a world where it wouldn’t be necessary for mothers to go out into the society just to protect their children, but since other people weren’t doing it, I felt I had no choice.”

Opposition to authority (especially outside of the biggest cities) is widely frowned upon in Japan. Companies pressure employees to sign political petitions at work against progressive initiatives and make vague threats that bad things will happen to them if they don’t, and shame or even ostracism is often spread to the family members and associates of those that step out of the accepted framework. One doctor I met had trouble renting an apartment for more than two decades after participating in a student antiwar protest on the other side of the country. His name, it seemed, was on some sort of blacklist. I thought to myself when I heard this, “and this guy is a doctor.”

I know that activists in Japan must resign themselves to the reality that their chance of success is low—citizens rarely win any kind of battle against the government or large corporations here, even when the law is on their side.

Atsuko’s firmness and stark decisiveness can take me unawares; she’s fiercely sure of herself sometimes. I remember an incident a few years ago soon after yet another nuclear accident in Japan. [Note: this was written about an accident in 1990!] I attended a protest that her anti-nuclear group organized at the electricity company office downtown, a brown, boxy bureaucratic building. As is often true in conformist Japan, only a small number of people turned out to the protest. When a few older male officials came down in their blue suits to make a show of “listening,” I was surprised to see Atsuko Watanabe step out of the group to confront them, looking them in the eyes. She became furious when they started lying to her. “Don’t you have children? Don’t you give a damn about your own child?” She almost shouted at them. “How can you expose your children, and my children, to atomic radiation leaking from the plant? Why won’t you take any responsibility for what has happened?” I was almost as startled as the bureaucrat seemed. It’s not culturally smiled upon to show anger, especially in public, especially for women. But she was dead serious. I then remembered the photo exhibition of victims of the Chernobyl disaster that Atsuko had invited me to. I could almost feel the grief in her voice when she talked about the children deformed, or dying of cancer, the land blighted.

I will close this blog post with something my partner Cynthia said to me after we watched a horrific video of a tsunami wave rolling across the land. The video was shot from the sky, and down there, on a road, one little car was trying to turn around, to head another direction to avoid the onrushing wall of water sweeping everything away. The wave was less than 30 feet from the car. Cynthia said, "It's like a metaphor for nuclear power. When the wave is actually heading right at you, it's too late to choose that moment to turn around."

Well said.

Yes, but can we do it HERE?

2011-03-03T12:32:00.000-08:00

It would be a mistake to think that A Different Kind of Luxury is about Japan. I'ts about (dare I say it?) Life. It is a book about how we use our time, about making connections to other people, to the luminous natural world, and to our own selves.

Inevitably, some people who read the book say, "Yes, they can do it in Japan ... but can we live this kind of rich slow, self reliant, palpable life here in the US? (Or anywhere in the West?) " The answer is absolutely Yes.

Creation from Nature by Steve Odell

I have seen it, and could share with you dozens of examples of people I know (or have met in the process of promoting the book who have done it). One person, a young artist by the name of Steve Odell, lives in a very low-rent one-room apartment and gathers seaweed at the shore, cooks up amazingly creative concoctions, and makes mysterious visual creations from the natural world. He lives using almost no money at all. Here's a pice of his artwork:

(By the way, Steve's contact information is drawmeasheep@riseup.net and he is "looking to exhibit in the Monterey Bay or San Francisco Bay Area." His other work is amazing too.)

I also met a woman who is in her 80s who lives on a piece of country property, grows her own food, has no car and just a telephone. She's an inspiration. She bought ten copies of A Different Kind of Luxury to share with people she cares about, loudly declaiming, "The people you write about, they are me!"

But mostly I'd like to use this blog post to introduce you to three books written by people who, in different ways, are giving us resources to live a different way than our society has set up for us.

The Urban Homestead, by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. All I can say is, what a delight to read. This is the book that may very well redifine the whole idea of “how to.” Urban Foraging is one chapter title. The book lets you in on the secrets of fruit mapping; it tells you six ways to harvest rainwater (they live in LA); it gives you instructions on how to make your own butter. I tried it. Easy as pie. Delicious.

The book is (also!) written with such verve and panache. Check out these sentences: “Not all bacteria are bad; in fact, some are delicious.” “Making a greywater wetland.” “Dehydration: Why save it for hangovers?” In a section on making a slug trap, it says, “Fill a shallow container with beer and bury it up to its rim inthe dirt in the middle of slug and snail territory. The next moring it will look like th aftermath of a tragic fraternity party.”

It tells you how to do SO many things in our environment, now, without having to spend money, including how to make acorns edible, how to do all kinds of pickling via lacto-fermentation, how to keep ducks, quali and bees. There are five ways to preserve a tomato. It also tells you about ENERGY, which is a deep concern of several people in A Different Kind of Luxury. In a section starting with "heating and cooling take up 50% of all home energy use," they feature an amazing drawing of a box that sits outside your window, tilted at 45 degrees and connected to the window, that then collects heat from the sun, which heats the air in the box, and presto the heated air just flows right on in to your house!

As they write, “Anybody who is willing to live a compact domestic life is freed up financially to follow their dreams.” As you read, you may say to yourself, "Hey, I could do that. I really could do that in my life." I did.

And, lastly, I should say that there’s something about a book full of ideas for doing things for yourself that is beyond all the (wonderful, useful) suggestions. It fills one with optimism. The imagination spawns. Entire mini empires grow in the mind, of how one could change one’s life, have more fun, eat more delicious food, and in general be more cool.

OK, here's another great one. Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes.

Radical Homemakers is a radical book. It challenges the idea that “homemaking” is somehow a condition for the un-liberated woman. It's a book of ideas but it sprinkles throughout the examples of widely varying people who have chosen to make their economic system one that supports the life they really want to live. It grapples with issues of health insurance as well as different feminist critiques of homemaking. A couple of chapter titles might give you an idea “Politics, Ecology and Domestic Arts” “Redifining Wealth and Poverty” “Tomato Canning Feminists” and “Toward a Homegrown Culture.” The format is different than A Different Kind of Luxury in that it’s organized by idea and theme, and not around the invidual stories and journeys, and it also takes a more overt look at the political and corporate world that has done so much to leave people in time poverty and running after some ever receding mirage.

But Radical Homemakers gives readers very much the same message as my book: spend less, live more. Thanks to my writing student, Katrina Alcorn, by the way for telling me about this book. In fact, she insisted that I buy it. Sometimes you have to use enough force to get people to do something. Check out Katrina’s blog, which is about how modern life does not support people having full family lives and what we can do about it.

Here are a few quotes from Radical Homemakers:

“Thus, not only are [the radical homemakers] lowering their cost of living through producing [what they need], but they are also recuding their urge to spend on distractions, instead filling their lives with meaningful and pleasurable activity.”

"Quite often their incomes are significantly below the norm. But that is because they have learned that there are two ways to make a living. In one method ... substantial money is earned and then spent on purchasing life’s necessities. In the other method, significantly less money is earned and basic necessities are produced or otherwised procured. ... These households are filled with books, simmering pots, some dirty dishes, musical instruments, seedlings, wood shavings, maybe some hammers or drills, sewing machines, knitting baskets, canned peaches and tomato sauce, jars of saurkraut, freezers with hunted or locally raised meat and potted herbs."

I'd like to say to you what Katrina said to me, "By this book."

And lastly I'd like to tell you about a book I haven't yet gotten, but was recommended by a good friend. Someone local to Oakland, where I teach writing. It's called Farm City by Novella Carpenter

She writes: "All of us who grow a little food, bake, brew, keep small stock and bees--what have you--are part of the solution. By building community ties and practical knowledge we're creating a robust food production and distribution able to withstand shocks. This is reason enough to do it, but as you all know, it's a whole lot of fun, too."

Novella has an urban farm in a predominantly African American area of Oakland, shares and sells her produce, and participates locally in a biodiesel cooperative, keeps goats and bees and offers farm tours. I hope to meet her soon. It's a cool and useful blog.

"Training to be talentless" The totemic interior world of Gufu Watanabe

2011-02-19T21:14:00.000-08:00

I learned a lot about how to look at art from Gufu Watanabe, who I profile in Chapter 8. This is only a small part of that chapter, and I'm posting it mostly so you can look at some of his ceramic work (I could only include a few pieces in the book.)

I really recommend you read the whole chapter. It took me more than four months of full-time writing to translate all the material and put together the chapter. It touches on some of the more important themes in the book. This part is just a taste of his wry view on making art.

(Many of these works are available for sale, although Gufu wouldn't publicize them himself. Contact me if you are interested at andy@theopening.org . Prices range upwards from $250 each.)

Black clay ceramic totemic creations
inspired by tribal minorities in Orissa India.

It is as if Gufu is harvesting the world of all its amazing variety, amassing thousands of bits and pieces and storing them, either in his sketch book, in his garden or in his mind.

Gufu draws much of his inspiration for his pottery from the art of Asian tribal minorities.

Gufu harvesting wild strawberries

Jonah and the Whale

"There's an odd humor to it, a strangeness" he says. "It's as if the art itself doesn't care a damn about you. It's not trying to attach itself to you, to say 'Please buy me and take me home.'

"Many craftspeople in Japan can achieve works of incredible refinement, but I find much of it uninteresting. I want to make things that are artless, with rough, strange, childlike lines. That's why I'm trying to train myself to be without technique, to be talentless. But I find it almost impossible to do." Watanabe is particularly inspired by the totemic animalfigures and religious items of tribal peoples of Persia and the Dekkan Plateau in South India. "Their art doesn't reek of human interpretation," he says. "Somehow it's distanced from the human character, impersonal. Their figures are almost expressionless,

but not quite. I find that very fascinating."

Food stall in India from Gufu's travel journals

Hedgehog in black clay

Chameleon

The menagerie around the Tibetan monk in Bali

The Palpable World of the Handmade Book

2011-01-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

An important part of A Different Kind of Luxury is about the pleasures of making things by hand, about the both the pleasures and the deeper meaning of working with your own mind, heart, fingers and creativity to make something beautiful and tangible in this too-virtual world. As I wrote in the introduction to Chapter Two:

It wasn’t until I met the craftsman Osamu Nakamura that I could experience exactly how his “simple” life and his palpable contact with the physical world is actually so much richer than the hamster-wheel lives of overwork, busyness, and rush that so many of us have become accustomed to. By using his hands to provide for his needs, he has found a richness of heart and a sensitivity of perception that so many of us long for.

One of the things that Nakamura excels at making is hand bound books. Here are is one them.

Nakamura with one of his many handmade books

Akira Ito (chapter Six) also bound dozens of his books by hand including a book on handmade paper making in Nepal. I wasn’t able to include that many photos of these in the final printed version, but I’d like to share some of them with you here:

Hand Bound Books by Akira Ito, Chapter Six

Although I love sharing these with you so you can look at on them your screen, it doesn’t compare at all with holding such beautiful volumes in your hands. Paper is different than light pixels on plastic! Here’s a short excerpt about Nakamura and what he says about hand work:

“Making things with one’s own hands cultivates a certain generosity and openness of the heart. It nourishes that state of mind in the craftsperson themselves, which is intimately connected with an entire way of life.”

One of a Kind Childrens Book by Akira Ito
"The morning Wisteria Tree"

Hearing this I am reminded, with sadness, of the epidemic levels of depression in my own country, and wonder whether it might have something to do with the aversion we have to working with our hands. For people in industrialized societies, perhaps the problem is not that manual labor is intrinsically unpleasant, but that we get frustrated because our attitude is one of resentment toward something demeaning. Viewed differently, however, such work presents us with an opportunity to know ourselves and the physical and natural worlds better by exploring this essential aspect of being human: our relationship with our hands. How funny it is that one of the fundamental definitions of being “modern” is the ability to avoid physical labor, when it might be that very thing that could provide us with such depth of connection to ourselves and to the world.

As I spend more time with Nakamura, it occurs to me that it is as though the mastery he has achieved as a craftsperson suffuses all the other spheres of his life. He then shows me number of other books that he has bound by hand, and explains the Japanese method of sewing together the cloth-and-paper covers. I look at each of them and shake my head imagining how much time and care went into making them. Given how much labor they take, I realize that it is only possible to make a few copies of each, and that only a few people will ever see them. It seems a lot of effort for very little reward. But then I think that in contrast to a book published by machines in a factory, the simple potency and beauty of a hand-sewn book gives the reader pleasure of an entirely different order.

One of the books Nakamura has bound comprises a few photocopied pages on how to weave sandals from rice straw. Paging through it, I see how much my way of thinking about “craft” has changed over the period I have known him. Instead of craft being a “nice” pursuit with which to fill some unoccupied hours around the house, I have come to understand it as one of the most fundamental and ancient ways that humans have to meet their needs: baskets for winnowing grain, woven cloth to cover the body, forged and hammered iron tools with which to cultivate the soil, and woodblocks to print books and communicate with others. Craft is something every person needed before machines made everything we use. Spending time with Nakamura, I see that the process of making something like straw sandals or a handmade book cultivates humility while connecting us with something fundamental about our humanity: the interaction between the remarkable capacity of our own human hands and the ingenuity of our minds.

Here’s another short bit from the book, in Chapter Six, on consummate craftsman Akira Ito, who also writes beautiful essays on the life of the craftsperson:

And as I read his writing about craft, about being an artisan, I see that when he describes a technique it is more than just instructions or a purely technical discussion for practitioners. For him, the “how” of a craft cannot be divorced from the heart of the craftsperson. It is the core of their life, and the handwork is not simply a means to do something; it is the meaning itself.

In fact, it was the example of these two men who led me to hand bound some copies of A Different Kind of Luxury myself. I have completed several versions of my own, and I also brought some unbound copies with me to India last year, and I with some bookbinders there produced a limited edition series of five books. (I’m actually offering these personally for those who might like a copy of their own, please contact me at andy@theopening.org if you would like to buy one, there are three more left.)

Here are also some photos of the two hand bookbinders from Varanasi who bound them.

Indeed, something made by hand has a tangible feel that cannot be described.

Sierra Club Recommends A Different Kind of Luxury! and Second Printing

2011-01-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

In a review of recent "Green Living" books, the Sierra Club said:

Couturier introduces this book with a bold statement: "I have always thought it was possible to live a great life." The 11 profiles that follow tell the stories of Japanese artists, farmers, and environmentalists whose unique lives embody ... sustainable abundance.

Koichi Yamashita (ch 9) with his water-powered rice hulling mill

Also! My publisher, Stone Bridge Press has informed me that we have nearly sold out the first printing and we will be moving to a second printing next month, less than a year since the book first came out.

Oizumi himself asks: “Why did you put the chapter about me first?” (includes new excerpt!)

2011-01-04T17:50:00.000-08:00

When I visited the ever-amazing and gregarious San Oizumi in May of last year, he asked me the question, “Why did you start your book with the chapter about me?”

It was a hard decision, actually, and one recommended by my editor at Stone Bridge Press. At first I thought that with his brusque manner, his anarchism, and his un-padded statements, the chapter about him might give people the idea that the book was more hard edged that it really is.

But I became convinced that the editor at the press was right. (I had considered starting with the chapter about Murata, or the one about Atsuko). I decided based on a number of things, including how he’s funny, and the range of his accomplishments, and how he lives in such an interesting place, and makes such fabulous pottery. Also, really important to me was that the way the chapter starts answers the potential objection--before we even get started--that this way of living is some kind of hobby or fad for middle class or rich people. Oizumi grew up poor in the slums.

Oizumi's pottery amongst the vines

But the clincher for me was that with the beautiful photos on the cover and inside, with the glowing jacket blurb text, and the general positive feel of the outside of the book, it would be easy for people to assume, wrongly, that this was a book that didn't grapple with the real world--the real world of nuclear power accidents, slums, electricity use run amok, racial tensions and war. Oizumi looks at all of them, straight on, and tries to make the world a better place. (He’s got time to do that, I should mention, because of the way he has set up his life, and because of his attitude toward consumption.)

So I’d like to give you another excerpt from the book, and I hope you enjoy it.

“I was raised in the slums,” San Oizumi tells me as we sit in the cozy central room of his large, rambling, mud-walled farmhouse. “There in the tenements was a world that I could never have dreamed of before we had to move there . . . so many people living right on top of each other: sick and broken people, the mentally handicapped, prostitutes. As a fourth-grade boy,” he admits, “it was kind of exciting. I even heard about a neighbor woman who killed her husband, crazy with jealousy. It was quite an education for an elementary school student.” He smiles slightly and raises one eyebrow. “But,” he says, now serious again, “because I grew up as a poor person, surrounded by poor people, I learned a lot about the distortions and sickness that lie at the foundations of our society. I don’t have any illusions about what it’s really all about.”

Such statements are typical of the broad-shouldered potter with the unhurried voice. Although he offers his insights with seeming indifference, when Oizumi looks at me, he’s all serious attention. It’s not a glare but it’s more than a gaze, and it always has a strong element of concern to it. Although Oizumi can at times come off as gruff and brusque, I never feel that I am speaking about something trifling with him. This has the effect of making me really consider my words and try to speak from a deeper, more serious place in myself.

Oizumi in his beautiful dining room

I had come to meet him originally because I had heard of his old-style wood-burning pottery kiln of mud and clay and of his organizing against a high-level nuclear waste dump planned for his rural district. After meeting at tonight’s gathering of citizens’ groups opposed to the dump, we’ve come back to his house. Sitting around the huge wood-slab table he has made, with pieces of his luminous pottery all around us, we drink tea and talk into the night.

Oizumi tells me of his upbringing and of his father. “Dad was a poet and woodblock carver,” Oizumi says in his thick working-class accent. “But you can’t make much money writing poems,” he laughs, “so we were very poor. When I was a very young child, before we moved to the slums, we had a house in a small village. The other villagers were very suspicious of my father because he had a record by Beethoven, and they could see by the letters on the album that it was clearly foreign, so they thought he was collaborating with the enemy Americans.” This suspicion was corroborated for them because Oizumi’s father could speak a little English and refused to go into the army.

“He didn’t want to have anything to do with people in the business of killing,” says Oizumi in his matter-of-fact way, “and as a result, the village elders shunned him and the other members of our family. But when Japan lost the war and the U.S. Occupation forces arrived in the village, there was no one else but my dad to translate. The same village elders who had ostracized him came begging at his door to ask for his help. But he didn’t want to help the Americans either: in his eyes, they were murderers just the same.” A few years later the family was forced to move to a tenement building in Sendai, an industrial city in cold northern Japan. The old man died from tuberculosis when Oizumi was only in sixth grade.

Oizumi speaks with his daughter Sonoe

Like his father, Oizumi is willing to make decisions entirely on principle, and he too is perfectly willing to suffer the consequences of his actions. “Growing up in poverty,” he tells me now in his calm, slow voice, taking a sip of tea, “I learned that even if I have very little money, that’s not the end of my life. I know I can still have an interesting life without it. I don’t want to be someone who is completely reliant on money, someone who is used by money. That’s why I neither borrow nor lend.”

The hard-edged world of the slums he grew up in seems such a contrast with the antiqued beauty of this two-hundred-year-old house—with its massive handhewn timber rafters, mustard-colored walls, and beautiful tansu cabinets—where he lives with his wife and three children today...

[continued, in the book!]

"They Just Happen to Be Japanese" Two expatriates' views

2010-12-31T15:55:00.000-08:00

I met the translator By Alan Gleason in Tokyo in June when I was lecturing at the (wonderfully acronymed) Society of Writers Editors and Translators (SWET) meeting. (And, by the way, it was great to speak to this group about the craft choices and translations decisions in the book to add that to how I presented the content.) Alan later wrote a review on the website of "Hobbit Village" (which I mentioned in Chapter 11 on Masanori Oe--it was the first center of alternative/ environmental culture founded in Japan). Here's his review: (original link)

"A rustic humility"
Masanori and Wakako working on a translation

There are plenty of books in English about people going “off the grid” to live a simpler, more natural life, and nearly as many books about the exotic aspects of life in Japan. The nice thing about this book is that it introduces some fascinating people whose courageous and innovative approaches to alternative living are worth reading about for reasons having nothing to do with nationality: they just happen to be Japanese. Still, I can’t help thinking that a common trait they share -- a realistic humility, amply laced with humor, about the ultimate impossibility of being purely self-sufficient in this day and age -- comes more readily to Japanese people than to Westerners raised in the Judaeo-Christian tradition of logical absolutes.

"I tried reading the book at my normal pace..."

Translator George Bourdaniotis also wrote a review of A Different Kind of Luxury (original link) in May before I came to speak to the SWET group in Kobe. It ran in the magazine Kansai Scene and I think my favorite line of George's is "the sense of time [the book] captured within its pages begged for me to slow down and absorb the wisdom it held."
Getting caught up in the daily rush is part of life in Japan and we wonder if it is possible to slow down. Kansai Scene talked with Andy Couturier while he prepared for a promotional tour of Japan for his new book, A Different Kind of Luxury.
Many books on Japan rehash the same themes of uniqueness and eccentricity, perpetuating the stereotypes,and the life of the gaijin (foreigner) in Japan. Essayist, poet and writing teacher, Andy Couturier’s A Different Kind of Luxury looks beyond the shiny facade and deeper into the rural areas, at 11 people leading simple but luxurious, lives on Honshu and Shikoku. Fifteen years in the writing, the book is based on Couturier’s articles in The Japan Times.
Couturier first arrived in the late 80s expecting a Japan even more money oriented and status conscious than the USA. While here, he met the people who are featured in his book while working on environmental causes.
At first glance, what appears to be a book about people leading traditional lives is actually one about simple living. “I had an idea of ‘the traditional life’ as something that does not change,” Couturier says. “But each aspect of our heritage is not a thing but part of an integrated and connected life that shifts and moves with time.
"My grandparents and great grandparents used cash to meet their needs, but as recently as the 1960s in Japan, in the mountains, rural people were still making almost all of what they needed without much inter-action with the cash economy. Many of the people in this book could learn how to meet many of their own needs by walking down the road to speak with a nearby older man or woman.”

Wildflower Watercolor by Akira Ito (ch.6)

Time is a recurring theme in these chapters, not only in terms of tradition but how time controls our everyday lives.
Osamu Nakamura (Chapter 2): “Humans have a tendency to create a visual image in their minds of what they think they can accomplish in a particular period of time. I felt ill at ease and irritable all the time. I eventually learned, however, to adjust my imagination, and plans, to what was actually possible.”
The people Couturier has written about “live the way they do based on their deeply-held value system about the way they should use their time on Earth. I don’t think they consider themselves eccentric or iconoclastic, or even ‘individualistic,’ but just living from some solid core in their personality, forged out of their experience and understanding of what it means to be human.”
As Couturier writes in the Introduction, “this book is not a blueprint for achieving ‘the good life,’ nor is it a how-to book. [It is] for anybody who wants more out of their life, or who is dissatisfied with what’s happening in today’s society, and would like to make changes.”

"Understanding what it means to be human."
Koichi Yamashita (Ch.9) talking and drinking tea.

I tried reading the book at my normal pace, but the sense of time captured within its pages begged for me to slow down and absorb the wisdom it held — exactly Couturier’s intention. “The book is meant to be read slowly. I tried very hard to make it both beautiful and meaningful, and accessible to a variety of people. ... As a gift, hoping to share with others the fantastic teachings I received from these modern-day wise men and women.”

What are the stereotypes about Japan that you tried to confront ?

2010-12-26T00:15:00.000-08:00

Journalist Anneli Rufus of the East Bay Express asked: What were some of the main stereotypes -- justified or not -- about Japan that you felt yourself disassembling (or shattering) while researching and writing this book?

I should first say that the people in A Different Kind of Luxury represent a tiny minority of people in Japan, so I'm not sure I'm addressing the stereotypes (or correct assessments) of Japan as a whole, but I do think that much of what they believe, and have believed for years, is becoming more and more accepted in everyday life among ordinary Japanese citizens. However, I think there are a number of things I'm trying to bring out that many Western readers (and myself in fact before I came to Japan) don't necessarily see.

Wakako Oe: "It was really hard to
breathe in Japan at that time."

One is that the rapid "development" of Japan in terms of increasing materialism and growth of the economy did indeed leave scars on people's hearts. Wakako Oe, in chapter 7, put it this way:

"You see, I was born after the war. When I was little I saw
people planting rice barefoot, but by the time we went to
India, Japan was all about high-speed growth, especially
of the economy, what they called ‘modernization,’” she
says, as if in the presence of something on the verge of
frightening. “The scenery that I was used to as a child had all changed so rapidly."

Listening to Wakako now, it occurs to me that when
people lose things very quickly, especially things they feel
are beautiful, it can be bewildering.

She continues, “No matter how I tried—I’m sorry—
it was really hard to breathe in Japan at that time.
I couldn’t keep up. In Japan in the ’60s and ’70s progress
meant getting rid of old things. But when we got to India, it was
all heading in the opposite direction—they treasured their
past. I felt a big sigh of relief coming out of me."

Another thing I was working against is the idea that all Japanese people are focused on becoming more Westernized. I found that the people I wrote about were more interested in looking to other parts of Asia, and to the traditions, crafted with such difficulty over the centuries, to try to find answers on how to live their lives today.

"Who am I?"
Calligraphy by Wakako Oe

A third idea I did also want to counter is that the idea that all Japanese people were hostile to environmentalism. In fact, I found that in these people's ways of understanding our place in the order of nature was in some ways deeper than much environmentalism I had encountered in the US. Just to choose one example, the way they understood the centrality of growing their own food: they were searching for the meaning of farming, not just the method or even a series of reasons to grow organically. As the author Masanori Oe wrote in one of his books:

"I believe that we must take a new look at farming
and see that it can be the pillar that will support
the healing and repair of this world. It will
show us how to understand the relationship of
the human and the earth. Nature is the reflection
of our internal spirit, which is the foundation
of our culture and the world."

Here's another quote from him about his form of "Natural Farming":

“With no tractor and no outside fertilizer, this method
we use allows the farmer to learn directly from the wisdom
of the plants . . . and at the same time we reduce our
own sense of superiority. Everyone has seen the mistakes
brought about from humans trying to control nature.
What Wakako and I are trying to do here is to see what
happens, inside of us, when we let ourselves be controlled
by nature.”

Masanori Oe in his rice field

I guess I'd like to add in conclusion that stereotypes are often basic misunderstandings based on having not enough contact with a group of people. In the case of Americans and Japan, I think that's partly because Japan is simply very far away, with a different philosophical underpinning to so many life decisions people make, most of the unconsciously. If there's a fault, perhaps it's through writers and media people not understanding a country well enough before writing about it. In my case, I tried to approach the subject, the people, their culture, their life choices, all of it, with--dare I say it?--as much love and respect as I could manage, and give to the project as much time as I possibly could. In that way, I tried to represent both the uniqueness of these people, and the specificities of their culture, highlighting what for me were the most important parts.

A Winter Color Palette and a Different Photographer

2010-12-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

The wash basin at Atsuko and Gufu's

As a book A Different Kind of Luxury has a particular look and feel in its design layout and photos. From a book designer’s perspective, this is good because it gives the reader a feeling of unity and solidity so that he or she can sink into the experience. But, as we know, reality has a thousand different angles. In this posting, I’d like to present the work of a young photographer who also got a chance to visit Atsuko and Gufu Watanabe, and Osamu Nakamura back in 1999. I just came across these photos, taken more than ten years ago by a woman, a girl of 17 at the time, Hatsumi Yano. You’ll see that they have a distinctly different feel than those in the book. But to my mind, that’s a plus. The world has a lot of different aspects, and a camera lens can pick them up. These photos were taken in mid-winter, and have that color palette. I was then, and am still, very impressed by Hatsumi’s work.

The spice rack at Atsuko and Gufu's

The fire pit in the middle of the floor
at Nakamura's

Ceramic work by Gufu Watanabe

Wakako's house of botanical sculptures, puppets and calligraphy

2010-12-13T14:07:00.000-08:00

Have you read Chapter 7 about the botanical artist and farming mentor Wakako Oe? Here's a view of the inside of her house, full to the brim with vines, gourds, baskets, calligraphy and dried herbs and flowers.

By the way, this is a simple, peaceful "ambient" video. Nothing dramatic happens: it's simply the feel of being in Wakako and Masanori's house.

Review: "I Don't Want to Live A Drab, Routine Life"

2010-12-07T14:35:00.000-08:00

I just got a great review from Anjor Bhaksar on the Amazon.com website (I really appreciate reviews, and it helps people find out whether they are interested in the book.)

Anjor is an Indian man I met who was doing ecological work with children in the high desert of Himachal Pradesh. His father is an academic, working on studying the informal economy, and Anjor really has a brilliant mind. I think he really expressed well one of the underlying, but perhaps unstated, messages of A Different Kind of Luxury. Here's his review:

A Journey into some beautiful minds

A Different Kind of Luxury is about exploring a feeling that is there in everyone - "A desire to be free." It's there in nearly everyone - very strong in some, to a lesser extent in others. But surely most people, at some point of time in their lives, have said to themselves "I don't want to be part of this system. I don't want to live a drab routine life. I don't want to follow the usual pattern, go to school, go to university, get a high paying job and struggle all through life to make it big in our profession, retire and then die. There is something wrong with this system which intrinsically thrives on exploitation -- of nature and of the poor. I want to break away from this system and live an independant life." Most of us, however, dismiss this feeling as blasphemous. Some believe it may be possible but are weighed down by too many constraints in our lives.

This book is about those who not only dreamed but also fulfilled their dreams. About people who wanted to do a lot of things, and did all of them. About those who are governed only by their heart and not by the economic system. About those who, in their own little ways, make a big difference to the world by showing that there is tremendous beauty and excitement in simplicity. About people who have their own measures of success in their lives rather than measures imposed on them from society.

Anjor Bhaksar

It's beautifully written. Especially for someone like me who is constantly toying with the idea of breaking free, living a life of self sustainance and yet of adventure, excitement, love and "inner abundance." While reading the book I felt that I was going through minds, very much like my own, only much more advanced than mine. Minds of people who had not only toyed with these ideas, but also experimented with them, had some failures as well, but in the end emerged successfully. Andy has a tasteful style of writing whereby the reader can sense everything that he senses when he meets these people. The reader actually travels through the mind of both, Andy and the person at the same time. In the end, you would feel like you have 12 amazing new friends who will always be there to guide and inspire you in your journey through life.

"Time is a recurring theme in your book"--With Excerpts

2010-11-28T01:10:00.000-08:00

Journalist Aneli Rufus asked, "Time is a recurring theme in these chapters. How did your perception(s) of time change as you lived in Japan, and came to know these people as you wrote about them for this book?"

I answered her question, and included several excerpts from the book.

I think the main thing I understood was how I was making myself miserable around time simply because I was trying to pack more things into my days than was actually possible. (And I certainly haven't yet solved this problem in my own life!)

Chapter 2, on Mr. Nakamura, really speaks to this issue quite a bit. Here's a man who does almost everything by hand, and yet he seems to have so much time. As he says:

“If you have time, a lot of

things are enjoyable. Making this

kind of woodblock, or collecting the

wood for the fire, or even cleaning

things—it’s all enjoyable and satisfying

if you give yourself time. Humans have a tendency to

create a visual image in their minds of what they think they can accomplish in a particular period of time—say in a day or a week or a year. But one thing I noticed when

I first came here was that there was a gap between that

image and the amount I can actually accomplish. I felt

ill at ease and irritable all the time. I eventually learned,

however, to adjust my imagination, and plans, to what

was actually possible.”

Perhaps this is another way that Nakamura keeps his

presence so calm: by reducing the number of plans he

makes so that they fit easily into the time he has available,

instead of trying to accelerate his life to accomplish a long

list of projects. And, I speculate, maybe he has come to

this understanding of how to live a satisfied life precisely

because he has set a pace slow enough to observe the processes

of the mind.

When I compare his absolutely simple, almost bare, existence to the sophisticated level of his thought, I admire his decisions about

what to prioritize in life. For all the time he spends cutting

and gathering firewood, growing food, carving woodblocks,

cooking, or just gazing into the fire, it doesn’t

seem that his intellectual life has suffered in the least. It

is as though the mastery he has achieved as a craftsperson

suffuses all the other spheres of his life.

Another change in me I noticed was when Atsuko (chapter 3) said to me:

"It is like what Rousseau said, Il faut cultiver son jardin: You must cultivate your own garden. They say that ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss,’ and I wanted to have some moss.”

and also when Nakamura critiqued Thoreau's Walden Pond:

“Thoreau only lived there for a

little more than two years. It’s more like he moved there

in order to write the book. But someone needs about ten

years, I think, to understand a particular way of living.

Thoreau seems like he was more of a tourist.”

In Japan in general, there's an assumption that if you want to be good at something, you have to put years and years and years in to that. I think we Americans, and I include myself, childishly want to be experts right away. Here's another passage that speaks to that, from chapter 4 on the Zen bamboo flute player Kogan Murata:

Then, contemplatively, Murata tells me about searching

for “the true sound.” Although he says he’s never heard

it, he believes it exists, and that looking for it is the real

work of the bamboo flute player. “The true sound can’t

be found in one or two years. Ten years is not enough,

twenty years is not enough. The real thing takes a minimum

of thirty years. That’s why you have to be mad. You

have to give it all your heart, as my teacher said, otherwise

it’ll never be the real thing.”

“But,” I ask, “what is wrong with doing it as a hobby,

a part-time thing, after getting home from the office

or something?”

“You wouldn’t understand at all. Better forget it. It’s

a waste of time. It’ll never be the real thing that way.”

I’m not sure I completely agree with Murata on this,

but perhaps I am thinking inside my own culture’s tendency

toward dabbling. And, after all, isn’t turning away

from “just messing around” what mastery means?

I'll also say that I learned from Nakamura that when you put a lot of time and care into something, it gives back to you later, again and again:

And yet as Nakamura starts to explain to me the painstaking

process of sewing the cover on a book—how the cloth has

to be tucked in at a certain angle under the paper, how

the cover should extend just one millimeter beyond the

stack of pages—I still wonder whether it’s really necessary

to be that careful.

Nakamura’s answer is simple, and clear: “If you make

it this way, every time you look at it later, it’s an enjoyable

experience.” It is almost as if the energy he puts into making

something remains stored in the object and feeds his

spirit every time he looks at it or touches it.

I certainly have found this with my own book, with how much time I put into it. It's really so satisfying for me to re-read the sentences of my own book, and that may be because I put years of care into writing the book.

I think about a lot of journalists (and I don't blame them for this, because it's the situation of their jobs) who parachute into a foreign country, get an interpreter, ask some questions, and then file a story on deadline. And then the world of Western readers bases its view on that "foreign" place on this supposedly expert person who has "been there". While I know this circumstance is a function of how much time the journalist is given by their agencies, isn't it a shame? I think of my own half-baked theories I had about why people behaved in a certain way when I was in Japan for 4 months and how they were totally shattered by one year in, and those again were proven wrong when we'd been there two or four years.

I finally got how really understanding another culture, or anything for that matter, takes much much much more time than we Americans are accustomed to--or even willing to-- give to it.

Insightful Review by Anthropology Professor Barbara King

2010-11-23T00:09:00.000-08:00

Anthropology professor Barbara King was curious about Japan, and "began scouting around on the internet for recent books involving Japan, and your title came up as I played around with a search engine. I ordered a copy for my friend and another for me."

In the review below, one line I particularly felt moved by was “It’s become thoroughly unremarkable to feel stoop-shouldered with work, [and] glassy-eyed from the assault of information’s flow through electronic outlets ...”

She added, in an email to me that, "As anthropologists we're interested not only in the amazing variation among individuals in any society, but also in thinking about patterns within cultures. My friend felt a different sense of order, and structure, and attention to aesthetics and design, in Japan."

She then chose to review A Different Kind of Luxury in her monthly column. Barbara's website, with her own books is here.

EXCERPT FROM THE REVIEW:

My habit for years has been to sign emails to colleagues and acquaintances with the phrase “Best, Barbara.” I type fast, and usually accurately, but in the last few weeks I’ve been startled to see appearing on my screen the sign-off “Beset, Barbara.”

In some ways I do feel beset: by too much work, and too much challenge in finding time for family, friends, books, films, and quiet reflection. I’m hardly alone in this sense that it takes incredible energy just to resist being engulfed by culture’s great forces. It’s become thoroughly unremarkable to feel stoop-shouldered with work, [and] glassy-eyed from the assault of information’s flow through electronic outlets.

Many of us may seek micro-escapes, fixing ourselves to a spot in our home or yard, or in a nearby park or beach, that invites us to think, read, talk with others, or do something old-fashioned and creative with our hands. In such a place, our vision may clear long enough to daydream a fuller resistance to the prevailing hamster wheel. At such times, a good book to have is Andy Couturier’s A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance.

Couturier, when living in Japan, interviewed eleven people who embrace a differently-paced life.

Koichi Yamashita was once a professor of literature and philosophy and is now a farmer in a remote area of southern Shikoku. His family embraces food self-sufficiency. “I would like to be an artist of farming,” he told Couturier, “to achieve the same level of artistry and creation of beauty as does a novelist or a painter.”

Two comments that Yamashita offered up to Couturier caused me to close the book for a few moments, and simply sit with his thoughts.

When he’s out in the rice fields, Yamashita is, he says, “simply glad. I understand that I myself am living, that I am in possession of a living spirit. In the rice paddy with the plants you just naturally develop a feeling of compassion, of sympathy…”

What I like best about the Yamashita chapter is its direct engagement with the costs of this kind of living: it’s not all mystical meshing with the Earth and its living creatures. Yamashita’s work is hard. He cares also for an organic tea plantation high in the mountains, and the weeds require constant attention.

It’s physically strenuous, it’s time-consuming, and together with the rice-field work, it leaves Yamashita without enough free time. “I do feel,” he notes, "that I don’t have enough time to read and write for myself.” Here we learn that “simple living” does not equate -- as it might in the popular imagination -- to a leisurely freedom.

Yamashita muses about reading and writing books in a wholly fascinating way. Equally engrossing are the fruits of Couturier’s interaction with Jinko Kaneko, a painter and textile artist living in the distant shadow of Mt. Fuji. Couturier describes Kaneko as “one of those rare people who has not only been able to contact the mystic energy in nature but can also communicate what it feels like in the paintings and fabric work she makes.” She embodies, to me, a mix of practical sensibility and airy thinking, and, like Yamashita, a mix too of happy choices and hard sacrifices.

The book reproduces some of her art; even in small black-and-white squares, the trees, flowers, mountains, and skies offer a sense of her fusing with nature as she paints. It’s a kind of slow art, too, in the making. The colors, Kaneko explains, are made from ground stones, and materials like mica, pearls, silver and gold.

Kaneko speaks about the challenges of being both a woman and an outsider. She comes originally from a different region of Japan, meaning that now she’s perceived as beneath not only all the men where she lives and works, but all the women too. “I am at the bottom of the ranking… It’s tiring. The village mindset is narrow, and there are all kind of tasks to do that take me away from my painting. I feel drained.” Yet there is joy, too, in her words, and in her art, and in her choices.

I’ve been dipping, at a graceful pace (and feeling not at all beset), into the nine other chapters in A Different Kind of Luxury. Sitting with the book in my sunroom, the view out to our garden expands, and I imagine I can see much, much farther, even a little way into the lives of people in Japan I’ll never meet.

From the Archives: Carrying the Stone Buddha of Life

2010-11-12T04:11:00.000-08:00

I'm currently in Nepal, and have been experiencing the beauty of the town Pokhara, which I wrote about in one of the Japan Times articles I published in 1999. Only 11 of the original articles I wrote made it into the book as full fledged chapters, and 11 others undortunately did not. This article is about a quirky sage of a man named Ichikawa. Here's one that didn't but indeed is full of much of the same spirit. I hope you enjoy it.

Ichikawa shows a village woman an avocado--
something she'd never seen before

Ever since he was a boy, Taizo Ichikawa wanted to be a saint, to attain enlightenment. "I don't know why I was so interested in achieving satori," he tells me as we sit at the table of his small shop in the mountain hamlet where he lives. "Perhaps I did some kind of spiritual training in a previous lifetime, but I died before I reached that state. Or maybe the reason was just that I was got angry so easily when I was young. I wanted to become a more gentle person."

It's hard to imagine this peaceful and unassuming man with his goofy smile, thick black hair and ready laugh as a volatile youth. He does, however, often have a look of merriment and even mischief in his large expressive eyes, as if he is privy to some secret joke.

Pokara, Ichikawa's shop, also has something of the preposterous to it. Besides its location on the virtually deserted main street of a village five hours from the nearest prefectural capital, there's the utterly incongruous nature of the items for sale.

One may buy or borrow books on transpersonal psychology and Steiner education, partake of a steaming bowl of noodle soup, purchase Hawaiian necklaces, woven sandals, Indian incenses or Uruguayan ceramic owls. Or, alternately, one can order a tall glass of beer.

On the wood-paneled walls--giving the shop a kind of rural cosmopolitanism--are a number of finely rendered line drawings hand painted by women from the northern Indian village of Mithila, a place on the other side of Asia, perhaps similarly remote. In the background quiet flute music fills the warmly-lit room.

View from Pokhara Nepal (25,000 feet!)

"I want this to be a place where people walk in and say 'Aaah,' and their body drops all of its tension," Ichikawa says. "Some people have never experienced a state of complete, utter relaxation. They don't even know what it feels like."

Ichikawa opened his shop originally, he tells me, as a place to hold holistic and transpersonal psychotherapy workshops. "But," he laughs, "there's no one to lead them!"

Seemingly illogical business concepts like this reflect Ichikawa's approach to efficiency and rationality--he doesn't put much stock in them. He admits, for example, that the few other homesteaders in the village to whom Indian folk crafts or books on spiritual psychology might appeal "are poor like me;" and the ordinary villagers, who are mostly in their seventies and eighties, don't show much interest.

Still he doesn't want to leave this remote area and move the shop to where there might be more traffic. "Here is good," he says. "At night, the sky is full of stars. Also the water is pure and the air is clean. I can make enough money to survive selling beer and ramen to my three customers, and that's enough for me."

Since becoming the cook, bartender and sage of this tiny, one-room establishment a year ago, he has rarely returned to his homestead several kilometers up the road. The rice fields that he assiduously cultivated for seven years have become choked with weeds, and the house itself looks almost abandoned. Characteristically, he doesn't appear to mind, except to joke about it to his visitors. He's clearly doing what he wants to be doing.

Absurdist ventures have apparently inspired Ichikawa from early on. He first got the idea of going to India from a story he read when he was in junior high school.

"This guy," he tells me in an animated voice, "was traveling through India without any money when he discovered a large stone statue of the Buddha that he really liked. In spite of the fact that he had almost no money, and that the statue was big and heavy and made of stone, he bought that statue, put it in his rucksack, and carried it everywhere with him. I knew then that I wanted to do something like that someday myself."

Before he left Japan however, he worked for several years as a road construction laborer in Tokyo. "I even tried college for a year!" he says. "But soon I could see that everyone around me was on a career track. They wanted to graduate and enter some big-name company. I got afraid that if I was around that kind of thinking for four years, I would become like them. I didn't want to have that kind of life ahead of me."

He spent years traipsing around India, off and on for a decade or more, before returning to search for a place in the mountains of Japan.

I asked him about the name of his shop.

"Pokara," he says, "is the name of a town in Nepal at about 800 meters of elevation. And just next to it, right up against the town, is an mountain ten times that high." As he says this, he holds his head down and his shoulders hunched and looks up and to the right, a sly grin on his broad-featured face. It's as if he's re-experiencing being a tiny human figure in such a landscape and inwardly laughing at how ridiculous we are.

Ichikawa crushes spices for some chai!

I see this same expression of both amusement and awe in Ichikawa a lot, as though he were standing next to that mountain most of the time.

"In India," Ichikawa tells me, "I became baki-baki ."

It's a word I don't know, but he laughs out loud when I reach for my dictionary. "You won't find it in there! I made that word up myself!"

"Baki-baki means being connected with the universe, it means the microcosmos and the macrocosmos are intertwined, in sync, it means transpersonal; it means satori, love, tons of it, full up to the top."

Ichikawa then hands me a box filled with flyers and pamphlets for workshops he has attended in diverse areas such as energetic healing, the Alexander Technique, reiki, butoh dance, solo performance, kinesthesiology, and left-right brain integration.

"I want to have workshops like that here," he says, "because a lot of people are out there suffering, and they don't know why. Maybe when they were very small, they were hurt emotionally in some way, but they have no consciousness of that trauma now. They just know that they are suffering. Even if they think about it intellectually, they still have no idea why.

"So when they are relating to other people, they say things that they really don't want to say, and they are unable to speak the things they do want to say. It's all unconscious however. In the end they become exhausted and depleted of energy, sick, low-spirited, and downhearted.

"I want to help people solve such problem themselves, and then use that understanding in their everyday lives."

For Ichikawa, helping other people is directly connected to his own fulfillment and happiness.

"My purpose in life, and that of human kind, and that of the earth are the same, absolutely," he says. "That's what I mean by transpersonal, by baki baki. The earth is a single life form, a single soul--the whole planet is a single body of life. I myself am just one cell in that body, that entity.

"My individual purpose in life is to be vibrant, alive and vigorous, and to continue on that way, full of spirit, healthy and energetic, endlessly. I will die and be born again, come into the world, and pass away, be born again and vanish. That's also the purpose of the human race, and the purpose of the whole life-planet, to continue on, healthy energetic and alive."

"This is not a thought in my head, and it's not a belief. I am totally uninterested in belief, because belief means 95%, belief means conceiving of something with your brain. What I am talking about is an understanding, a felt thing in my body, something I know intuitively. It happens in an instant, and it's an absolutely sure, 100% thing."

"That's why I have given up on negativity. I used to go around saying 'this thing is bad and that is bad,' naming the problems in Japan--pesticides, nuclear energy, destruction of nature, the behavior of politicians. But it only made me feel worse all the time, brought my energy to a lower level; and what's more, it probably didn't accomplish anything. So now I try to just be positive, saying 'this is right, and that is good!' "

"Was there any other major influence you got from your years in India?" I ask.

"Well, one thing I noticed is that on an Indian bus, if you sit next to someone, you always talk to them. Japan isn't like that at all. That's why I only have one table here at Pokara, this is a place for people to talk, and, maybe, hopefully, to raise each other up."

To Love Nepal

2010-11-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

Anapurna South, in the
Nepali Himalayas

A Different Kind of Luxury is not a travel book, and I certainly don't claim that the good life can only be lived after spending time in another culture. Still, all of the people in the book did travel outside of their own country, outside of their own comfort zones, and learned tremendous things, which they use daily in their lives. Many of these tools, techniques and philosophies have come from India, but perhaps even more, they came from Nepal. Over the 15 years of writing and working on this book, I must have written the word “Nepal” hundreds of times, yet until two weeks ago, I had never been here. I had learned a lot about its culture and art and especially, speaking with the 11 people in the book I learned how they interacted--in different ways--with Nepali people and the land here.

A Nepali Traditional House
at Rice Harvest Time

But there’s nothing like experiencing the real thing. I’ve only been here such a short time but I can easily see why the tremendous people I was able to interview and become friends with in the process of the book, could really love this country. It is a very gentle place, and yet in love with beauty and full of vitality. The mountains, of course, take your breath away, but the people’s ways, and their art, and their food, and their hand crafts, and perhaps especially the way they make things by themselves, and use them, using just their own hands, it has moved me time and again. It’s peaceful just to be here.
After all these years, I feel like my understanding of what I have been writing is so much closer to complete. I’d just note here, with some photos, how Nepal has touched the lives of so many people in the book.

Nakamura Showing his collection
of Nepali cloth printed with woodblocks

Osamu Nakamura, profiled in Chapter 2 lived for almost 10 years in the mountains of Nepal. I have seen here many of the characteristic black and red woodblock prints I first saw at his cabin in the mountains of Japan. Also, his kitchen arrangements, and the woodstove he cooks on are distinctly Nepali.

Nakamura collected samples of Nepali cloth
and then made versions on handmade paper
by carving individual woodblocks

Jinko Kaneko painting

Jinko Kaneko, profiled in Chapter 10 cooks Nepali style curries at her restaurant Bontenya. She documented the different ways the curries were spiced in many different Himalayan valleys. She also studied fabric dying and design while there.

Inside Jinko's restaurant

A delicious Nepali curry
in the mountains of Japan

Gufu Watanabe

Gufu Watanabe, profiled in chapter 8, who I just spoke to on the phone, explained to me the festival of lights here in Nepal, in incredible detail, explaining the cultural significance of the many lanterns and candles. Gufu hasn't been in Nepal for 30 years. Here's an illustration from one of his journals of a tea stall in Kathmandu, where many of the people in the book first met each other.

Interviewing Akira Ito about his book
documenting handmade paper in Nepal

And finally, a man who deeply loved Nepal, Akira Ito, profiled in Chapter 6. Ito-san wrote much about traditional woodblock carving in several magazine articles, and about the traditional mountain cultures here. I've translated parts of these articles in the chapter, and I think you can feel Ito's spirit in his writing. Here is one of the pages of one of his illustrations of Nepali handmade paper making.

Nepali Paper Making Illustration by Akira Ito

A Boy’s Life: Making Something by Hand

2010-10-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

The people I profiled in A Different Kind of Luxury live a good life. And the choices of how they live of course influence the texture of the lives of their kids.

In Chapter 4 on Kogan Murata, I write,

Kohei Murata with Saw and piece of bamboo

One of the reasons Murata is so vital—although unhurried in every single way—is, I think, that he has always been in such direct contact with the physical world. As a boy he played shortstop (I can still see that in him now—fast reflexes, sinewy muscles, and his ability to pivot on a dime). He spent more than a decade of winters doing ski rescue for the Red Cross, and he has always loved camping, still sleeping outside in a tent many nights with his son, Kohei.

A little later in the chapter, I devote some more consideration to Kohei’s life.

Watching this child I’m struck by how natural boyhood is, and amazed to see a child in the twenty-first century so connected to the physical world. There’s no computer, no TV, no video games. (I have to remind myself that this is Japan.) He plays outside, and makes toys out of bamboo (he nailed me with his bamboo-plunger squirt gun when I arrived). He goes fishing all summer long, and tells me about different kinds of fish. It seems like the way things should be.

So when my partner and I visited Murata and his family in May of this year, after the book came out, we got to see Kohei in the process of making a bamboo sling shot by himself. He wasn’t prompted to by his parents, and it wasn’t an assignment from school, he just decided he wanted to make one. He saw it in a book of great drawings of toys made by kids one hundred years ago in Japan, and working just from the images, made one for himself. Naturally.

Here he is:

"Here's the one I'm going to make."

Cutting

Almost Done

Watch Out!

Western Coltsfoot Heads East

2010-10-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

While we were in Japan in May, my partner and I helped Wakako and Masanori (chapters 7 and 11) make and eat a delicious seaweed condiment pickle of kombu and "sansho" a kind of wild prickly tasting peppercorn. We harvested wheat with Yamashita (chapter 9) in Kochi Prefecture in the south of Japan, looked through 400 year old medical books (printed on rice paper, and bought for pennies) with Oizumi (chapter 1) and planted rice with Murata as well as with the Oes. I wrote a lot about "Nature Farming" (no cultivation) in the book, but it wasn't until standing in the mud of the Oes' rice paddies and seeing how many living creatures teemed in that water that I 'got' it.

Western Coltsfoot

But what I thought I'd share here was about being at Gufu and Atsuko's house (chapters 8 and 3) having fuki stems steamed with soy sauce, (fuki is a large leafed plant that grows semi wild, and the stems are delicious. Then Gufu says, "Have you heard of 'fuki no tou'?" I said that I had not, and he breaks out a book on native plants for scavenging in the Pacific Northwest (of the US). He shows me the picture, and sure enough it seems to be Western Coltsfoot, which grows in a couple of moist depressions on the land my partner and I own in Northern California.

We then read the text in the book, it said that this plant was the basis of a war of sorts between the Wylackie and Yuki tribes, which are very small tribes, or were, that inhabited the area of what is now southern Trinity county and northern Mendocino county (a VERY specific area of California, and exactly where our land is). Seems they would burn this plant and use the ash as source of badly needed salt. Then we look up from the book and we're in a farmhouse in southern Japan's Shikoku island and Gufu's telling us about all the ways to cook with it, and what it can be used for medicinally.

Resolved: learn about the plants near us, and attempt foraging for more of our edibles when we get back.