these problems connected?”
As for answers, the point at which a sense of hopelessness gave way to glimmers of hope for me, personally, came when I attended the Sun Valley Sustainability Conference in the autumn of 2006, and realized that the quiet and continued efforts of individuals and organizations around the world had begun to coalesce, and that their combined body of knowledge and experience was reaching the sort of critical mass necessary for igniting widespread change. A shared language was developing as practitioners of diverse specialties found their own work extending into new areas. Urban planners wanted to know what farmers knew about soil, architects wanted to know what hydrologists knew about purifying rain runoff, foresters wanted to know what waste specialists knew about naturally treated sewage, and everybody wanted to find out how to power everything from the sun. In every field, people were bringing answers to the table and walking away with a sense of partnership. Among the specialists in any area of green, sustainable, or environmentally sensitive design, no one underestimated the enormity of the tasks ahead. But everyone agreed that the necessary change is doable.
Still people shrug and ask, “Is it worth the effort? Won’t the sustainable life be annoying at best?” The problem is that none of us has ever lived in a sustainable society, so it’s hard to imagine what it will be like. Will we have cars? Will we have air-conditioning? Will my neighbors report me for not composting my table scraps? What if I want mangoes in December? Answers to questions like these depend upon how well the best recommendations for environmental remediation are implemented, and how quickly.
In the most optimistic scenarios, our power infrastructure is rapidly overhauled to eliminate the use of most fossil fuels, and we are able to use electricity much as we do today. Plug-in hybrid autos become the norm. Reuse and recycling, along with improved product design, allow us to approach the goal of zero-waste while still buying and selling huge quantities of products. Deforestation is halted and reversed by massive replanting, and sustainable forestry insures a continued supply of wood for building and other uses. Freshwater is available but is conserved, and people enjoy what they’re eating. In short, in this scenario it is possible to make the transition into a new way of providing for our needs so that our future life closely resembles our present one.
However, we have nearly lost the race against time. As government and industry dither, as individuals delay making crucial changes in how they travel, eat, and use household energy, as inertia and denial continue to overcome pro-active decision making, our margin for avoiding unpleasantness has largely evaporated. We should all be prepared for social disruption, for shortages, for being forced to accept unpalatable changes and lack of choice in areas where, even today, we can choose how and when to change. Sustainable society will come, because the alternative is no society at all. The bleak prospect of the collapse of our civilization may seem fantastic to many, but in fact most environmental specialists are forced to concede that their less-optimistic scenarios point to exactly that.
Japanese society once faced the prospect of collapse due to environmental degradation, and the fact that it did not is what makes it such an instructive example. Japan entered the Edo period in 1603 facing extreme difficulties in obtaining building timber, suffering erosion and watershed damage due to having clear-cut so many of its mountains for lumber, and virtually unable to expand agricultural production to the degree necessary to feed a growing population. The needs of the urban population, particularly those of the capital city of Edo, but also those of Osaka, Nagoya, and numerous other growing cities, conflicted with those of the rural areas, and the life of farmers was made all the more difficult by their legal obligation to surrender one-third or more of their harvest to support the warrior classes.
In terms of environment and natural resources, Japan was both challenged and blessed. The archipelago is extremely mountainous, and arable land is limited to a handful of broad coastal plains and many narrow mountain valleys, amounting to only about one-fourth of the nation’s land area. At the start of the Edo period, nearly all of the potentially arable land had already been opened to cultivation and was feeding, just barely, a population of about twelve million. Agricultural land in many areas was showing signs of exhaustion and degradation, and output was declining. But the country benefits from a temperate climate and warm ocean currents, and it is blessed with abundant rainfall and a long growing season. Freshwater from snowmelt is generous and fast-flowing, and the extensive watersheds drain into innumerable fertile river valleys and wetlands. The virgin forest that originally covered the mountains of the archipelago was extensive and diverse in both broadleaf and coniferous species, and it provided an extremely rich habitat in which all manner of flora and fauna flourished. Nature itself had endowed Japan well for human habitation, but by the early 1600s the land was suffering from overexploitation by the large population.
All the more remarkable, then, that two hundred years later the same land was supporting thirty million people—two and a half times the population—with little sign of environmental degradation. Deforestation had been halted and reversed, farmland improved and made more productive, and conservation implemented in all sectors of society, both urban and rural. Overall living standards had increased, and the people were better fed, housed, and clothed, and they were healthier. By any objective standard, it was a remarkable feat, arguably unequalled anywhere else, before or since.
This success can be credited partly to technological advances and partly to government direction. Agricultural breeding played a part, as did improved hydrology. Design was crucial, as was the timely collection and distribution of information. But more than anything else, this success was due to a pervasive mentality that propelled all of the other mechanisms of improvement. This mentality drew on an understanding of the functioning and inherent limits of natural systems. It encouraged humility, considered waste taboo, suggested cooperative solutions, and found meaning and satisfaction in a beautiful life in which the individual took just enough from the world and not more. The stories in this book describe many of the more remarkable technical aspects of life during this period, as well as relevant social, political, and economic factors, but their real purpose is to convey this mentality of “just enough” as it guided the daily life of millions throughout the society.
How do we know how the people of Edo Japan lived and what they thought? For one, we have surviving material culture in the form of houses, clothing, and the implements of daily life. Archaeology has literally dug up the old infrastructure and clarified its design and workings. We have been left with a wealth of writings, both printed sources and the handwritten records of individuals and families. The number, variety, and quality of pictorial sources that have come down to us—mainly woodblock prints, but also drawings and paintings—are astounding. All of these sources have undergone decades of collection, curation, commentary, and analysis both in Japan and overseas, with the result that a rich body of knowledge exists within reach of anyone who seeks it.
There has never been a better time to study Edo-period Japan, and the discoveries and observations of many specialists are finding such a ready audience at home that the country can be said to be experiencing an “Edo Boom.” Museums of Edo life and culture in Tokyo and elsewhere are packed most days, and the era’s approach to various problems is presented frequently in the mass media. The appeal of Edo is quite broad in Japan, but in the hands of successive generations of specialists—in architecture, agriculture, industry, and economy, as well as in environmental history, to name a few areas—information and understanding is reaching a great depth as well. We know a lot about the price of fertilizer in certain regions, and the literacy rates of farmers. We know quite a bit about the lumber industry, how wood was cut and transported, the uses to which it was put and the prices it brought. We can reconstruct networks of paper recycling and estimate the extent of the used-clothing market. And we can describe how energy was used and not used.
