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https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240703-what-the-japanese-edo-period-can-teach-us-about-today>
'Imagine standing on the old wooden Nihonbashi bridge in the commercial
heartland of Edo, the ancient Japanese city now known as Tokyo. It is some time
around 1750 during the Edo period, the era from 1603 to 1868 ruled by the
Tokugawa shoguns.
You are surrounded by a bustle of chattering locals twirling their umbrellas,
seafood traders rushing across the bridge, balancing brimming baskets on their
shoulders, and labourers carrying rice and cloth to the market stalls on either
side of the riverbank. The smell from the famous Nihonbashi Uogashi – the fish
market – wafts through the air.
It is a huge city of nearly one million people – far bigger than London or
Paris at the time. You notice that almost everything seems to be made of wood –
houses, carts, the bridge itself. But what is less obvious is that you are
gazing upon what may be one of the world's first large-scale ecological
civilisations.
Ancient Japan, I argue in my new book
History for Tomorrow, offers
inspiration for creating the deeply sustainable society we so urgently need
today. Humanity's material footprint is almost double what the planet can
safely sustain: we are using up the resources of nearly two planet Earths
annually. Just think of the e-waste mountains, the biodiversity loss, the
oceans polluted with microplastics, the deforestation to graze the cattle
needed to feed our insatiable hunger for meat. What's more, most of this
ecological overshoot is driven by the consumers of wealthy nations. The rich
are devouring the world.
Edo was different. Partly due to the government's policy of not trading with
outside nations, there was a scarcity of key resources like cotton and timber.
The result was that Edo was a city without waste. Almost everything was reused,
repaired, repurposed or in the last instance recycled – what we would today
call a circular economy. The Edo economy "ran as a very efficient closed-loop
system", argues sustainability historian Eisuke Ishikawa.'
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
