Edo: Living With Just Enough

Great essay about Edo Era Japan over at Resilience.

Living with just enough

by Azby Brown, author of Just Enough (Kodansha 2010), essay originally published by The Global Oneness Project.

He studied architecture and sculpture at Yale College, graduating in 1980. In 1985, he received a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education to do research at the Department of Architecture of the University of Tokyo, where he received a master's degree. He is the author of The Genius of Japanese Carpentry, Small Spaces and The Very Small Home, all published by Kodansha International

There is more to it, however. Edo society was literate and informed, and one of the government's major roles was the protection of the environment, which it did through forestry ordinances, waterworks, and promoting good agricultural practices by sponsoring how-to manuals and almanacs. This was not through altruism or for the spiritual advancement of the rulers, but to ensure the safety and security of the realm and the longevity of the regime. Intriguingly, government policy was most effective when the goals and principles were laid out by the central bureaucracy and each region was encouraged to develop local solutions. In many ways, this local thinking and responsibility lay at the heart of the success of the program to achieve self-sufficiency and sustainability on a national scale. Though a very active national trade network existed, each of the dozens of fiefdoms into which the country was divided was encouraged to be as self-sufficient as possible. Each village in a fief was encouraged to do the same, as was each family in a village. The result was what we might call a "mosaic of economies," in which government and trades people were the most dependent on the cash sector, while villagers could meet most of their needs without every touching money, utilizing a "gift economy" in which surplus goods were circulated as reciprocal gifts until every household had pretty much what it needed. 

Hat tip to P :)

I also liked this from Grist:

Oregon study finds that:

"Those who walk to work, the study found, are nearly as happy as
cyclists, who are about three times happier than solo car-drivers."

http://grist.org/news/cyclists-are-the-happiest-of-us-all/