Synchronicity of “after 3.11 era” and Edo-era; ~ History swings like pendulum and now it started to swing backwards.

After 3.11 (earth quake and nuclear issue), many people says ‘my values have changed’.

For example;

“I bought decent apartment floor with nice view. it’s on 38th floor. I really loved the flat before. But now, I regret. It takes 15 minutes to walk down to the ground floor during blackout. Sucks!”
　( young business leader )

“I just cannot do anything about nuclear erosion… It’s really sad thing that we depend on something we actually cannot control… sigh… “
( good hearted hard working organic farmer )

“Now I suddenly started to be suspicious if my current job is meaningful or not… I feel I should work on something directly helpful for those who in trouble…” ( 24-year-old first class programmer )

So, what shall we do? What shall we envision?

Some says, “We shouldn’t restore Tohoku. We were wrong. It was our misjudgment to believe in tsunami barrier. We shouldn’t believe we can manage nuclear energy. We’ve been too arrogant and greedy. So we need to design Tohoku from the scratch with those perspectives” in which I agree.

From my perspectives, Edo-era may be very interesting period of time in the sense we can learn a lot given current situation.

Edo-era was very stable society system which continued 350 years without much change. (from ~1600 – 1868)

Edo-era was a time that Japanese can be so proud of. For example;

At that time, Edo was largest city in the world (lager than London or Beijing), 40M people lived with little farming space.
Edo was clean city with environmentally friendly system, and culturally very exciting and unique (Hokusai, etc.)
Edo-era was highly ethical society (etc. Hara-kiri) backed up by Taoism values.
Japanese ‘jump up’ in Meiji-era cannot be achieved without ‘strongly unique Japanese culture’ generated in Edo-era.

So, what’s the essence of Edo-era?

Edo-era was founded after Azuchimomoyama “War-era”.
At war era, technology was developed quite rapidly (started to manufacture guns), merchants getting much more powerful. (before then, most people were self-sufficient farmers)

As I see it, 2 typical very interesting policy describes essence of Edo era;


1) Stick to swords & Bushido (Samurai spirit), think light of guns.


2) Stick to 石 (unit to count rice as a standard unit of money), not gold based money

Edo-era leaders choose ‘less convenient but more sustainable’ things.
Edo-era's essense was 'keep adquate distance from too convenient stuff'

Now I think that’s wise.

History keeps turning like pendulum.
3.11 & Lehman shock may be a turning point to change the way it swings.
　
I cannot help being excited to think that we are living in turning-point in the history.
　
Let’s ‘spiral up’ rather than just swing back, and create great ‘More ethical and mentally fulfilling society, but not too inconvenient nor inflexible’
　
I’ll try my best to create ‘most advanced’ happy community in the countryside of Japan.