Knowing what ‘just enough’ is: Azby Brown on Japan’s Edo period – Part One | Transition Network.
One of the most extraordinary books I have read in recent years is Just Enough: lessons in living green from traditional Japan by Azby Brown. Brown is director of the Konazawa Institute of Technologies Future Design Institute and has lived in Japan for the last 30 years. It is a beautiful analysis of the integrated, mindful and design-driven way in which one traditional society worked and embodied the principles of sustainability.
His analysis of the Edo period is the perfect example of the ‘Less is More’ that is our theme for this month. I talked to Azby by Skype from his home in Tokyo. I began by asking him when the Edo period was, and what it is that he finds so fascinating about it:
“The Edo period began in the first decade of the 17th century and lasted until the country opened to the West in the 1860s. That was a period of a little over 250 years. It was remarkable in many respects culturally, technically and economically because it was preceded by centuries of civil war and also of economic and military expansion overseas. The country basically had exhausted itself, had exhausted its resources. It had deforested most of the country, it had damaged its capability for agricultural production, the population had increased and the country was on the verge of environmental collapse, mainly caused by the deforestation.
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