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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Down with the Cities!, by Tadashi Nakashima

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DOWN WITH THE CITIES!

Nakashima Tadashi

Translation from the Japanese of "Toshi wo Horobose,best magnetic blocks for 10 year olds under 30 dollars" firstserialized in the periodical Kankyo Hakai, reprinted in 1992 inbook form by the Japan Communal Society Association, andrepublished as a commercially available book in 1994 by MaijishaPublishing Co. This translation is of the earliest version, anddoes not reflect subsequent updates, additions, and changes bythe author.

Permission for posting on Project Gutenberg has been securied bythe translator from all concerned parties. This translation isto be distributed freely throughout the world to anyone at all,and is not to be sold for commercial profit.

Mr. Nakashima (born 1920) is a self-sufficient farmer in thehill country of Gifu Prefecture, Japan. He entered the Army in1939, and was in Taiwan at the end of the war. In 1945 hereturned to his family farm and began farming. In 1954 Mr.Nakashima began raising free-range chickens, and embarked on thelong process of developing his method of producing "naturaleggs," for which he is now well known in Japan. About 1975 hestarted studying the writings of the Edo Period thinker AndoShoeki. He has also written a book entitled "Minomushi Kakumei —Dokuritsu Noumin no Sho" (The Bagworm Revolution — A Book forIndependent Farmers). The author has also written and publishedextensively on free-range chicken farming.

The order of Japanese personal names follows East Asian custom:surname followed by given name.

Some footnotes are the author's, and others are thetranslator's. The latter are identified by the notation"(Translator's note)" at the end of those footnotes.

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PREAMBLE

Saying "Down with the cities!" is not a rash statement. If we donot get rid of the cities, the human race will disappear fromthe face of the Earth. The cities are none other than the sourceof all pollution, and the root of all evil. One may try to leavethe cities as they are and get rid of only the pollution, but itwill be wasted effort. Environmental destruction and pollutionare caused by none other than the functioning of the urbanmachine; pollution is, we may say, the unavoidable respiratoryfunction, metabolic function, and bowel movements of the cities.If we plug up the nose, mouth, and anus of a human being, is itpossible to continue living? Therefore, if we are to banish urbanpollution from the Earth, we must eliminate the citiesthemselves.

CHAPTER I

Urban Sprawl

The cities are spreading out like amoebae. No matter what part ofthe world, and no matter what kind of political or economicsystem, the expansion of the cities is more than apparentwherever you look. If urbanization continues in this manner, theentire surface of the Earth will in time be covered with cities.

I should explain that by urbanization I do not mean merely thespread of what we normally call "cities." In urbanization Iinclude interurban buildups, those along train lines and roads,housing developments, tourist facilities at resorts, ruralfactories, and a host of other things. We must also consider thebuildups in the centers of villages, and asphalt roads in (whatis mistakenly considered to be) the boondocks as a kind ofurbanization. In other words, the city is not just something thatwe distinguish from the country by region alone; we must alsomake a clear distinction in accordance with differences inindustries (that is, class). To wit, the city is a place that ishome to the secondary and tertiary industries, or is a placewhere the employees of such industries dwell. No matter how farback in the sticks one goes, if one finds anything relating tothe secondary or tertiary industries — such as public facilitiesor concrete river bank walls — such a place must also berecognized as the city.

Let us then examine the reasons for the unbounded, continuousexpansion of the cities.

Reason One

Throughout the entire world, in no matter what country,"modernization" is the glorious banner under which all peoplegather. If something is done under the name of modernization, itis considered good, and if it stands in the way of modernization,it is automatically evil. Modernization: Expressed in differentterms it is the prosperity of the secondary and tertiaryindustries. [1] And since these industries are based in thecities, modernization means urbanization.

Right now, all around the world, increasing numbers of peopleare, with the aim of achieving modernization, engaging in thesecondary and tertiary industries, and that is why we witness thefurther, inevitable expansion of the cities. As long asmodernization is not negated as an evil, urbanization willcontinue unabated.

Reason Two

Modernization — if we look at this in another way we see that itis the pursuit of Convenience, Extravagance, and Ease; itsignifies the ceaseless advance toward infinite prosperity.

And the pursuit of convenience, extravagance, and ease is noneother than an expression of instinctual human greed — we want tohave it easier and eat more delectable cuisine, we want to domore stimulating things, we want objects that are rarer and morebeautiful. Thus the secondary and tertiary industries, inmanufacturing and supplying us with festivals and entertainmentand trinkets and gewgaws, are able to scale the heights ofprosperity, and the cities thereby continue their boundlessexpansion.

Reason Three

There is one other abettor of urbanization that we must notoverlook: the bewitching power of the money economy. In order tomake more money, the city manufactures more merchandise thannecessary, and forces services down our throats. Charged with theeconomic mission known as the Pursuit of Profit, the secondaryand tertiary industries work hard at money making, and this tooleads to the expansion of the cities.

The above three elements — (1) a national policy ofmodernization, i.e., urbanization; (2) the instinctive desire ofhuman beings for prosperity, i.e., urbanization; (3) the Pursuitof Profit, which propels the secondary and tertiary industries tomake more and more money, i.e., urbanization — combine to causethe increasing spread of the cities. This is symbolized in, forexample, the construction industry.

Urbanization is, in more concrete terms, the covering ofeverything with concrete. Whether buildings or roads orriverbanks or seashores, the rule of thumb in modern times is tomake it out of concrete. There are, to be sure, occasional peagravel gardens or dirt playing fields in the cities, but theseare few and far between. Cities are made by smothering the groundwith concrete. Indeed, the city can be understood as constructionitself.

Never-Ending Construction

The world is full of construction officials, who, if they cannotplan some kind of project, are capable of nothing but yawning;the proprietors of construction companies, who, in order to makemoney, cannot rest from their labors for a minute; the pitifulpart-time farmers who pay back their loans by engaging inconstruction work; the proprietors of cement and gravel companieswho will be in a pickle if they cannot get someone to use thetons of building materials they have made; the truckers and thedealers in construction machinery and fuel for them; the big shotpoliticians like Tanaka Kakuei whose life work is pork barrel;the idiotic voters who weep for joy over the services brought inby construction (that is, urbanization)… With an arrangementlike this, it is almost assured that, even if the vast oceans dryup, there will always be construction going on in the world. Atthis rate, it will not be that far in the future before they arecarrying out construction work among the peaks of the Himalayas.

There are some who will say, "Come now, they wouldn't go so faras to do such unnecessary work in the Himalayas," but if this isso, then when all the construction work in the world has beencompleted and there is no more to be done, is it possible tothink that the Ministry of Construction will disband itself, thatthe construction companies will go belly up, that the cementcompanies will close down, or that the part-time farmers willhang themselves? There is no doubt that when such a time comesthey will carry out needless construction work like covering overthe peaks of the Himalayas with concrete. There will be no end toconstruction work, and consequently the urbanization of theEarth's surface will continue until the ground disappearsentirely. [2]

Even now, in every place imaginable, they are building solidconcrete walls in places where, they think, perhaps once in athousand years there will be a landslide; they needlessly dig upbamboo groves which will most assuredly not be washed away, andstack up concrete blocks. There are instances in which by merestchance, such a place is visited by natural disaster, and theytake the matter to court saying that it is the government'soversight. In actuality, however, the authorities, whom one wouldexpect to be bitter over losing the case, are smilingcontentedly. This is because the government has obtained proof ofthe need to pour astronomical sums of money into a totallyneedless construction project, the excuse being that one neverknows when disaster will strike. Though the government and theconstruction companies openly plan and carry out needlessconstruction projects everywhere so the contractors can profit,there is little fear that the citizens will ever take them tocourt over any of it.

In addition, the government uses construction projects tostimulate the economy. Using construction bonds as a convenientcover, it spurts out wads of money (merely in order to make itcirculate a little better), dig up our precious land, and coverit over with concrete. [3] Why must they go to such lengths tostimulate the economy? It is for no other reason than tofacilitate the even greater activities of the secondary andtertiary industries, which results in the waste, contamination,and destruction of the city.

Chapter I Notes

It is possible to modernize agriculture (a primary industry) aswell, but this becomes possible only with the intervention ofthe secondary and tertiary industries. Agriculture is meant to bein accord with the cycle of Nature; it is supposed to beceaseless repetition.

Indeed, this has already been realized in Japan, for theMinistry of Construction is building a gargantuan concreteembankment on Mt. Fuji, Japan's highest. (Translator's note)

In comparison with construction bonds, the money-losing savingsbonds are still better. This is because the savings bonds are notused to directly destroy the land (though it will come around tothat sooner or later).

CHAPTER II

The Evils of the City

If we were to assume that the city brought no harm to eitherhuman beings or to the Earth, there would be no need for adiscussion (or condemnation) of the spread of the cities as inthe previous chapter. Yea, it would be verily the opposite: Justas most urbanites believe, the city is an ultimate good since ithelps them achieve prosperity. We may even say, then, thaturbanization must be aggressively promoted not onlyquantitatively (in terms of the city's boundless expansion), butalso qualitatively (in the quest of ever greater modernizationand technological advances).

But sorry to say, such is just not the case. The city is, inactuality, the very root of the evils that threaten the future ofhumanity and the Earth.

Though to the denizens of the city it is a good, since it allowsthem to pursue convenience, extravagance, and ease (that is,prosperity), that "good" is, minute by minute, turning into afuture — yea, a present — evil, and we (the city dwellersfirst) will in time be exterminated by the city's poisons. Sothat the city can pursue convenience, extravagance, and ease, wemust be visited by the accumulation of waste, destruction, andcontamination, which will, needless to say, end in a dreadfulcatastrophe.

The City's Endless Plunder

The city itself is unproductive, and cannot supply its own needs.No matter how many trinkets and gimcracks the manufacturing andprocessing industries make, this cannot be called production; wemust in fact regard this as the consumption of resources andenergy. Since the city is therefore nonproductive and non-selfsufficient it must either rob all needed supplies from some otherplace or lose the ability to keep itself alive and functioning.Urban residents will not be able to pursue extravagance and ease,let alone continue living.

Because it robs everything from another place the city causestrouble for others, and trashes the Earth is the process. Let usnow try listing the various evils inherent in the city'splundering ways.

Evil One

The first evil is deforestation.

Cities were first built by chopping down the forests. No matterwhat city, unless it floats in the air or on the water, the placeit occupies was most likely originally forest. Thus the city, inorder to establish itself, cut the trees. And though it is thedestroyer of trees, the city at the same time requires theoxygen produced by trees (for its overflowing people, its legionsof automobiles, and its multitudes of factories). Counting on theoxygen from the trees of other areas, the city is barely able tomaintain its life and functions.

If that were all, we might be able to put up with it, but thehigh-handed, arrogant city, in order to increase its benefits andextravagance, continually plunders and destroys the forests inthese other areas as well. If one goes to the port at Shimizu,one can see the shiploads of lumber and pulp robbed from theforests of developing nations. The countries thus plundered arenow watching their clearcuts turn into wasteland and desert.

Thus, by means of producing vast quantities of throwawaywrapping paper and packing boxes, and its idiotic newspapers,magazines, and leaflets, by becoming drunk on its ownextravagance and convenience, the city is cutting its own throat;it is carrying on activities that contribute to the reduction ofits all-important oxygen. What is more, after consuming thesevast quantities of paper, the city disposes of them by burning,consuming yet more oxygen.

The city should take a good look at what is happening. Byplundering the forests of the southern hemisphere it is not onlybringing about a crisis there. It is using up its own supply oftrees as well — the trees without which it cannot survive.

Evil Two

The second evil is the plunder of farmland.

In the previous section I wrote that the city was built bydestroying the forests, but land which was formerly forested isfirst and foremost that which can and should be used for farming.The cities are built almost solely on the level, most fertileland. And other urbanized areas, such as those along rail linesand roads, or the centers of villages — though there are a fewplaces which have been made by cutting into the mountains — havebeen built on plundered farmland. The urbanization of farmland isaccomplished by such high-handed legal stratagems as taxing theland as if it were residential property, or employing urbanplanning laws.

The residents of the cities had best not forget that the veryfarmland they continue to urbanize is the source of their food.

Evil Three

The third evil is, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, thecovering of the earth with concrete.

In order to profit from plundered farmland, the city usuallycovers it with concrete, thereby making the land forever useless.

All living things are borne and nourished by the Land. Rain isabsorbed by the Land, becoming the source of well water andstream water, water that is released gradually in dry times bymeans of the Land's regulatory and retaining capabilities. TheLand also purifies all contaminants (except for things like heavymetals and chemicals). The Land has, for millions of years,continued its work of reducing waste products, dead plants, andfallen leaves by means of bacterial action, and returning them tothe soil.

But by covering the Land with concrete we paralyze thisfunction, and it dies. Dead land (concrete) will not grow plantsor absorb water, or give it forth in dry times. And contaminantson concrete just stink without being purified; if we don't cleanup the mess we cannot even live there.

The functions of the earth — giving life to the plants andanimals, regulating the rainwater, purifying waste and returningit to the soil — may be said to form the main artery of Nature'scyclical function. If the earth is blocked off, the flow of bloodwill halt, and the Earth will turn into a dead planet. And it isnone other than concrete that is responsible for cutting off theflow of blood.

The big city is a great mass of concrete, and it is here thatthe rape of the Land attains its highest perfection. Should themultitudes of buildings collapse, how would they dispose of themountains of rubble? No matter where they put the rubble, it willcover the earth, and the bottom of the ocean should also beconsidered earth. Whether a factory, an office building, or apaved road, once it is built we have condemned some part of theLand to be covered with it. The more you block off the Land, themore the functions of nature are necessarily impaired, and wewill pay for this sooner or later. The net of Heaven is coarse,but allows nothing to escape [4] — is it possible that Naturewill miss this or generously overlook it?

Evil Four

The fourth evil is the theft of the farm population.

The cities have burgeoned by stealing the farm population. Theexpansion of the cities is in other words the growth of thoseemployed by the secondary and tertiary industries, and the growthof the secondary and tertiary population represents the declineof the farming population.

In order to feed a large non-tilling population with a smallfarming population, labor-saving, high-yield agriculture is anabsolute necessity, and this leads to plundering, contaminatingagriculture using machines that run on petroleum. As long as theincreased secondary and tertiary population tries to enjoy amodern lifestyle (convenience, extravagance, and ease), it onlystands to reason that the consumers (the non-tilling population)will have to put up with, and pay the price of, contaminatedagricultural produce.

Evil Five

The fifth evil is squeezing food out of the farmers. Since theconcrete cities are incapable of supplying themselves with food,the inhabitants must, in order to survive, squeeze everythingthey eat — be it an apple, a tomato, or a grain of rice — outof the farming villages. Long ago the cities expropriatedagricultural produce through the feudal lords and landlords, andin more recent times they forced the farmers to give it up bymeans of the Food Control Act. Now, however, they take mountainsof food by means of money. These are necessary, desperatemeasures taken to keep the cities alive. No matter what meansthey employ, the cities must forever (until they collapse intorubble) continue to extort food from the farmers. They can donothing else, even if they have to send in the military and seizefood from the farmers at gunpoint.

What is more, as long as one has to rip it off, why not grab thebest (even dogs and cats take the best first)? That is why thefeudal lords and landlords issued orders for rice to be sent tothem. "Millet will not do. Such is for farmers to eat." Thusthey ruled. And now the city dwellers say, "Let us pay a lot ofmoney for sasanishiki and koshihikari." [5] How is this differentfrom the arrogance of the feudal lords and landlords?

In this way the best of the agricultural produce continues toflow into the cities, while in the country we continue to satisfyourselves with the leftovers. It ought to be the other wayaround.

Evil Six

The sixth evil is the destruction of the seashore and theprodigal consumption of marine products.

Once upon a time Tokyo Bay was a famous fishing ground forshorefish, but now the shore of the bay is concrete and greatquantities of sewage pour into the water, destroying the fishing.In order to make things better for themselves, the cities havedestroyed the natural seashores (it is not just Tokyo Bay — thebetter half of Japan's seashores are concrete) and sacrificed thelives of the fishermen living there.

The shore has always been the greatest mechanism for the sea'sability to purify itself. [6] Great numbers of marine organismslive near the shores, so that as long as we do not cover themwith concrete and fill the littoral areas with garbage, there isno need to go far out to sea to fish, thereby being a nuisance toother countries.

Japan's deep sea fishing industry, for example, has taken toomany shrimp near Indonesia, and in order to get 8,000 tons ofshrimp, once discarded 70,000 tons of fish (according to an AsahiShimbun feature entitled "Food"). Extravagant city dwellers willpay high prices for shrimp, but they will not pay much for othermarine foods, and since the fishermen cannot make money byoffering ordinary fish, all the dead ones are thrown back intothe sea after sorting. Such fish are a precious source of proteinfor the people of Indonesia.

Thus the egomaniacal cities waste 70,000 tons of fish so thatthey can gorge themselves on shrimp (I will answer later to thecharge that people in the country eat shrimp, too). And what ismore, they so recklessly take shrimp that the shrimp are now indanger of running out. Just as with the forests, Indonesia's fishcrisis is intimately connected with our cities' appetite.

Evil Seven

The seventh evil is the copious consumption of resources andenergy. The functions of the cities are supported by vastquantities of energy and underground resources. Almost all theseresources are used to maintain the extravagance and convenienceof the cities (like elevators, automatic doors, neon signs,transportation systems, heating, and air conditioning), and tomake idiotic trinkets and gewgaws (like cars, cameras,televisions, and robots). The cities (industries) are built onthe assumption that petroleum and metals will be suppliedforever, and in unlimited quantities. However, it should bemanifest even to a little child that such things are limited, andwhat remains dwindles day by day.

The incredible fight over, and waste of, resources is anindication, along with the pursuit of profit inherent in a moneyeconomy, of the competitive ideology of the city mind. Modernurban civilization — that is, the extravagance and prosperity ofthe cities — is a fruitless blossom fed by this waste of energyand underground resources.

Evil Eight

The eighth evil is the excessive consumption of oxygen and water.

The consumption of oxygen is just as I noted in the section onforests (Evil One). Were it not for oxygen, even the convenientenergy provided by petroleum would not be available. Oxygen isthe most important thing in maintaining the functions of thecities, and they consume it with wild abandon. Oxygen decreasesminute by minute, so that in time we too might not have enough tobreathe (it is said that in one minute a jet consumes as muchoxygen as a human being consumes in a year).

The cities also think nothing of wasting water for convenienceand money-making, for their flush toilets and their factories.The cities take water from others by force, and then dump theirwastes everywhere.

Evil Nine

The ninth evil is the way the city forces sacrifices on others soit can obtain electricity and water.

The egotism of the city is more than apparent in its method ofobtaining electricity and water. We all remember when Tokyoitesinsisted that, in order that they could live a convenient,pleasant life, it was only natural that the village of Okawachisink beneath the waters of a dam reservoir. In this way thefarmers of the village were turned out of the place that had beentheir home for generations, while the citizens of Tokyo, in theirpursuit of convenience, extravagance, and ease (not to mentionmoney-making), never even looked back. And the tragedy of suchobscure villages is just like that of the villages ruined bynuclear power. Why don't the cities build their nuclear reactorsright in the middle of the cities? Why don't they build them inone of their seaside industrial zones? If city residents do nothave enough water for their flush toilets or electricity fortheir automatic doors (though I would expect they too have handswith which to open doors), they should leave the cities.

The Evils of Urban Wastes

The preceding nine sections are an outline of the plundering,destructive acts that the cities must perpetrate in order tomaintain themselves.

Now, having consumed all of these plundered resources, thecities are left with wastes — both industrial and human — andthey then proceed to dump them on others, all the while thinkingit a perfectly natural thing to do. No matter that the citieshave been so devilishly clever in devising a civilization builton all manner of amazing apparatuses — the law of conservationof matter guarantees that they cannot do away with their garbageby sleight of hand.

Let us now list and examine the various evils of the cities asrepresented by their wastes.

1. Carbon Dioxide

The first of the wastes is the excessive release of carbondioxide into the atmosphere. The result of robbing great amountsof oxygen and consuming it is the production of similarly greatamounts of carbon dioxide. Trees would be expected to consumethis carbon dioxide and deliver oxygen to us, but since thecities are also destroying the trees, this conversion processcannot keep up; if there were no cities in the world, we couldexpect the consumption and production of oxygen to be in balance.

Thus the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere steadilyincreases, and it is said that by the years 2025-2050, there willby twice as much in the atmosphere as there was beforeindustrialization. Because of the greenhouse effect thetemperature at the surface of the Earth will rise two or threedegrees, the glaciers will melt, and the surface of the oceanswill rise five meters above their present levels. Most of the bigcities of the world will then be flooded. They shall reap as thehave sown.

2. Atmospheric Pollution by Exhaust

The second is the production of particulate matter and exhaustgases. Prodigious amounts of poisonous gases and particulatematter pour from the smokestacks of the cities' innumerablefactories, from the throngs of automobiles crowding theirstreets, and from the swarms of jets in the skies (and even alittle from all the cigarettes; I will answer later to the chargethat we have cigarettes and cars in the country, too). Not onlydoes all this pollute the atmosphere, it is also said that theparticulate matter blocks the light of the sun, thus causing adrop in the temperature on the Earth. There is no reason tobelieve that this will be balanced off satisfactorily by thegreenhouse effect. The increase in carbon dioxide, poisonousgases, and particulate matter in the atmosphere threatens thelives of all living things on our Earth.

3. Depletion of the Ozone Layer

The third is the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer.

Those ever-so-convenient city inventions the jet plane and theaerosol spray, and the nitrogen fertilizer that the cityinvented to dominate the farming villages, are the instruments bywhich the city is destroying the ozone layer.

The effects of the exhaust gases and nitrogen oxides released inthe stratosphere by jet planes will, in the final estimation,reduce the ozone by 6.5 percent. And it is thought that the CFCsused in aerosol sprays, which rise to high altitudes upon theirrelease, will, even if their use continues at the 1974 rate,cause a 14 percent loss of the ozone over the next 50 years. Thenitrogen suboxide released when the nitrogen fixed in chemicalnitrogen fertilizers is denitrified will, it is estimated, causea future 3.5 percent reduction of ozone.

A 1 percent reduction in ozone translates to a 2 percentincrease in ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface,and an increase in ultraviolet radiation is a threat to allliving things on Earth; it is said that, if nothing is done aboutthis — if the ozone layer continues to be destroyed — certainspecies will be faced with extinction. Since all species in theirinteractions work to maintain the ecosystem, the loss of even onecould signify grave consequences for the ecosystem as a whole. Asfor human beings, should there be a 10 percent reduction inozone, it is thought that cases of skin cancer could increase 20to 30 percent.

The cities steal nitrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere, theyrob metals and petroleum from the earth, and their wonderfulscientific achievement is to put us and the entire ecosystem inmortal danger by means of the production and use of theirinventions.

4. Sewage

Fourth is the dumping of sewage into the ocean.

In order to maintain convenience, extravagance, and ease, thecity must somehow dispose of the great amounts of water itconverts into sewage, and that sewage always ends up in theocean. The amount of sewage produced is about equal to the amountof water consumed.

This sewage is treated and divided into water and sludge; thesludge is used for landfills, and the water goes to the sea viathe sewage system. However, since this treatment is not perfectthe water flowing into the ocean contains, depending upon thesubstance, 10-60 percent of what it originally contained. Inaddition, most cities have a sewage system in which rain water iscollected along with the sewage, so that on a rainy day thetreatment plants cannot handle the volume, and the result is thatsome of it goes to the sea just as it is. Thus the ocean hasbecome a cesspool.

Washing one's hands means that one must dirty some water. Anddoing the laundry means that one pollutes the ocean by cleaningone's clothes. Flush toilets are no different. As long as I canlive under sanitary conditions, it doesn't matter if the oceanbecomes polluted — this is the egotism that the city is builtupon.

5. Mountains of Garbage and Wastes

The fifth is landfills of garbage and sludge. No matter what kindof garbage one has, it is quite impossible, even if one changesits form or appearance, to make it disappear. Unburnable solidtrash goes without saying, but burnable trash is no different:even after burning, the gaseous part disperses in the atmosphere,and the ashes still remain. And there is no proof that these areharmless. Even if the city had the technology to make themharmless, these great amounts of waste (ashes) must still be putsomewhere, and that will cause problems for someone.

The cunning, arrogant city is able to maintain the pleasantnessof its own environment by shoving its tons of garbage off on thecountry, or by dumping it in the ocean. But do we tolerate itwhen someone dumps his garbage in his neighbor's house in orderto keep his own clean? The beautiful cities and spic-and-spanfactories which receive awards from the Environment Agency areshowing us that they are shoving more garbage off on others thanare other cities and factories.

Of all the kinds of trash brought out of the cities the mostvoluminous is demolition wastes. It is said that this makes upone-third of the waste from the big cities. Whenever they beginsome new enterprise, they remove the old buildings since they arenow just in the way. And the place they discard this waste is(take for example Nagoya) farmland purchased for the purpose.Every bit of junk that the city produces in order to achieve evengreater benefit and extravagance (even the wastes produced in oneday could not be kept in the city) are taken to the country andforced off on us. If the people in the country bought some landin the city and began to haul things like straw, wood chips, androcks to the city and dumped them there, would the city stand bysilently and allow this?

Second to demolition wastes, the wastes of greatest volume arethose created by the manufacturing and processing industries.Next come domestic wastes, and then those produced by theservices (included are of course such poisonous substances asmercury, PCBs, and ABS). These wastes are disposed of, along withthe sludge from sewage treatment plants, on land or in landfillsnear the ocean. [7]

6. The Flood of Merchandise

The sixth is the flood of products (merchandise).

I have already written about how, in its activities ofmanufacturing and processing, the city robs and wastes resources;how it spreads pollution everywhere; how it shoves its garbageoff on others. But these are not the only evils inherent in thecity's industries.

The city produces vast quantities of products (merchandise),piles them high everywhere, and threatens the very future ofhuman society with this flood. [8] Look at the packs ofautomobiles crowding the roads. Look at the great quantities ofagricultural chemicals in use. Look at the mountains of medicineand food additives being shoved down our throats. It is the samefor the worthless cigarettes produced in mountainous quantities;for the oceans of alcohol meant to help city people forget thatthere is no longer any meaning in their lives; for the heaps ofrecords and tapes, which, like sonic narcotics, produce noise anddementia; for the weekly magazines and comic books that overflowwith idiotic stories and pictures — one could go on withoutlimit. It would not be an overstatement to say that allmerchandise produced by the city is the same. And just as Imentioned before with jet planes and aerosols, they producepollution not only when they are used, but, as outlined insection five, become pollution themselves after use, thus causingthe utmost trouble for people in other places. No matter whatproduct, it cannot stand up to use indefinitely; sooner or laterit becomes trash and the city must dispose of it somehow (thesedays we see many products that were made purposely to last only ashort time). [9] Everywhere we look we see discarded junk liketelevisions, washing machines, and automobiles (strangely enough,these were supposed to be the very symbols of prosperity) — doesit not make one feel the desolation foretelling the end of anage? When a tiger dies it leaves its hide, but when citymerchandise dies, it leaves more evil. [10]

Will human beings in the end be crushed under the load of theirmerchandise and trash? [11]

7. Excessive Services Forced onto Us

The seventh is how the city forces excessive services off on us.

Take, for example, public employees. It is said that the numberof public employees increases at a fixed rate. Even thatillustrious, tyrannical dictator Hitler met with defeat when, inan effort to streamline the government, he ran up against thefirm resistance of the bureaucrats, so there is no reason tobelieve that today's pusillanimous cabinet members or boneheadedGovernment Reorganization Committee members would be able tochange anything no matter how many handstands they perform.

The overpaid bureaucrats, in order to increase their staff andexpand their territory, are continually planning new "services"and getting their politico friends to appropriate money for them.It is the citizens who have to put up with these nuisances. Fillout this form, cooperate in this survey — there is no end totheir worthless, time-consuming services.

Private service enterprises are no different in that theyhard-sell services. These days we see the emergence of strange,previously unheard-of services, and there are numerous instancesof their swindling the innocent public for all they can get.

There is no saying where all this will stop. According to 1982employment survey results published by the Gifu PrefecturalStatistics Section, a mere 0.9 percent of all youths 15 to 24years of age are employed in primary industries (this figure hasshown a steady yearly decline). This means that the other 99.1percent are making a living in the spiffy secondary and tertiaryindustries. Let us take careful note of the fact that the presenturbanizing social structure allows only 0.9 percent of the youngto feed the other 99.1 percent prodigal sons.

8. The City as Warmonger

The eighth is that the city is a warmonger.

Both guns and ammunition are made by the city. And nuclearweapons go without saying.

Needless to say, those who directly manufacture and sell weaponsfor killing people are the merchants of death, but a careful lookreveals that the cities are chock full of merchants of death. IfI may be allowed an extreme statement, I would say that it is notan overstatement to say that those who engage in the secondaryand tertiary industries are all merchants of death. For example,those who manufacture and sell such harmful things as foodadditives, agricultural chemicals, cigarettes, automobiles, andjet planes, and make money at it, are all merchants of death. Butthis hardly bears mentioning.

"But surely…not me!" However, even the sacred profession ofteacher, those relieved because they believe they are innocent,are just as guilty as the merchants of death as long as theyengage in any kind of education, for all education teaches"progress," "development," "improvement," and "prosperity," i.e.,destruction and contamination.

And physicians, practitioners of the benevolent art of medicine,work in tandem with the drug companies, dribbling, injecting,inserting, and popping huge quantities of drugs into theirpatients, bringing about iatrogenic diseases; they are butepigones of the merchants of death.

And the entertainers, professional athletes, men of letters,painters, composers, critics, and even the archeologists andanthropologists, who appear to be able to excuse themselves bysaying that their work at least does no harm — theseleisureologists all plan ways to continue their idle andgluttonous [12] ways without dirtying their own hands; sittingback in their armchairs they force the small number of farmers tocarry on labor-saving, high-yield agriculture, and contribute topoisoning by agricultural chemicals, frequent occurrences ofgreenhouse diseases, and the production of great quantities ofcontaminated agricultural produce. As long as this state ofaffairs continues, they can never remove themselves from theranks of the merchants of death.

Having thus listed some professions, I wonder if there is evenone person living in the cities who can prove that he or she isan exception? Even if it is possible to demonstrate this, thereis still no possible way to deny the fact that urban dwellers areliving in the city for convenience, extravagance, and ease, andthat they are accomplices to the city's plundering anddestructive acts.

While it was obvious that the producer of murderous weapons isthe city, let us in addition take note of the fact that the cityis also the starter of wars.

As I wrote in the beginning of this chapter, the city itself isnon-self-supporting and non-productive, so that if it does notcommandeer its supplies from some other place (and since the citycannot clean itself, if it does not shove its garbage off onsomeone else), it cannot maintain its functions or continue itsactivities. Competition among cities then naturally arises, andif a dispute cannot be resolved by money or discussion, theyresort to a settlement by means of armed force. There is notelling how many wars of this kind have been fought in humanhistory.

In the country (which will be defined in Chapter III) it ispossible to keep oneself alive by self-sufficient practices andthe blessings of Nature, so there is at least no reason why onemust resort to war.

You, in the cities! If you still insist on getting rid ofnuclear weapons, then you must first dismantle the city, which isboth the hotbed and ringleader of war. If you do not do so, youwill be destroyed by the nuclear weapons that the city itself hasproduced. [13]

NOTES

Lao Zi, chapter 73: "Heaven's net is great in size; though itsmesh is coarse, nothing gets through." Usually interpreted tomean that Nature never lets evil go unpunished. (Translator'snote)

The finest, and most expensive, varieties of rice. (Translator'snote)6

If river water flows through 100 meters of rocks, sand, andplants, impurities will be removed, but even if it flows througha thousand-meter length of concrete channel, it will not bepurified.7

In an interview (Asahi Shimbun, July 24, 1985 evening edition)with one of the promoters of the "Phoenix Project," a land fillplanned for the disposal of Osaka-area wastes, the interviewedperson recognized the fact that "if we burn 100 tons of garbage,15 tons of ashes remain." The project, which will destroy whatlittle remains of Osaka Bay's natural seashore, was ironicallynamed after the phoenix since, its promoters claim, though theocean will be filled in, the area will be reborn as new land forJapan. Though the total planned volume of the landfill is astaggering 45 million cubic meters, it will serve the needs ofthe area for a mere six years. (Translator's note)8

Though the cities are already overflowing with manufacturedgoods, why is it that the cities madly pursue increasedproduction? This is, as I mentioned before, due to the magicalpower of money. In order to make more money — that is, in thepursuit of profit — people are manipulated by the magicalstrings of money, and thus increase production.

No matter what the original purpose of money, it has always beenused as a weapon to seize food. At present, however, it is usednot only to bring food to the cities, but is also the life bloodof all industrial activities. Thus its role is to carry on byforce the destruction and contamination of the naturalenvironment, the robbery and waste of resources, theoverproduction of goods, and dumping of wastes on others ("Aslong as we pay money, no one will gripe even if we make a mess ofthings.").

I could have established a separate section for the harm causedby money, but will let this note serve for now.

The average lifetime of a one-family home in Japan is now said tobe 20-25 years. (Translator's note)

A play on the proverb "When a tiger dies it leaves its hide, butwhen a man dies he leaves his name." (Translator's note)

I am not especially trying to ignore the "good" of the city'sproducts, but allow me to remind the reader that there is nodenying the harm rendered to people by cigarettes, foodadditives, and cars.

"Idle and gluttonous" (fukou donshoku) is a term from the
Japanese feudal-age thinker Ando Shoeki, whom Nakashima will
introduce later. I have borrowed the translation from E. H.
Norman. (Translator's note)

On a special program, "Earth in Flames," aired by NHK on August5, 1984, they told of the effects of a nuclear attack on Tokyo (asingle one-megaton bomb exploded over Tokyo Tower). The manyhigh-rise buildings, the Shinkansen trains, jet planes, and carson the expressways would all be set afire and blown away in aninstant; furthermore, computer operators, people enjoyingthemselves downtown, housewives shopping in the marketplaces, andchildren playing on the school playgrounds would similarly beblown away in an instant, their flesh half melted; in this waythe six million people within a 15 km radius of the explosionwould all die instantly. This is bad, but I must take issue withthe view that all these Tokyoites are just innocent, pitifulvictims. There is absolutely no difference in this case betweenthe attacked and the attacker, because both are destructive,rapacious, haughty, arrogant, tyrannical cities. The civilizationof the city, which produced the high-rise buildings, theShinkansen, the jet planes, the computers, and the supermarketslikewise produced nuclear weapons. Therefore, if we are to getrid of nuclear weapons, we must also get rid of the cities.Nuclear weapons are like the bull's horns — we cannot just cutoff the horns and then believe it is all right to let the bull goon living.

You in the cities! Open your eyes! Your belief that if we justget rid of nuclear weapons then we are assured everlasting peaceand prosperity is nothing more than a delusion.

In order to maintain this peace and prosperity how much evil(destruction, contamination, waste) must the city perpetrate?What great catastrophes must the city bring down upon humanityand the Earth?

There is little difference between dying by nuclear weapons anddying by contamination and destruction. If the city is destroyed(of course it will take the rest of us down with itself) by itsown nuclear weapons, then it will have reaped as it has sown.

Special Chapter

The City and Food

— The Excess, Insufficiency, and Importation of Rice —

Whether or not to import rice is COMPLETELY the problem of thecity. Can there truly be a reason why the farmers must be up inarms over this issue?

It is absurd that this problem of rice excesses and shortagesshould be fussed over as if it controlled the fate of thefarmers! [14]

The Farmers Have No "Food Problem"

Originally farmers were people who grew their own food andsurvived on that, and if because of frosts they lost half theirrice crops, they would get along on the half they were able toharvest. The cities (consumers), however, receive the full impactof that lost half of the rice crop, so this must therefore beconsidered a big problem which completely controls the fate ofthe city. If on the other hand there is a bountiful harvest ofrice the farmers have cause for celebration, and have no reasonto consider this a burden. Even if they have far too much ricefor themselves they can give it to their domestic animals, and ifthey still have some left over (or if they have no animals) theycan return it to the earth.

It is also of no concern to the farmers whether the city decidesto import rice or not (there is no reason why farmers must eatimported rice even though they still have some stored), so thisis therefore purely the consumers' problem. Thus it comes down tobeing simply a matter of the city securing its staple food fromits own country or another country, and making the wrong choicecould mean running out of food. If the city relies upon anothercountry for its staple food, and this supply is for some reasoninterrupted, then logic dictates it is the people in the cities,and not the farmers, who will be in a pickle.

Don't tell me that this is my egotism. What I want to make plainhere is that the city (the system) is taking a problem thatcompletely controls its own destiny, and making it look as thoughit controls the destiny of the farmers, thereby trying to solvethe entire food problem by sacrificing the farmers. This isnothing other than another one of the city's deceptivestratagems. Nothing exhibits the stupidity of the farmers to theworld more than their being taken in by this trick, and thengoing down to the ports to demonstrate against the importation ofrice. [15]

The insufficiency and importation of rice is the perfect chanceto eliminate (or at least shrink) the cities. Farmers! If thereis a shortage of rice, we should reduce, not increase,production. Help promote the rice shortage! Don't oppose riceimports! Until the authorities take action, voluntarily reduceyour rice acreage! Produce only enough for yourself and youranimals! If you prepare yourself for an austere life, then it isthe cities, and not the farmers, who will find themselves in abind.

If the trees do not produce many nuts, then the number ofsquirrels will decrease. It is a self-evident truth that, ifsupplies of the staple food fall, the number of cities will bereduced correspondingly.

When farmers have been deceived by the cities, believe the foodproblem is their own, say that we must at all costs stop theimportation of rice, and demand that government rice stocks beopened — when even the farmers begin to talk this way — we canonly say that their delusions and stupidity have attained thezenith. Are they trying to bring about again that terrible pastof plunder when our ancestors, in years of famine, had even theirown stocks of rice taken from them as tax, and starved to deathin shame? We must not be fooled by their demands to break out thestored rice. Even if you have to throw it in the gutter, don'tgive it to the city. This will be the best means of bringingabout the shrinkage of the cities. Let the cities import food ifthey like. When in their dangerous tightrope act they run upagainst some unforeseen circumstance, it will be of NO concern tothe farmers.

Why Feed the Hand that Pollutes?

"The farmers have a duty to provide the citizens (actually thecities) with food." This is the noble-sounding great cause thatthe city always brandishes, and the farmers believe it withoutquestion. This faith of the farmers is proof of what I meantpreviously when I said that the city (that is, the secondary andtertiary industries) changes a problem that completely controlsits own destiny into one which controls that of the farmers, andthrough this deft trickery attempts to solve its food problem bysacrificing the farmers. And since this is blind faith, thefarmers do not realize at all that this is a trick; the citycoolly gives the farmers the responsibility for the food problem,and the farmers themselves take on this responsibilitywholeheartedly. The city, in other words, has made the farmersbelieve blindly that supplying the cities with food is theirduty.

A duty to feed the citizens (cities)? There is no such thing! Imay be repeating myself, but this "duty" is nothing more than anartifice invented by the city — which cannot live even a daywithout robbing food from the farmers — to take that food; suchan unwritten law has not, of course, always existed as a law ofNature. Did not Nature decree that we either gather or produceour own food?

We must not be deceived. Though you farmers believe from thebottom of your hearts that "agriculture is a sacred profession,"that is but a belief brought about as a result of your havingfallen prey to the city's plundering stratagems, and is nodifferent from before when, controlled by the slogan "Japan isthe nation of the gods," young men from the farms gave theirlives for the state.

Farmers! When you believe that "farming is the sacredprofession," [16] when you fall for the idea that "the farmershave a duty to supply food to the citizens," when, with sweat onyour brow and mud on your hands, you are put on the run by yourmachines in order to answer to the demand for great quantities offood, you are preserving and promoting the "evils of the city"that I outlined in Chapter II.

That which you nourish by working your fingers to the bone isnone other than the source of all pollution, the root of allevil, that is, the city dwellers, the prodigal sons. In view ofthis situation, the "sacred profession" in which you believe isactually an evil that nourishes evil. We must immediately root itout.

If we do not eradicate this evil, there will soon be no hope forus. There is absolutely no reason why you must expose yourself todangerous agricultural chemicals, suffer under onerous debts, andwork yourself into the ground in order to feed the likes of thosewho make cigarettes, food additives, cars, and jet planes, thusspreading pollution all over the place; those who make guns,bullets, nuclear weapons, and preparations for murder; the peoplewho force needless governmental services onto us; or people likesingers, dancers, and athletes who make their living by excitingothers.

I will say it once again: Don't answer their demands for greatsupplies of food! A shortage of the staple food, rice, is anexcellent opportunity for us. If the city people do not haveenough to eat they will realize their error, and this willengender the shrinkage of the cities, which will in turn bringabout the amelioration of the city's evils. This is what AndoShoeki meant when he said, "The idle and gluttonous should simplybe punished by death."

The Alternatives Pressing Humankind

Let us note that allowing land to lay idle is, as a matter offact, the best possible way to make the switch to organicfarming. It is said that making a sudden switch to organicfarming is difficult for our arable land, which has been ruinedby agricultural chemicals and chemical fertilizers, but if onelets the land lay idle and avails oneself of the followingmethod, the land will come back to life in only one year, and onewill be able to raise good rice with absolutely no agriculturalchemicals or chemical fertilizers.

On idle paddies just dump great quantities of such things asstraw, grass, chicken manure, garbage from your kitchen, anddregs and lees from starch and tofu, if you can get them free.After you have done this, the weeds will grow luxuriously. Cutthem and then either let them lie as they are, or (if you haveanimals) feed them to your animals and return the weeds to thesoil in the form of manure. If you continue this for one seasonyou will find that the next year, even if you begin with nofertilizer at all, mature seedlings planted a little late andwider apart than usual will grow beautifully and strong, and youwill get big ears of rice even without adding any fertilizerduring the season. Truly great is the recovery power of Nature.

By letting some land lay idle you can get two birds with onestone: begin the shrinkage of the cities, and manage the switchto organic agriculture. Remember, the object here is not toproduce great quantities of rice, but to produce healthy ricewithout the use of chemicals; if the farmers eat just a littlegood-quality rice, that is all that matters.

Now at this time a food panic will arise, and it is inevitablethat the cities will ransack the farming villages in their searchfor rice. But if we do not get rid of the pus, the sore will notheal. In the attempt to deal a blow to the powerful cities, wemust prepare ourselves for a little bloodletting. It may beexpecting too much to achieve our goal without payment of anykind.

Whether in the country or in the cities, we are faced with twoclear alternatives, represented by the following two attitudes:"As long as I can gain happiness (extravagance and prosperity)now, it's all right if humanity perishes in the future," and"Even if we experience more unhappiness (austerity and a smallerscale lifestyle) than at present, humanity will survive." Theseare the alternatives, and we must choose one of them.

I think that, even if there is a little bloodletting, and even ifthe cities retreat and life becomes much more inconvenient anddifficult than it is now, we should let the human race continueto exist on this Earth.

Fortunately, a full belly (extravagance) engenders laziness, butan empty belly (austerity) engenders hope. As long as, ensconcedin the midst of plenty, we continue our extravagant lives, wewill never have the opportunity to experience real happiness.

Supplementary Comment on "Rice Shortages"

It is said that the rice shortage (a shortage of a magnitude thatbrought about the need to import rice) is the result of fourcontinuous years of bad weather, but a bigger cause is man-made— the meddling of the city.

The first of the city's mistakes is its infamous policy ofreducing rice acreage. To say that "since there's too much riceyou must till fewer paddies" is nothing more than akindergartner's idea for a solution. Is this the best idea thatthe elite bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture could comeup with? And when we see that the politicians representing thefarming villages just let this pass, it is obvious that they arenot much smarter.

Long ago, in China, they say that even with nine years' worth ofrice stored they still had shortages. So what is all theexcitement over a three or four months' excess?

You, in the cities! This is the rice you're eating. Offer allthose office buildings as rice storage facilities. We should fillthose buildings up with unhulled rice. Should there ever be afood shortage, all those office buildings and hotels will beworthless compared to rice. When the Pol Pot regime institutedthe barter system, the capitol of Phnom Penh was instantlyconverted into an empty shell. This is because the formerresidents left the hotels and offices behind and went fromfarming village to farming village in search of food. If we wereto set a nine years' supply of rice as our goal there would be noshortages because of frost damage, and no need to import rice; atthe same time there would be no need for an acreage reductionpolicy.

In such a situation there should be no need to discuss costs.Since this is the rice that they would all be eating, they shoulddo the work for free. When it comes down to actually carrying outthis plan, the money economy will probably fall apart, anyway.[17]

The second of the human-caused disasters is the infrastructureindustry. In order to build infrastructure, the government blowstrillions of yen destroying the paddies tilled by generations ofancestors, and for that reason we are seeing a reduction in therice harvests (let us not overlook the effects of the denseplanting by machines, the damage due to causing the rice to growtoo thickly, and the ill effects of the great quantities ofchemicals).

The government says that the farmers benefit frominfrastructure, but we are actually the victims of it. In realitythose who benefit are the government; the farming co-ops; themanufacturers of machines, fertilizers, and agriculturalchemicals; the rice wholesalers; and the consumers, all of whombelong to the cities. What this means is that the city hascreated a system by which it can control the production of ourstaple food as it pleases. The stupid farmers have given the citypermanent control over the production of rice for a mere pittancein subsidies.

Our traditional method of producing rice, which boasts a historyof several thousand years, has also been negated by the city(government, farming co-ops, machinery manufacturers), and thecity has been able to achieve a system of rice production thatsuits its own purpose, that is, a system which makes full use oflarge machinery and agricultural chemicals, and which saddles thefarmers with debts. That this new system of rice production(involving the planting of immature seedlings, dense planting,and early planting) is susceptible to frost damage, is the pricethe city must naturally pay.

The third is the desire of the Epicurean city dwellers to eatthe famous varieties of particularly tasty rice. It is for thisreason that the farmers plant more and more "sasanishiki" and"koshihikari," strains that are particularly susceptible tofrost, blight, and wind damage. On the other hand, strains thatare resistant to cold and disease, since they do not taste asgood, have all but disappeared from the paddies. This is why Isay that frost damage is human-caused.

The fourth is the decline in the will of the farmers to produce.It would seem to be a mistake to ascribe the loss of thefarmers' enthusiasm to the city, but sad to say, it is completelythe fault of the city. It is because the city has meddled withthe production of food that the farmers have lost their will toproduce. Who was it that promoted the eating of bread (thatconsidered eating rice bad) and increased the imports of wheat?It was not the farmers of Japan. It was clearly the city — thepoliticians and traders and nutritionists of the tertiaryindustries — who made deals with the U.S. Department ofAgriculture and grain traders. It was then that the farmers beganto lose the will to produce.

The creation of agribusiness in the early 1960s by means of thestructural improvement of agriculture, in which the governmentwas highly instrumental, resulted in debts for the farmers, theincrease in the scale of agricultural operations, and the supplyof great amounts of agricultural produce, which was accomplishedby making the farmers busier than ever. The ability of thefarmers to supply themselves with food — their independence —was completely lost at this time, and agriculture became highlydependent on the secondary and tertiary industries (chemicalfertilizers, machinery, fuel, subsidies, etc.). This dependenceis in other words the loss of autonomy; the farmers becameprisoners and lackeys totally controlled by the politicos, theco-ops, the manufacturers, the trading companies, and theconsumers, and their will to produce rice declined precipitously.

And what did they do to the remaining small-scale farmers? Theymade a big deal of the difference in income between thesecondary/tertiary industries and the farmers, and promoted themove to the cities. As the number of farmers shrank, the urbanpopulation burgeoned, and where the government was not successfulin getting them off the farm, they at least managed to createmany Sunday farmers and part-time farmers. So the farmers, whowere busy making money in town, lost interest in rice production,and they performed field work hastily with machinery, andneglected to apply compost to their paddies.

During the same period of time the raising of domestic animalsbecame an industry independent of agriculture, this becauseJapanese agriculture was taken in by the stratagems of the bigU.S. grain companies. Feeding great numbers of domestic animalswith nothing but compound feed burdened the farmers with heavydebts, and this situation remains unchanged to the present day.[18] But an even greater problem is that the loss of domesticanimals to the farmer has resulted in the loss of manure(compost) to be returned to the soil, and this has in turnresulted in the forced use of larged amounts of chemicalfertilizers and agricultural chemicals, and the weakening of foodplants because of damage to the soil.

The fifth is the standardization of rice-growing techniques bymeans of standardized agricultural education.

Just as I mentioned earlier, it is needless to say that much ofthis standardization is the result of the interference of thegovernment and farming co-ops, which is part and parcel of theirinfrastructure. But the farmers themselves, who accepted thissystem, looked with disdain upon the traditional and appropriatefarming methods of their ancestors who farmed the same land,prevented these methods from being passed on, went off to faraway schools to learn standardized modern farming methods from ateacher that had never once held a hoe, and thus created anenvironment conducive to the acceptance of intrusion by thegovernment and the co-ops (of course, most of the people whoreceived this education became white collar workers, and sobecame those who also control agriculture and the farmers). Inthis way both Hokkaido and Kyushu now grow rice in the same way,and no longer have the diverse methods to deal with problems suchas unusual weather, diseases, insects, and wind damage. Still,they may claim that the per-hectare yields of modern agricultureare increasing, but how far can we trust the statistics of theMinistry of Agriculture? It is my suspicion that true yields willnot jibe with desktop statistics which take into considerationsuch things as Staple Food Control Act accounts, the rice acreagereduction policy, and incentives for importation.

The above is a very general explanation, but we can see the"rice shortage" (or decrease in stores) does not find its onlycause in unavoidable things like frost damage, but is due largelyto the gratuitous meddling of the city.

Postscript

Without really planning it, I touched upon something I am goingto cover in Chapter V, "Down with the Cities!", so I would liketo mention here that by "Down with the cities!" I do not mean"Down with the people in the cities!" This I shall treat indetail in Chapter V.

SPECIAL CHAPTER NOTES

This chapter was written at the time the Japanese governmentimported rice from South Korea. The government suddenlydiscovered that it had no reserves of rice except for very oldstores, unacceptable because of the high level of bromine (causedby fumigants). (Translator's note)

Some groups of farmers went down to the ports during theunloading of the South Korean rice to protest. The January, 1985issue of Gendai Nogyo ("Modern Agriculture") published a photostory about some young farmers in Miyagi Prefecture who protestedthe government's policies by producing all the rice they could.(Translator's note)

If harvesting rice is a sacred occupation, then a snake'scapture of a frog is also a sacred occupation. There wereoriginally no human occupations which could be considered sacred.

It was at a time when China carried on no trade with othercountries that they said, "Though we have a nine years' store ofrice, it is still insufficient" (of course, at that time othercountries were also incapable of exporting). However, at present,when arable land all over the globe is eroding and beingotherwise ruined, and the population is growing explosively,there is no doubt that food for human beings is heading forinsufficiency. Though for Japan imports are still possible, itwill become difficult to import in the future, and we will be inthe same position as ancient China. When such a food crisisresults, we must not allow the money economy to interfere withfood storage. Also, since money serves as the lubricant by whichall the city's evils arise, we must get rid of it sooner orlater.

Debts are an excellent means of exploitation. In order to payback their loans, the farmers must work themselves into theground and offer large amounts of animal products.

CHAPTER III

The City and the Country

In Chapter II we learned that as long as the cities continue toexist, urban pollution — which is the product of the cities'activities — is unavoidable. We also learned that urbanpollution is at the same time the pollution of the Earth, andthat, other than the cities, there can be no other destroyer andcontaminator of the Earth.

In only a brief, cursory inspection we saw that there are farmore deadly, serious kinds of pollution than we can count on twohands, and that the city is the sole perpetrator of thesepollution crimes, and the source of all the evils that threatenhumanity and the Earth.

The Entire Japanese Archipelago Has Been Urbanized

However, the cunning and arrogant city has shifted theresponsibility for the destruction of the Earth — aresponsibility that is clearly its own — to others, insistingthat the pollution is the product of the science civilization orthat it is brought about by the industrial state. And it goeswithout saying that the country is included within that civilizedstate.

In the country as well as in the city they drive cars, burnpropane gas, use electricity, smoke cigarettes, waste paper,spread agricultural chemicals, and drain detergent into therivers and lakes; as long as the country belongs to the civilizedstate, it cannot escape the fact that it is an accomplice. Thussaying, the city attempts to shift part of the blame forpollution onto the country. And what is more, the city also triesto justify its own pollution as an unavoidable phenomenon of amodern state.

But sorry to say, this is not at all consistent with reality.

The "country" that the city speaks of — as if it had made somegreat and wonderful discovery — is not the real country at all,but a fake, a red herring meant to keep us from seeing thetruth. The real country is what is left after we have removed allurban influence. It is, in other words, that which can stillexist after the cities have disappeared from the Earth.

The country that the city speaks of is a fake country that isunder the influence of the city. When country people (actuallyhalf-urbanized people) ride in cars, drive tractors, watchtelevision, smoke cigarettes, eat processed foods, burnpetroleum, use electric lights, and read the newspaper, they areliving a life that would be impossible without the city; this istherefore what we should probably call an "urbanized country." Ifwe go a little bit further we could say that such a place doesnot even deserve the name "country" for it is none other than thecity itself.

Let us take a look at a typical farm family. The son is a whitecollar worker, and so of course belongs to the city. The head ofthe household is a part-time farmer who farms on Sunday, andbelongs to the city Monday through Saturday. Even on Sunday whenhe does his farm work, he belongs to the city if he benefitsfrom petroleum and agricultural chemicals. If, after he comeshome from the fields, he drinks beer and watches television, hebelongs to the city. In this way we can see that, in the entirecountry of Japan there is not a single place that has not beenurbanized, not a single place that deserves to be called"country." Yea, it is not going too far to say that the chillingbreath of this devil the city can be felt now in the remotestcorners of the villages, and that the country has been completelyoccupied by the city, or shall we say, the commercialism of thecity.

But this is reality, says the city. We must recognize reality asit is. We must respect reality.

The Real, Invisible Country

However, when we take a close look we see that though they chantReality! Reality! we can at any time invert this reality, andhaving done so we can see that what has been inverted is just asmuch "reality" as that which came before. There is no mistakingthe fact that the country before urbanization was reality, andthat the country after urbanization has become the kind ofreality we now have. It is therefore assured that after invertingthe present reality (that is, after eradicating the cities anddoing away with their influence) the real country that remainswill immediately become reality.

And so, rather than saying "The reality is that the country nolonger exists," it is more accurate to say "If we remove thepresently existing 'urbanized country,' that which remains is inreality the country itself."

I will say it once more: The real country is what remains afterwe get rid of the cities.

If propane gas stops arriving from the city, then we will burnfirewood; if matches to light our firewood stop coming from thecity, then we will warm ourselves by burrowing under piles ofstraw, and eat uncooked brown rice and raw potatoes instead ofcooked food; if the city stops sending shrimp taken from far outat sea, we will give up eating shrimp and catch and eat locustsand digger wasps; if salt no longer comes from the city we willconsider it an unexpected blessing since it is only human beingswho ruin their health by eating too much salt (we never hear ofwild animals ingesting too much salt and damaging their health);if shoes stop coming from the city we will make sandals out ofstraw; if aluminum sashes and bricks stop coming from the city wecan build sunken huts with logs and straw; if there is noelectricity we will go to bed at sundown and rise with the sun towork in the fields. This is the country. This real country atpresent no longer exists (except in certain "uncivilized" placesin the world), but if we get rid of the cities everyone will findthemselves plunged immediately into this kind of country life,and that will instantly become "reality." And is there in thisreal country any place where pollution can be produced?

The Fate of the Wealth- and Prosperity-Seeking Cities

The city and the country — this is none other than the contrastbetween extravagance (wealth) and austerity (indigence).

China, which aims to modernize itself, has begun saying that"Being wealthy is the Right Way" (essay in the People's Daily),and has found it necessary to discard the immortal virtue, alivein China since long ago, that "Wealth is evil, indigence ishonorable." That such a thing has come to pass is proof thatChina could not overcome the lure of extravagance.

The present urbanization of the developing countries (includingthat behemoth, China) is proceeding relentlessly as they seek"wealth," "modernization," and "extravagance." In the nearfuture, it is said, Mexico city will become a city of 20million, outstripping New York (UN population survey). When inthis way the developing countries achieve the same level ofmodernization as the developed countries, it will be time forhumanity to pay the fiddler. If, for example, 90 percent ofChina's one billion people, in their quest for ease and gluttony(i.e., modernization, wealth, and prosperity), come to live inthe cities, they will demand an incredible amount of resources,and create an equally incredible amount of poisons. The reasonthe developed nations achieved modernization is that they wereable to rob the developing nations of all manner of materials,and discard the leftover garbage in every place imaginable. Ifurbanization spreads to every corner of the globe there will nolonger be anyone to rip off, and no place to stash the trash.

Needless to say, the developed countries will not stand for "theslide back into poverty," nor the developing nations for"eternal poverty." So of course we find everyone insisting thatthey won't listen to anything like "Let's now wear straw sandalsinstead of shoes," or "Let's continue to wear straw sandals."They all believe that indigence (austerity) is an evil, but it isnothing compared with the much greater evil that we shall perishfrom the Earth.

Listen! Steamed dumplings will of course fill your emptystomach, and you therefore consider them beneficial. However,should you eat too many you'll get sick, and those dumplings thatyou considered "beneficial" will suddenly become "harmful."

Changing the planet into fields and gardens may be all right,but changing it into cities is not. This is because the citydepends upon urbanized land for it survival (oxygen and food),and cannot continue to exist even one day without it. But thecountry, even if it does not depend upon the city, can alwayscontinue to live as long as it depends upon nature(self-sufficiency and austerity). In spite of this, the countrysuffers losses day by day, and the cities continue to expand.[19] Has humanity finally been marked for ruin?

Supplementary Remarks on the Distinction Between the City and the
Country

If there is no money the city cannot survive, but even if thereis no money, the country will continue to exist. Unless Natureitself disappears, the country will not disappear.

It is money that supports the city (allows the city to controland exploit the country); money maintains the functions of thecity, and allows it to continue its activities. If the use ofmoney were to be outlawed the city would immediately find itselfunable to maintain its functions, and its activities wouldcease. This is not an empty argument, for in Cambodia the Pol Potregime demonstrated that it can be done. The use of money wasprohibited, and the people were forced to conduct business bybarter. Immediately the city people went from farming village tofarming village in search of food, and in no time at all thecapital city of Phnom Penh was reduced to an empty shell. Thiswas a great experiment in which we saw that , without droppingeven one bomb, and by merely banishing currency, it is possibleto eliminate the cities in a single stroke. [20]

Money is used in the country because of the influence of thecity (the damaging influence of urban commercialism). Even if wehave no money, things will be peaceful. But perhaps it would bebetter to express it this way: If we have no money things will befar more peaceful than if we do. Money is making a mess of thecountry, and it allows the city to rob the country of its food.

Long ago our ancestors lived outside the bounds of the moneyeconomy, and so as long as they had salt, there was no need tobuy anything. [21] "Farmer" means a person who does a hundreddifferent kinds of work, [22] and originally the farmers dideverything for themselves, supplying their own food, clothing,and shelter. They wove cloth, and they made sandals. They dugwells, and they thatched roofs. They made ropes, and theygathered firewood. Not only that, almost all the materials theyused were recyclable products of the fields and forests (I willlater discuss the necessity for the tools — hatchets, sickles,and saws — they used to cut and assemble these materials).

"As long as they have salt…" I wrote, but even if they do nothave salt the farmers can somehow get along. Wild animals such assquirrels, raccoons, and monkeys do not ingest so much salt, butthey maintain themselves in perfect health. It is only humanbeings who eat too much, thereby suffering from hardening of thearteries and high blood pressure. There is plenty of saltcontained in natural foods; Nature, I expect, made human beingsthe same way it made squirrels and monkeys.* * *Since the city depends mainly for its existence upon nonrenewableunderground resources, its functions will of course be paralyzed,and its activities will come to a halt, when the resources runout. The cities, therefore, will perish first with thediscontinuance of the money economy, and second with shortage ofnatural resources. The country can always get along without suchunderground resources, just as wild animals and primitivesocieties do.

Next (and this is directly related to my remarks on money), thecities will disappear with a cutoff in the supply of food. Thereason the cities will perish if there is no money is because,first and foremost, it is money that the city uses to plunder thecountry for food. As I have said time and again, the city itselfis nonproductive, and cannot supply its own food. It cannotcontinue to survive without robbing (this includes imports) everylast grain of rice from the country. A cutoff in the food supplyis the best means of triggering the fall of the cities.

It is the city which, for its own benefit, and for progress anddevelopment, continues to control and destroy the naturalenvironment, and it is the country that lives by being in accordwith the flow of Nature. This is the decisive difference betweenthe city and the country, and the all-important fork in the roadwhere we separate that which perishes from that which willendure.

The flow of Nature is a cycle. The four seasons come and go,night and day are repeated (the Earth repeats the rotation on itsaxis, and its revolution around the sun). Rain falls, the watersoaks into the earth, and becomes a spring. Spring water flowsinto mountain streams, then makes its way to rivers, and theninto the ocean, where it evaporates. Rising into the sky it formsclouds, and falls once again on the Land, starting the cycleanew. Parents give birth to children, children to grandchildren;from seed to seed the relay of Life continues. And the remains ofall things that have died are converted into humus by the Land(its self-purifying mechanism), where they again become thesource of nourishment for life (soil). Plants grow, animals thenconsume the plants, and the cycle starts all over again.

There is no end to this repetition. We may say that this cycle iseternity itself. [23] It is therefore not a mistake to say,"Nature is a cycle, and that cycle is eternity."

The Cycle Is the True Substance of the Country and Agriculture

Furthermore, in this cycle, i.e., repetition, there is no"progress." From time immemorial the Earth has continued itsrotation and revolution. In the center of the solar system thesun has continued to blaze. For tens of millions, hundreds ofmillions of years, there has been not the slightest developmentor improvement. In Nature there is no "progress." The biologicalidea of evolution is adaptation to the environment, and isdifferent from progress. For example, the functioning of humanbrains and hands has advanced, whereas the sensitivity of ourears, eyes, and noses has regressed. These changes are theresults of the adaptation of intelligence and nerves to theenvironment, i.e., external stimuli. For the same reason, thenecks of giraffes and the ears of rabbits became long. Ifevolution is the same as progress, then can we also say that itwas progress when the dinosaurs became too big?

Well then, the country (agriculture) must be in accordance withthe eternal cycle and progress-less repetition of Nature. Lastyear I planted seeds in the spring, watched them grow in thesummer, and harvested my crops in the fall. This year I will dothe same. And next year I will no doubt do it again. It onlystands to reason that if the cycle of Nature never changes, akind of agriculture that is closely joined to the cycle is alsoeternally unchanging (needless to say, I speak here of truecountry agriculture, not of modern agriculture). It is a simpleand boring repetition, but this is what makes agriculture what itis. The essence and true characteristic of agriculture must bethis simple, boring repetition.

In the modern city, which holds industry supreme, there is nosuch repetition. Yea, it is the very essence of the city that itcannot have repetition. Even if, after the limited resources haveall been dug out of the ground, the city tries to repeatsomething, it cannot because there is nothing left. Suchineffective one-way movement means stagnation, and stagnationmeans an irrevocable loss. The more the city becomes aware of theinevitable future awaiting it after the depletion of itsresources, the more it tortures itself with worry. The citiesthen fight among themselves, each trying to grab more resourcesthan the others, thus hastening their own demise by franticsquandering. Momentary (as opposed to cyclical and eternal)prosperity is the fruitless blossom that blooms upon buriedresources. To the modern industries (i.e., the city), repetitionis a fatal blow. The city has a short life, and therefore no timefor leisurely repetition. The categorical commands given to thecity are Progress, Development, and Prosperity.

In the country it is possible to eat rice even if we produce itjust as we did one hundred years ago, but in the city you'll notfind anyone who is able to watch the same television theywatched ten years ago. The city must have even one step forward,even one millimeter's change. The same can be said for people whomake their living by getting the attention of the world withliterature and painting, for they are always thrashing aboutwildly, trying to find a new style, or trying to breathe newnessinto things. This quest for novelty ultimately leads to poetryand prose and pictures that we find are impossible to understand.Nikita Khrushchev termed this "a pig's tail" thereby earning thereprobation of the literati, but I think he was correct andjustified in saying so. Ah, the idiocy of those who believe theyare the cultured just because they follow what is new or strange.

So in this way people put all their energies into this mad rushforward, ever forward, while single-mindedly screeching aboutsuch things as Creativity, Challenge, Freedom, Individuality, andProgress. If they just sit around they'll be left behind, andbeing left behind is serious business (this is the urbancompetition mentality).

This stern competition mentality has started the big race toruin, and continues its fearsome advance with the entire societyin tow (an effect produced in combination with the Pursuit ofProfit).* * *And now a final word to modern agriculture —

Nature has repeated the same cycle over and over again forbillions of years. If agriculture, which is in an inextricablyclose relationship with this cycle, shows unusual progress anddevelopment (by accepting the intervention of the secondary andtertiary industries) in spite of this relationship with thenatural cycle, then it is not at all surprising that distortionwill arise. By distortion I mean the contamination of the land(our food), the loss of topsoil, the accumulation of salts in thesoil, and the loss of humus.

If we assume that progress in agriculture has made our livesmore affluent, then we must pay a terrible price for thataffluence. In order to live an extravagant "life," we must giveup our survival.

CHAPTER III NOTES

By invading the country and urbanizing it, the city is, morethan anything else, destroying the very source of its life.

Please note that I do not support any of the barbarismsperpetrated by Pol Pot.

Since in those days (the feudal age) the feudal lords seizedfood directly from the farmers, there was no need to include thefarmers in the monetary economy. The farmers were dragged intothe monetary economy when the Meiji government decreed the switchfrom payment in kind to cash payment.

A literal rendering of one of the Japanese words for "farmer."
(Translator's note).

It is said that even in space everything disintegrates in theend, but if a part of the universe (for example, the Milky WayGalaxy) disintegrates, the planets and stars turning to dust andscattering throughout space, then this becomes interstellarmatter which floats about in space; this dust again gathers toform stars, and a new system is born. This too is the repetitiousmovement of the universe, movement which requires tens ofbillions of years.

Chapter IV

The Origin of the Cities

Just as the sun exists in the heavens, the cities exist on Earth.Just as there is water in the great oceans, there are the citieson land. Or at least this is what most people seem to believe. Ifone does not believe so, then it would probably be impossible toblithely make one's home in the city.

But sorry to say, the city is nothing at all like the sun or theoceans, for it has only the most tenuous, bubble-like existence.

The World before the Appearance of the City

No matter how grand an existence urbanites try to give the city,it is unfortunately nothing more than a phantom born a mere tenthousand years ago or less as the final bubble of human history— or as the explosive with which it will destroy itself. This isjust like the Japanese Army, which, though it called itself theImperial Army, and (believing that it had existed from thebeginning of time) boasted of its own enduring existence, waswiped out in less than a hundred years. It would not be at allstrange if, just as the Japanese Army (I am here distinguishingit from the Self Defense Forces) perished in only one hundredyears, the cities perish after ten thousand.* * *Let us take a look at the origin of the city. At the time whenhuman beings kept themselves alive by hunting, fishing, andgathering, it seems that there were no cities. And there wereprobably no cities even after the beginning of agriculture, whenpeople made farm implements, clothing, and houses while tillingthe soil. Why was it that way? It was because at that time peoplegathered their own food or produced it themselves, and in thiskind of world there is no need for the cities.

In Japan this corresponds to the period of time from the latterhalf of the Jomon Period to the first half of the Yayoi Period(the first half of the Jomon Period and the time prior to thatdoes not concern us here). During the Jomon Period, in which theeconomy was based on gathering, the resources in any one givenarea were limited, so that if the population increased thiswould cause a shortage. It was therefore impossible for people toconcentrate in one place; they kept moving around so that therewere always small numbers of people living scattered over theland (just as wild animals stake out their own territory). Therewas some cooperation in their life of hunting, fishing, andgathering, but for the most part each person took part ingathering, making religious offerings, and dividing up the foodaccording to the customs of the group (Yazaki Takeo, TheDevelopmental Process of Japanese Cities).

Under such an economic system it was impossible to storeanything for a long time, so there were no rich and no poor.Since this was a society which had no written records, the peoplehad to depend upon their rich knowledge of past experience forthe methods by which they adapted to the extremities of Nature,and this was the reason that experienced elders were respected,and in positions of leadership as the heads of groups.

In those days each individual made all tools for gathering andfor consumption, so that there was no one who specialized inhandicraft, and thus no distinctions of social position. Even thehead of a group did not step out of his bound, for the head of agroup, while leading, did not exploit. [24]

The Yayoi culture came from the continent (China). Therefore thetransition to the metal culture was not a natural development ofthe Jomon culture, but a revolutionary change that occurredsuddenly as a result of the influence of the continental culture.

The technology of wet rice agriculture also came to Japan atthis time. Rice became a staple food along with those thingsobtained by hunting and fishing. It became possible for people tolive sedentary lives in the vicinity of their fields; communitiesincreased their supportive power, and there appeared villages ofseveral hundred families. People began to work together ever moreclosely, and there were divisions in social functions. On thewhole, society took on a class structure that was based uponpower.

Land, which was the principal means by which each family madeits living, was not individually owned, but held in common by thevillage, and so it was necessary to tightly control the use ofland and water, and the distribution of agricultural implementsand labor. The headman succeeded to this position of authority.

One can sense that the birth of the city is nigh, but in thefirst part of the Yayoi Period people were still abiding by thelaw of Nature, which states that one must either gather orproduce one's own food. Even the village headman still had togrow his own rice.

The City's Origins

When did the city make its appearance in Japan? We may say thatit happened when the gods marked the human race for ruin. When asystem made up of the dominators and the dominated, theexploiters and the exploited, became necessary, the city cameinto existence as none other than the mechanism of domination andexploitation (see note 24).

Whether it be Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, or whatever place whereancient civilizations arose, the city did most decidedly notarise as an instrument for the prosperity of civilization (orculture); it was without doubt a mechanism for idleness andgluttony set up by the dominators and their ilk, as well as thosehangers on who hoped to profit, such as merchants and craftsmen.Urban civilization (culture) is nothing more than a means ofachieving idleness and gluttony.

In Japan the city appeared in the latter part of the YayoiPeriod. Technology (culture) developed, the scale of communitiesexpanded, and the social organization became complicated. As aresult the various regions took on distinctive cultures based ontheir respective functions, and there appeared villages whichwere groups of people specializing in the manufacture of clay,stone, or metal implements. Groups of people whose soleoccupation was the manufacture of things — this was without adoubt the beginning of the city.

Just as I stated in Chapter I, the city is the base of thesecondary and tertiary industries, or the place which is home tothose employed by those industries; it is none other than theorganization of idleness and gluttony. If there are even a fewpeople who, finding their sole employment in the secondary andtertiary industries, make their living at it (or if there is thepossibility of such), then we must consider this the beginning ofthe city. Scholars believe that in the latter part of the YayoiPeriod there were people whose sole occupation was themanufacture of things, and this means that the city came intobeing at that time.

There is no proof that in the later Yayoi the group heads —that is, the dominators — grew no food but were engaged solelyin politics. But judging from the general conditions in lateYayoi society (particularly the considerable advances intechnology, and the furthering of functional divisions in theeconomy), it is possible that there were a few group heads whofilled their bellies by engaging solely in politics (in the TombPeriod there were countless such people). It is here that I seethe origin of the city.

And if we agree with those who say that the city was created bymerchants, then, whether they dealt in necessities or luxuries,with the appearance of even a small-scale place where themerchants work (i.e., the market), we must again consider thisthe birth of the city. In the late Yayoi there was of coursebartering, but there is no evidence that this was conducted bythose who did nothing but barter (perhaps full-time merchants didnot make their appearance until the Nara Period). In addition wefind there were Buddhist monks and Shinto priests, as well assoldiers and bureaucrats, who are the very models of idleness andgluttony, and they came in droves to the early cities.

From the continent came Buddhism, and from the Tomb Period tothe Nara Period, the number of monks increased steadily; it issaid that in the 32nd year of Empress Suiko's reign [623] therewere 46 temples and 1,385 monks and nuns. Public officials andsoldiers no doubt showed a similar increase. There were 12 gatessurrounding Itabuki Palace of Empress Kogyoku [reigned 642-645]in Asuka, and there were guards posted at each one of them.

In the fifth century the Yamato state unified the land,establishing the Jingikan and the Daijokan departments in thecentral government; in the Daijokan there was a Prime Minister,as well as others like a Minister of the Left, and a Minister ofthe Right. Under them there were eight ministries, which handledall the business of the state, and a system of officials. Theland was divided up into Kinai, and seven Regions, and the sevenRegions were further divided into over sixty locally governedprovinces. These were further divided into smaller districts andvillages. And to govern all of these the state appointedprovincial governors, district governors, village heads, and soon.

When the capital was based in Nara there were, among thoseassembled in the city, over 130 persons who were what we may callthe aristocracy, and the officials, including those down to thelowest ranks, numbered about ten thousand (the population of Naraat that time was 200,000). And since these officials, monks, andpriests had their attendants, assistants, concubines, servants,errand boys, and slaves, it would seem that the greater part ofthe 200,000 people living in Nara in some way or another belongedto the temples, shrines, and the palace.

The City as a Means of Supporting Idleness and Gluttony

In this way the city came into being, underwent transformation,and developed. To put it more simply, politics brought the cityinto being as a place for domination (exploitation). Those whowished to fill their bellies under the wing of the rulersgathered in the same place, thus causing the growth of the cityas an organ of exploitation.

Now let us take a jump into the future.

The city as a political entity has a 5,000-year history, but itis said that the industrial city has at best a 200-year history.According to Toshi Mondai no Kiso Chishiki ["Basic Knowledge ofUrban Problems"], "Ancient cities were by and large organs ofexploitation built upon a ruler, the priesthood, and themilitary, but with the advancement of industrialization,exchange and division of labor became the principal means ofcontrol in the social organization, and when that happened thescale and form of the city changed fundamentally. [25] Thesephenomena, known as industrialization, and urbanization in theage of industrialization, transcend the differences betweencapitalist and socialist states, as well as the differencesbetween developed and undeveloped nations. [26] These are, we maysay, phenomena which represent a change common to the wholeworld."

In this quote the author is describing the limitless expansion ofthe modern city that I spoke of in Chapter I, "Urban Sprawl."This is the problem that we must concern ourselves with solely;what I wanted to get a general idea of here was whether or not itis historical fact that the ancient city, which is the ancestorof the modern city, came into being as a system (even on a smallscale) made up of the dominators and the dominated, and theexploiters and the exploited, and if it arose in order toestablish a World of Laws [27] (a society based upon laws devisedby human beings) for idleness and gluttony. And I also wanted toknow if the city, which now stands before us like the Rock ofGibraltar, was really born long ago as humanity's golden banner,and if, in a Natural World (a world governed by the laws ofNature), it is a necessity.

I wonder if it was really the wish of Nature that the city comeinto being?

By looking into the past we have been able to get an idea,however vague, of the process by which the city came into being,and just as we thought, it came into being at the hands of masterpoliticos and men of the cloth as a means of abandoningagricultural labor, skillfully plundering the fruits of thefarmers' labor, and achieving idleness and gluttony. To put iteven more tersely, the city came into being the moment suchactivities began. It is virtually impossible for the city to comeinto being any other way. According to the previous quote, theancient city was an organ of exploitation, and this is theessence of the modern city as well. The only difference is thatthe modern city has made it possible to plunder more skillfully,in a more complex manner, and in greater amounts. To put itanother way, it was not the desire of the farmers (the country,that is, the Natural World) that the city came into being. It istrue that many farmers helped to build the palaces, but this wascorvee labor exacted at the request (or rather the command) ofthe city. I am quite sure that an examination of history willshow that the farmers did not willingly have anything to do withthe establishment of the city. The city, in other words, wasbrought into existence by the urban ego itself, and not at therequest of the Natural World or the country; it was not born asthe golden banner under which all are to gather naturally.

The city is therefore a foreign body borne by the World of Laws;its existence is merely temporary, and we would be better offwithout it.

The city: Is it not the crystallization of human greed andwickedness? (Convenience and extravagance and ease. Trinkets andgewgaws and amusement. Progress and change and expansion.Plundering and destruction and contamination…)

Therefore we should not feel a sense of loss at thedisappearance of the city. It will, in the near future, perishanyway because of dwindling natural resources and nuclear war. Sowe must realize that it would not be such a terrible thing to getrid of the cities.

Supplementary Remarks

In just the last 5,000 years human beings have achieved rapidprogress. Even the Jomon Period was a mere 10,000 years ago. Whenwe consider it in the light of the millions of years sincehumanity appeared, 10,000 years is only the most recent fewmoments of our existence.

It is extremely unusual that we should have achieved such fataldevelopment in this short a time. Perhaps we should assume thatthe gods have, during this short time, allowed humanity thisrapid progress. Let us note the fact that wild animals have shownno progress in millions of years, for foxes and raccoons arestill living the same lives as foxes and raccoons. The rapidchanges, increasing complexity of social structure, andurbanization achieved by humanity in the last 5,000 years mustseem extremely unusual when considered in the light of Nature'stimeless cycle. The city: the final, transient bubble of humanhistory. It would not be strange at all if the gods had chosenthe city as the means to destroy humanity.

The city is the explosive that will bring about the ruin ofhumanity. If we assume that in order to cause the manufacture ofthat explosive, Nature took the unusual step of allowing us asingle great leap in progress in a short period of time, thenthis was either done on a whim of Nature (the gods) or a severetest by the laws of evolution (yes, I will say evolution here).

The gods gave human beings wisdom (by means of evolution), andthat wisdom built the city. The city has visited us with acrisis. When the laws of evolution led to wisdom, the godsperhaps decided to use humanity in an experiment to see whatwould happen. The gods are no doubt grinning and watching to seewhat happens to the human beings who think themselves so cleversince they have invented jet planes and computers, recombinedgenes, and made nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. [28]

To the gods: You granted humanity wisdom, but I don't believeyou meant that wisdom to be used in vain for progress, expansion,and prosperity.

To the people: How about giving up the use of this wisdom forthe attainment of convenience and development, and using itinstead now for regression and austerity? And how about, if noteradicating the cities, at least resolving to shrink the cities?

Let us get rid of nuclear weapons. And while we're at it, let'stear down the nuclear reactors. Let's remove escalators andautomatic doors. Let's drastically reduce the numbers of jets andautomobiles. Let's give up traveling abroad (and that goes fortrips within the country as well — being one with the land alsomeans that we remain stationary). Let's cancel the constructionof airports. Stop using moving walkways and walk with your legsinstead. Stop using pulp to make idiotic comic books, handbills,and wrapping paper. Let's stop the manufacture of cigarettes,detergents, and food additives. Let's stop taking so muchmedicine. Reduce further the amounts of agricultural chemicalsand chemical fertilizers. Let's stop building so many roads.Let's leave the seashore in its natural state. In order to shrinkthe cities let's send the extra labor to the farms. Let's promotethe redistribution and further division of land. Let's all workhard for the production of food that isn't poisoned. Weed thefields and gardens by hand, and return compost to the soil.

There is no limit to that which we must do for scaling down,regression, and austerity. It is for these things that humanitymust use the gift of the gods (wisdom) to its fullest extent.

People! (Assuming that the gods are even a little bit good),they know that wisdom is a double edged sword, and they aretesting us to see how we will use it.

CHAPTER IV NOTES

Domination and exploitation are actually two sides of the samecoin. But if we must make a distinction, then domination is ameans of exploitation. It also follows that the city does notcome into being by means of domination without exploitation.

The scale and form of the modern city is basically differentfrom that of the ancient city, but in essence they are basicallythe same. We should note that both the ancient and the moderncity are organizations for plunder and domination; the moderncity, by means of industrialization and technological innovation,has grown to huge proportions.

In this instance, instead of saying that it transcends thedifferences between developed and non-developed countries, weshould say that urbanization itself constitutes the efforts ofthe non-developed countries to overtake the developed countriesby progress and development (or by means of living beyond theirmeans).

"World of Laws" and "Natural World" are terms from Ando Shoeki.
(Translator's note)

Truth is absolute, but good is relative. Since the gods areabsolute they are truth, but they cannot be good. To the farmersthe rice weevil is an evil, but to the manufacturers ofagricultural chemicals, it is a good. And to the gods the riceweevil is, just like the farmers and manufacturers ofagricultural chemicals, merely another form of life.

It is nothing more than the arbitrary decision and wishfulthinking of human beings to believe that the gods are on the sideof good. This is where we find the fundamental error of religion.

CHAPTER VDown with the Cities!

"Down with the cities!" means that the people of the cities willsurvive, and "Prosperity for the cities!" means that the peopleof the cities will perish.

If We Do Not Halt Urbanization, There Is No Future for Humanityor the Earth

There is no problem with turning the entire planet into country,but we must not turn it all into cities. If the entire planet iscountry then, even though we cannot hope for an extravagant andconvenient life, the survival of humanity (as well as the livesof all other living things) is completely assured. However, ifthe entire planet is urbanized, then we cannot hope for our ownsurvival or that of any other living thing. This is because it isimpossible for the city to survive even for a day unless itdepends upon the country.

Anyone should be able to understand this much. Unless one hasgone completely bananas, it should be impossible to believe thatthe city can keep itself alive. Yet in spite of this fact, everyday sees the loss of the country, and the expansion of thecities. Just look at the donut phenomenon (the building of moreapartment complexes) occurring around the big cities. Just lookat the plastering of everything with concrete and the leisurefacilities along train lines and roads. Just look at how thepolluting industries are evacuating to the country. Just look atthe rise in tourism all over the country (tourist facilitiesrepresent urbanization: cable cars, scenic roads, parking lots,rest facilities, hotels, stores). And look also at the centers oftowns and villages that are now halfway between the city and thecountry.

The cities continue their amoebae-like expansion. This limitlessprosperity of the cities means the decline and fall of thecountry, which is the city's life line, and that means thestrangling of the city's prosperity, and the end of life for thecity.

If at this time people do not find the courage to curburbanization and begin the return of the city to the country, wewill have eternal regrets. Time has all but run out, and it mayalready be too late. Still, we must do what can be done toexercise the little remaining hope for humankind and the Earth.

We must get rid of the cities.

In Saving the City We Will Lose Everything

No matter what counterargument, no matter what reason there couldbe, we cannot expect to save ourselves while preserving the city.If we exterminate ourselves we will lose everything. [29] Whatcould be more important to us than our own survival?

Freedom? Will we still have to defend it even after we are gone?

Progress? Must we continue with it even if it meansself-destruction?

Scholarship? Must we still pursue it even if it drives us tocatastrophe?

Culture? Must we maintain it even if it brings about a crisis?

All these great and grand things will be worth nothing after weare gone. It is the same for the prosperity of the nation-state,the elevation of national prestige, the flourishing of a people,and for convenience, extravagance, and ease, as well astraditions and customs. Even while humanity is still around theyare not worth a pig's tail (this is because they come about byoppressing and exploiting the country, and by destroying andcontaminating the environment, or they are the means whereby suchthings are accomplished). How can there be a reason forpreserving such things when it means our own ruin?

ANDO SHOEKI:
A Great Sage Who Taught Us to Eradicate the Cities

"Scholarship and learning steal the way of tilling and gain therespect of the people by means of idleness and gluttony; sincethey are created by means of private law they are plots to stealthe Way. Therefore the more one engages in learning, the more oneglorifies the stealing of the Way. Learning is that whichtherefore conceals this theft… Learning is scheming words meantto deceive the people and eat gluttonously, and is a great fault.Therefore the idleness and gluttony of the sages and Buddhas is astinking and filthy evil. Learning is a means of hiding thisstench and filth." (This quote and the following are taken fromThe Struggle of Ando Shoeki by Terao Goro.) Ando Shoeki livedduring the Genroku Period (1703-1762), and was a doctor innorthern Honshu. A great pioneer sage who took a path taken by noone before him, he is the only revolutionary thinker which Japancan boast of to the world. [30]

Learning is not the Way of Heaven, but a means of achievingidleness and gluttony which human beings created with private law— this is the truth which Shoeki expounded. We must not, Ishould think, preserve the cities for the sake of that which"conceals theft," thereby driving humanity to catastrophe.

"The sages of all the ages, the Buddhas, the bodhisattvas, thearhat, Zhuangzi, Laozi, physicians, those who created the laws ofthe gods, all scholars, ascetic practitioners, priests and monks— they are all the idle and gluttonous, the dregs of society whosteal the Way. Therefore all laws, the preaching of the Dharma,and storytelling are all ways of justifying theft, and nothingmore. Their books, which number in the millions, all recordjustifications for theft; the more wise their aphorisms, and themore clever their turn of phrase, the more they justify theft,and the more we must deplore them… They steal the Way,establish their private laws, and live lives of idleness andgluttony while lecturing on their various theories… Theydeceive the people with their many theories in order to eatgluttonously… Note well what they are doing…! We shouldbehead them."

And this is the reason why it has always been the object ofeducation to teach the techniques of idleness and gluttony. Atpresent, moreover, education is aiming for more than that. It isno overstatement to say that, either directly or indirectly, alleducation exists to bring upon us the catastrophic ruin in whichprogress ends. If we intend to keep this from happening, we mustnot preserve the cities.

"The way of agriculture… is the way found naturally in allpeople; so we naturally till the soil, and naturally weaveclothes, that is, we produce our own food, and we weave our ownclothes; this comes before all other teachings."

You in the cities! We do not need all your extra baggage. The
way of direct cultivation [31] depends only upon the blessings of
Nature; it is the Way of Heaven in which we live by flowing with
Nature.

"When we carry on tilling and weaving by being in accordancewith the four seasons, with Nature, and with the advance andretreat in the motions of the essences, we are living with theWay of Heaven, and there will be, therefore, no irregularities inthe agricultural activities of human beings."

Nature is a cycle, and this cycle is eternity; in thisrepetition there is no progress. Shoeki is saying that there mustbe no progress or change in the agriculture which is carried onin accordance with the flow of Nature (the cycle). Shoeki sawfrom the beginning that progress in agriculture spurs on thedevelopment of the secondary and tertiary industries, that is,the city, thereby abetting the city's evils, which would in theend wipe out humanity. It is idiocy to stubbornly defend thatwhich invites ruin, and that which invites ruin is the progressof the city.

Business and Money are the Prime Evils

"Merchants do not till the soil; business in its profit-seekingis the root of all evil.

"Merchants are gangsters who buy and sell… They come up withschemes for increasing their profits, they curry favor withrulers, deceive the scholars, farmers, and artisans, and competewith each other in their profit-seeking… They are the men ofmonstrous profits and harmful greed. They wish to make their waythrough the world without tiring themselves with labor; theycurry favor with those both above and below themselves withartifice, a servile countenance, flattery, and lies; they deceivetheir own fathers, sons, and brothers… Immoral in the extreme,even in their dreams they do not know of the natural way of humanbeings.

"Money is the great originator of all desire and all evil. Sincethe appearance of money we have lived in a world of darkness,confused desires, and rampant evils."

Is it not exactly the same in the present day? Money and
Business — they have always been the symbols of the city.

"And the master artisans, the makers of vessels, the weavers —the sage uses them to build towers, fancy houses, and beautifulchambers, or for military purposes. And the artisans curry favorwith those of all classes by means of artful language; seduced bythe lust for more commissions, they hope for the occurrence ofdisasters."

In the present age we see parallels in the manufacture of suchneedless, and often harmful, things like trinkets and gewgaws,cars, cameras, televisions, jets, and computers, which only wasteresources and spew forth pollution, and in the fact that themanufacturers of weapons and explosives hope that there will be awar, that pharmaceutical companies hope there will be lots ofsick people, that manufacturers of agricultural chemicals hopethere will be more rice weevils, and that construction companieshope there will be more natural disasters.

"Songs, dancing, chanting, teas ceremonies, go, backgammon,gambling, drinking and carousing, the koto, the biwa, thesamisen, all arts, drama, plays… are the evil accomplices ofconfusion and disorder; they are all worthless amusements of theidle and gluttonous, and the businesses of pleasure; they are thefrivolity which destroys oneself and one's family."

Shoeki is saying that games and the arts are merely means forachieving idleness and gluttony. Festivals! Amusement! Leisure!say our modern tertiary industries (the city), investing greatamounts of resources, time, and money in their wild abandon toidiotic entertainment and events. Shoeki's statement was a severecriticism of just such things.

The Idle and Gluttonous Dominators "Should Simply be Put to
Death"

It is with this that Shoeki then concentrates his stinging attackupon those in command of the secondary and tertiary industries(the city, i.e., an assembly of the idle), their thieves' bosses,the sages and clergymen (dominators), who are the veryincarnation of plunder.

"Those who eat gluttonously without tilling the soil are thegreat criminals who steal the True Way of Heaven and Earth…Though they be sages and men of the cloth, scholars, or greatwise men, they are still robbers.

"Sage is another name for criminal.

"The Confucian Gentlemen are the leaders of the highway robbers.

"Sage Emperor is another name for robber.

"Know ye that those of later ages will call them horse manure,but they will not call them the scholars and the clergy. This isbecause horse manure has more value." ("Scholars and the clergy"here refers to the dominators and their ilk — all harm and nogood.)

It would not do to get rid of these worthless and harmfulrobbers and criminals (the leaders of the idle and gluttonous)with such half-baked methods as trying to educate them. It isimpossible to change these inveterate robbers by talking withthem, by persuading them, or by educating them. Shoeki here makesa timeless statement:

"They should simply be put to death" — there is nothing to dobut to overthrow them. This is nothing other than a call to anheroic, unparalleled revolution.

Of Ando Shoeki Terao Goro says, "Shoeki is worthy of beingcalled the Marx of the Genroku Period," but I think that Shoeki'stheory is backed by thorough revolutionary thought and apenetrating view of society that far exceeds that of Marx, and ismore highly developed. Shoeki was a more radical revolutionarythinker.

* *

Whereas Marx sought the source of class confrontation in thebourgeoisie and the proletariat, Ando Shoeki found it in thosewho practice direct cultivation on the one hand, and the idle andgluttonous on the other.

The factory workers, distributors, and buyers and sellers whowere, to Marx, "our camp," were not so to Shoeki, who thoughtthat they too belonged to the idle and gluttonous classes, andthat if we do not dismantle such a system, we will not be able torealize a true "communistic society" (Natural World).

The Overthrow of the Urbanizing Mechanism Is Essential to a True
Revolution

Verily it was the dominators (feudal lords) and farm operatorswho were the medium of plunder by which were fed the hugesecondary and tertiary industrial population — the city — whichloomed behind them. (The scholars, clergy, and officials weresubjectively the chief instigators of plunder, but objectivelythey were merely the medium of plunder.) Shoeki insisted that,before anything else, we must close the portal, we must block thedoorway of plunder.

These ideas are quite different from the theories of Marx, whoconsidered the medium of plunder (the bourgeoisie) to be theultimate enemy while believing that the great hordes of the idleand gluttonous slithering in the shadow of the bourgeoisie werethe allies of the revolution. Shoeki was truly the first toinsist upon the eradication of the cities.

In Marxist revolution theory, there is a surprising — andactually quite fatal — error in that it does not call for thedismantling of the city, that is, the liquidation of the idle andgluttonous. Without the overthrow of the urbanizing mechanism inhuman society — a mechanism which cannot but engender theformation of the idle and gluttonous hordes — we cannot achievetrue revolution.

So just take a look, please, at where the spreading worldsocialist revolution is leading (even if it is but a precursor ofthe communist revolution): power, oppression, progress,expansion, modernization, urbanization, industrialization,militarization, destruction, contamination, prodigality, andcorruption.

A Natural World in which All Till the Soil Directly, and There
Are No Groups of Idlers

The "natural world" that Shoeki imagined had no exploitation oroppression whatsoever; its aim was a self-governing commune withcommon ownership, labor by all, and equality. It was a primitivecommunist society which could not be realized without, first ofall, the overthrow of the bloodsucking ruling class, and thenthat of the non-tilling idlers (those who contaminate anddestroy). It was a society of contraction, regression, austerity,and one in which all practiced direct cultivation.

If one leaves the great hordes of the idle, plundering, andgluttonous just as they are, and then tries to achieve thetransition to communistic society (of course, this assumes theabolition of capitalist society), can we really expect theestablishment of a utopia in which there are neither theexploiters nor the exploited?

Sorry to say, agriculture has always had a relationship ofconfrontation with business and the manufacturing industries, aswell as with the tertiary industries. The famous Meiji-eraMarxist, Dr. Kawakami Hajime, lamented, saying, "If agriculturedeclines, how can business and industry prosper?" But in his bookRespect for Japanese Agriculture he wrote, "The development of ahealthy national economy depends upon the balanced prosperity ofagriculture, industry, and business." Ever true to Marxism, hedid not at all notice the antagonism between agriculture on theone hand, and industry and business on the other.

And so the modern socialist revolution, which does not includethe dismantling of the urbanization mechanism, is not in theleast what could be called a revolution, for it is merely asystem in which the corrupt bosses plunder the produce of theregime in place of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, and thisholds even if they are able to make the transition to thecommunist revolution, but have not dismantled the cities. Inother words, we end up with a situation in which state power, inplace of the bourgeoisie, carries out oppression andexploitation. This is a mere passing of power from one hand toanother (I will disregard here the relative merits and demeritsof the various regimes), so that there is no real differencebetween the old regime and any new one brought to power by anelection victory. Perhaps this is the reason that both theSocialist Party and the Communist Party switched their tactics tothose of emphasis on election campaigns.

Military Power, Religion, and Money as Instruments of Domination

From long ago, force of arms and religion have been used as themeans of domination. In a state governed by laws, it looks asthough laws take the place of these, but behind the laws is theforce of arms (the military and the police), and out in plainview is money, about which I shall have more to say later. Andthe backbone of laws is religion, which includes morals, ethics,tradition, and customs.

There is no need to say much about military power. Control andoppression by military force, a conventional technique, is verycommon, with just a few examples being the ancient attempts tosubjugate the Korean peninsula, the struggles between the Tairaand Minamoto, the Warring States, the feudalist militarygovernment, Manchuria, the China Incident, and so on withoutlimit. In addition, as everyone knows, in between these big warsand incidents the dominators were constantly making use ofmilitary force to gain power for themselves. And the presentmilitary, though they call themselves the Self Defense Forces,will, when the time comes, point their guns in this direction.

I will have to say a little about religion. I speak here notonly of Buddhism, Shinto, Christianity, and the new religions,but also of all blind faith and superstitions. There is notelling how, from ancient times, the blind faith of loyalty(originally Confucianism) has been an advantage to thedominators, and a disadvantage to the dominated. Good examples ofthis are the elimination of those in the way by harakiri, and thehonoring of the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine. The dominators havealways deceived us with superstitions which say that if we arenot perfectly loyal, we will be punished. And now the blind faithin the omnipotence of science [32] is making possible theaugmentation of the city's functions, thereby inviting the growthof the plundering classes.

The traditional religions teach us not to become attached tomaterial things, and as proof to that they tell us to makeofferings. Show the extent of your belief, they say, with awidow's mite. And in this way, with each small drop adding totheir ocean of wealth, they have built not only their headtemples and headquarters, but boast of their branch temples,missions, and other splendorous buildings, ostentatiously displaytheir decorations, feed their priests and officials, and scalethe heights of prosperity with only contemptuous regard for thepoverty of the people. And very important here is the fact thatthe dominators, in the shadow of religion, have used thesereligious teachings as tools for the placation of the people, andthrough exchange have offered the riches concentrated in theshrines and temples as the capital resource for domination. Thisis without a doubt the reason that the central government has,from the Tomb Period through the Nara and Heian Periods, helpedthe religions prosper.

If We Banish Money, the Cities Will Perish

In addition to the force of arms and religion, money has been aninstrument of domination and exploitation.

Money: It would be hard to find anything else that is soconvenient, so easily used, so powerful an instrument ofdomination. The arrogant belief that, as long as one has money,one can do anything, is not mere arrogance; money is in actualitythe mechanism by which the functions and activities of the cityare supported, and the means by which people so freely manipulatethe city's functions in order to bring about prosperity. Thereason burglars and thieves (in this case I am not referring tothe dominators) always take money is because they too, as long asthey have money, can get anything they want, be it goods orservices. Big shot politicos get sweaty palms at the thought offat bribes because as long as they have money they can feed greatnumbers of hangers-on and wield great power.

Simple logic, then (and here we at last come to the stage wherewe get rid of the cities), dictates that all we have to do to getrid of the cities is banish money.

This is not idle speculation, for the Cambodian regime of PolPot actually proved it could be done (forgive me for harping onthis one example, but no other government has had the guts to dothe same thing).

Proving no exception to the rule, the growing urbanizationphenomenon in the developing countries has brought aboutunfavorable trade imbalances and the devastation of thecountryside, as well as the importation of food, which engenderseven more losses of foreign currency. No matter how high thegovernment raises its voice and orders the citizens to till thefields, once the people have had a taste of idleness and gluttonythey squat in the city and refuse to budge. The Pol Pot regime,which had come to the end of its rope, prohibited the use ofmoney and made everyone barter. So the citizens, who could nolonger get food with money, went from one farming village toanother in search of food, and the capital of Pnom Penhimmediately became a ghost town. This was a great experimentwhich proved that, without dropping a single bomb, and by merelybanishing money, the glory of the city can be wiped out in thespace of a day.

Criticism of the Productivity Remarks by Sony's Honorary Chairman

Ibuka Masaru, the honorary chairman of Sony, said, "There is a1,500-fold difference in productivity between agriculture andindustry." (A statement made during a committee meeting on theissue of internationalization in agriculture, and included in thebook Food, published by the Asahi Shimbun.) He also said, "Ratherthan having the farmers produce crops, it would be better to handthem money and let them be idle." And, "All agriculture should betransferred to Southeast Asia." [33] He even declared that"hanging on to an industry which has lost its competitiveness isnone other than a big loss to the country."

A difference of 1,500 times — this means that agriculture hasbut 1/1,500th the productive capacity of industry, and istherefore a great loss to the country. What a jump in logic thatis. It is natural that there is a difference in the productivityof industry, which night and day produces things in timeintervals of minutes and seconds, and agriculture, which harvestsfarm products only once or twice a year. So if we proceed alongthe same logical lines, it means that we must destroy allfarmland in the world and build upon it efficient factories.

So, Mr. Chairman, let us assume that the cities of Japan end asPhnom Penh did (ultimately it will surely happen when the foodruns out). If you try to exchange 1,500 Sony transistor radiosfor one bag of rice, do you think the farmers will listen? Evenif a farmer received 1,500 essentially worthless transistorradios, he would not even have a place to put them.

Mr. Chairman. If industry has 1,500 times the productivecapacity of agriculture, then does it not make sense to say thatagricultural products should have 1,500 times the value ofindustrial products? This is the reason that, if we were tobarter, you would not even be able to get one bag of rice for1,500 Sony products. This is a good example of how theinterposition of money has evilly exploited farm produce.

There Are no Mice with the Requisite Bravery

We have seen that if we banish money, industry will perish,commerce will languish, the services will tread water, and thecities will die, but is there a mouse with the bravery to put abell around the cat's neck? Outside of Pol Pot, there is probablynot a mouse in the whole world with the bravery to try it.

As long as "the government" does not find the resolve to banishmoney, it will not be possible, but if we get rid of money, thefirst to be put out on a limb is none other than "thegovernment" itself. Is it possible that any government in theworld could find the guts to make the rope for its own hanging?

Money: The means by which domination and exploitation can bemost easily and effectively achieved. It is inconceivable thatpeople would abandon it, at least voluntarily. (Of course, if thesituation grows objectively worse on a global scale, money willperforce change into worthless little pieces of paper and metal.)

Is Stopping the Food Supply Possible?

The reason that the city would perish immediately with thebanishment of money is that the city would be unable to purchasefood. (With the banishment of money the movements of rawmaterials, wastes, and merchandise will slow, and the functioningof the city will become paralyzed, but the city will not perishimmediately.) But if we carry our thinking one step further, wesee that, even if we do not get rid of money, we can get rid ofthe cities by merely shutting off the food supply.

There is no doubt that, if shipments of food stopped right now,the mountains of food in the grocery stores would not even lasttwo days. No matter how badly the residents of the cities want tostay there, no matter how well they hunker down, no matter howmany new and wonderful machines they make, no matter how rare thearts they display, no matter how far they pursue abstruselearning, they cannot do a thing on an empty belly, so they willall abandon the cities, crying, and go to the country in searchof food. Thus the cities will become ghost towns.

Cutting off the supply of food is, at the distribution stage,known as shipping refusal. If the farming cooperatives would findthe bravery to do this, cutting off the food supply would not beimpossible. But sad to say, the co-op is on the side of the city;it is the city itself. Even if the heavens and the earth reversedthemselves, it is doubtful that the co-op would ever stand withthe farmers. The co-op makes it look as though it is the ally ofthe farmers, but this is a mere gesture. Anyone will tell youthat, if there were to be a rice shortage, the co-op, which isthe wicked agent for the city's plundering, would never let thecity starve, even if it had to scratch together every last grainof the farmers' rice stocks.

So much for the co-op. There is no need to discuss the tradersand the wholesalers. Shipping refusal would, ultimately, end intotal failure.

The Mammonistic Farmers Cannot Become Revolutionaries

Would it be possible, then, for the farmers to refuse to sell?This would not be impossible if the farmers would not fearrepression, if they would steadfastly refuse to supply the citywith food even if the military came with their guns, and therewas a little bloodshed. The city can live a bit longer byimporting food (the president of Sony can take charge when thetime comes), but that cannot be helped. How long the city cankeep itself alive depends upon the skill of the president.

The real problem, as I see it, is that among the farmers thereare quite a few mammonists who have for some time been nursedalong by the money economic system. There are without a doubtgreat numbers of traitors. If there are many farmers who, takingadvantage of a food shortage, sell food for high prices insecret deals, any efforts to stop the sale of food to the cityare bound to end in failure. The "farmer power" of those farmerswho gird their loins and go into Tokyo to demonstrate is actuallygreed power. It is their greed which gives the city a place intowhich it can dig its claws. The city then rips off great amountsof food for a mere pittance (or for loans).

Ah, the pitiful farmers! This greedy egotism is the(historically and socially inevitable) pathetic mentality thathas been deeply implanted in the farmers who for generations havesuffered from the poverty brought about by cruel plundering. Wasthis the reason Marx chose the city laborers as the soldiers inhis revolution instead of the farmers?

* *

To say "Refuse to sell food!" or "Down with the cities!" seemsextremely cruel and subversive, but it is nothing compared to theunmitigated robbery and tyranny that the city has committedduring the last five thousand years.

It Is the Plundering and Destructive Idlers Who Are the
Subversive Elements

When we say "Down with the cities!" we do not at all mean that weshould kill all the city dwellers. We are merely saying, "Give upyour extravagance." We are saying, "Stop your insatiableplundering." We are saying, "Dismantle that mechanism ofplunder." We are saying, "Let us create a society of austerity inwhich all practice direct cultivation." [34]

Why is it cruel and seditious to say "Give up being a robber"?Why is it wrong to say "Stop driving others into poverty so thatyou can, by their sacrifices, live an extravagant life"?

Long ago the farmers, no longer able to bear the burden of harshexploitation, sent representatives to the feudal lords to pleadfor reductions in the amount of rice they had to send astribute. The reply was, "You insolents! Do you not fear yourmaster? Such effrontery cannot be forgiven!" And they weredecapitated. This is outrageous. The insolents were the feudallords (idlers) who, in order to continue their own extravaganceand gluttony, cruelly robbed the farmers. And their spirit ofidleness comes all the way down to our modern city. Even now ifwe were to say, "Stop plundering for your own extravagance!""Stop destroying for your own ease!" or "Be satisfied with a lifeof austerity!" the city would surely consider us subversiveelements, and look upon us with severe disapproval. The realsubversive elements are the city dwellers themselves, whocontinue their rapacious and destructive ways as if it is theirnatural right, who nonchalantly continue their lives ofconvenience, while contentedly patting their fat bellies.

Should We Be "Thankful" for Urban Civilization?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, there are manywho believe that the flourishing of civilization and culture ismore important than anything else; that the city, the value ofwhich is absolute, is contributing 100 percent to such; and thatthe city is sacred and must not be desecrated. Though I havealready said quite a bit on this subject, I would here like to gointo it in a little more detail.

For example, the believers say that the civilization of theShinkansen train and the jet has made considerable contributionsto politics, economics, and culture. A company of singers thatperforms in Tokyo at noon can give the same performance in Osakain the evening. "Is this not a wonderful world we live in?" theysay. Who are they kidding? This silver-tongued, idiotic lot ofsingers, these idle and gluttonous bloodsuckers, go from Tokyo toOsaka on the Shinkansen which wastes incredible amounts ofenergy, assaults our ears with noise, and runs on rails over theconcrete ties which are destroying the land. Then in Osaka theysing the same idiotic songs. Now, tell me what I should bethankful for. Should I be thankful for the activities of suchpeople who, with each passing minute, bring about the increasingdevastation of the Earth?

Politicians can take jets to other countries, thereby enablingthem to take care of important political affairs in little time,and the believers claim that this is a blessing of our modernurban civilization. They say that the ability of internationaltraders to jet to other countries and quickly conclude businessdeals is due to the same. And they say that, thanks to the jetcivilization, it is possible for old and young alike to freely goto other countries, learn more abut the world and soak upculture.

Let us not be fooled. When politicians hurry to other countriesby jet and confer with other politicians, it is almost always toinsure the progress and prosperity of their own countries. And asI have said before, progress and prosperity are inseparable fromenvironmental contamination and the destruction of the Earth.Should we really be thankful when politicians, in order todiscuss such things, jet to other countries, destroy the ozonelayer, waste energy, produce noise pollution, and do it all withtax money?

When international traders (the "economic animals") go to othercountries, the purpose is of course to plunder the developingnations, or to suck up to the industrialized nations (although anoverabundance of merchandise in their warehouses is clearly theresult of squandering resources and squeezing labor to producemore than is necessary, they believe implicitly that this statehas come about because other countries do not buy, so they try tohard-sell more by dumping). Should we be thankful that they hurryby jet to other countries so that they can cause trouble for thedeveloping countries and cause more trade friction with theindustrialized countries?

Everyone and his dog are going to foreign countries these days.Quiz programs on television usually bait people with promises offoreign travel. What are all these people whizzing off to othercountries for, on the jets that boast of being the worstpolluters? Is it to see the rare beauty of foreign scenery? Arethere no mountains in Japan? Is there no ocean? There is littledifference between the ocean at Boso and that in Hawaii. In themountains near their homes there are places they are unfamiliarwith. All those people who have no time to consider theappearance of a single tree, to feel the pathos of a singleblade of grass — what do they expect to experience abroad? Is itthat the scale is different? If you pine after magnificence, thenstand where you are and look up at the sun's great orb. Lift youreyes to the night sky and gaze at the cosmos.

What? Your want to research foreign sexual customs? Youlecherous slobs! [35]

Travel abroad in the name of study and training is none otherthan for the purpose of learning the techniques of idleness andgluttony, or to make preparations for contamination anddestruction. Even in Japan there is much of this going on, but inwhatever country it is the extreme of evil. Are we supposed to bethankful when people go abroad for sightseeing, sex, or study,and then come back bug-eyed with amazement? Are we supposed to bethankful that, because of their activities, the Earth is moredevastated minute by minute?

The "wonderful world we live in" is the "city." We must takedrastic measures to get rid of the city.

Even If We Do Not Eradicate the Cities, They Are Fated to Perish

But the city has underestimated the situation. "If you think it'spossible to get rid of the cities, then go ahead and try," itsays. "What can you accomplish in your frenzied condition?"

Well, this certainly is true. Once the city realizes that it isimpossible to banish currency or get the farmers and co-ops tostop food shipments, it is natural to sit back and relax, for thecity is right.

However, let us note once more that, though we cannot get rid ofthe cities by our own actions, the cities are in actuality boundto perish (I will treat this in a later chapter). The city'sunderestimation of the situation will lead to its own fall in thenear future.

The depletion of mineral resources, the drying up of the oilfields, nuclear war, the destruction and contamination of theenvironment, food shortages, economic panic, computers, robots,overproduction, backlogged inventories, trade friction, violenceby the unemployed — these will all lead to uninhabited cities.But the city's swaggering, unconcerned attitude toward thesethings will only bring about a crises state that much sooner. Aslong as the city continues to underestimate the dangers, to wastewithout a moment's afterthought, to make more nuclear weapons, tourbanize farmland, to change the forests to desert, tocontaminate the land and the sea, to develop convenient machines,to produce an overabundance of goods — as long as the citycontinues in this manner, how many more years can it live withouta care?

The prophet Nostradamus, who has been 99 percent accurate, saysthat in July 1999 the Great King of Fear will come down from thesky, and humanity will face annihilation. This would seem to beright on target, since the cities are heading for destruction atfull speed, and will probably perish at that very time.Unfortunately, this bit of prophecy cannot but hit the bull'seye.

There Will Be No Cities in the Twenty-First Century

The cities are bound to perish, and they have not long to live.Even if we do nothing but stand by and twiddle our thumbs, thecities will suffer automatic annihilation.

There will be no cities in the twenty-first century. It isnonsensical to believe that in the next century the Earth will becovered with 20 million cities. This is almost the same as theestimate that, should the population continue to increase at thepresent rate (and assuming the absence of epidemics, war, andstarvation), population density 700 years hence will be such thatthere is one person per each square foot, including themountains. If people estimate that in the twenty-first century 20million cities will swell to cover the Earth, then it is for thatvery reason that the cities will perish. And if they estimatethat the population density will become such that there is oneperson for every square foot of land, then it is for that veryreason that humanity will perish.

There is no doubt that this will come to pass. The rails havebeen laid, and the city is rolling along right on course. Fromwhatever angle, and with however sympathetic eyes, we look at thecity, we cannot but conclude that it is bound to perish by reasonof the urbanization phenomenon itself.

Even now, Nostradamus is surely watching from afar, boastingover the accuracy of his prediction, and laughing at theinsatiable progress, prosperity, and obsessive delusions of ushuman beings.

I will say it once more: The cities are bound to perish. Even ifI were to swing at the ground with a maul and miss, there is nomistake in predicting so. Even if the sun rises in the west, andeven if the rivers run upstream, there is no way to stop theannihilation of the cities. Verily, in the next century the citymust make reparations for its 5,000 years of wickedness.

The Only Way to Save Ourselves and the Earth Is to Cut Ourselves
Off from the City

But if the cities are bound to perish anyway, why not just letthings go on as they are? many will say.

The fact is, we cannot just sit around and wait for it tohappen, because it will then be too late. The cities are tryingto ruin the whole Earth in order that they themselves willperish. We must not allow ourselves to be dragged down with them.Though it may appear cowardly, we must cut ourselves off from thecities before that time comes.

Cutting ourselves off from the cities will first of all helpprevent their further expansion, and begin their contraction. Andthis is not impossible, for our ancestors long ago did the samething. Let us not allow this to be a mere dream; let us try touse that one slim chance given humanity and the Earth.

Now is the Time to Escape from the City

I now appeal to the people in the city to give up those whitecollar jobs and get out of the city.

If even one of you leaves the city and takes up farming, thatmakes possible the contraction of the city by 1/9,000,000th. Italso makes possible the lessening of the city's evils by the same1/9,000,000th.

Escape from the city is not only the victim's flight from thecity, which he feels cannot last much longer, but it is also awithdrawal from the position of the malefactor — thoseaccomplices of evil, the city dwellers who refuse to budge.

And I also want to appeal to those in the farming villages tostop producing vast quantities of food, and to embark onself-sufficient farming.

For every one of you that ends your dependence on the city(actually the dependence of the city on you) and becomes anindependent farmer, we will be able to chase 1/90,000,000th ofthe city's population out of the city, and reduce the city'sevils by the same amount. (At present 10 percent of the Japanesepopulation farms, and the other 90 percent lives in the cities.This works out to one farmer feeding nine idlers, so for everyone farmer that stops feeding the city, we can shrink the city bynine people.)

The city is, of course, perfectly free to feed itself with foodimports. It can import all the vegetables, fruit, meat, and eggsthat it likes. When the time comes, the president of Sony cantake charge.

Becoming an independent farmer — I can call this the "Bagworm
Revolution."

The combined effect of leaving those white collar jobs andbecoming an independent farmer will without a doubt prevent theexpansion of the cities and begin their contraction. I am surethat this is the one ray of light, the one hope, we have ofassuring our survival, and we must take advantage of it beforethe cities see their final collapse.

CHAPTER V NOTES

Optimists will say, "Humanity will not necessarily perishbecause of the cities. As a matter of fact, it is not impossiblethat, because of the progress of science and technology, we willperpetuate ourselves by the acceleration of prosperity." Butbefore coming at me with this counterargument, they must provethe following:->

that no matter how many resources we squander, they will neverrun out.->

that no matter how much we contaminate the atmosphere and theoceans, it will not affect living things.->

that the more drugs and food additives we ingest, the healthierwe will become.->

that matter (trash) is not imperishable, that it can bedestroyed.->

that the more land we cover with concrete, the greater ourchances of survival.->

that nuclear weapons were made so that they would not be used(in other words, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exceptions).

And there are still zillions more that they must prove! And whatis really important is that the opposite of each one of thesezillions is extremely easy to prove.

See E. Herbert Norman, Ando Shoeki and the Anatomy of Japanese
Feudalism. Reprint edition published in 1979 by University
Publications of America, Inc. (Translator's note)

A term of Shoeki's which means that all people grow their ownfood. (Translator's note)

This blind faith is implanted in us, on a national, yea, aninternational scale, from the time we are in elementary school,and we have come to the point where there is no greater "faith"than this.

To the question, "Science is the standard for everything; if wecannot believe in science, then what must we believe in?" onemust reply, "There is only the Way of Heaven. The Way of Natureis a cycle with neither progress nor development; wild animalscommit themselves to this cycle and live out their lives thisway. Blind faith in science is a privilege given only to humanbeings, but unfortunately they will perish in the near futurebecause of scientific progress.

The land in Southeast Asian countries is the precious means offood production to those who live there (there are also theforests which maintain the ecosystem and convert carbon dioxideinto oxygen for us). It is preposterous to abandon theagriculture of one's own country and invade another. Sucharrogant corporate minds crowd the cities of the entire world sothat now reckless development runs rampant in Southeast Asia,Africa, and the Amazon basin, and desertification and devastationof the land proceed at an astonishing pace.

It is said that "before civilization there are trees; aftercivilization there is desert," and this will probably come topass since the land is being sacrificed for the sake of today'sprosperity, and in time we will find the survival of all thingson Earth (including ourselves) seriously threatened ("TheTwenty-First Century's Warning," special program aired on NHK,November 8, 1984 at 8 p.m.).

Japan has six million hectares of arable land, and this worksout to five ares per person. One person can probably grow enoughon five ares to live. It is therefore possible for all 220million Japanese to become direct cultivators. Let them singsongs, draw pictures, and make trinkets and gewgaws during thetime they are not working in the fields.

The author is referring to the so-called "prostitution tours" inwhich Japanese men allegedly travel to Southeast Asian countriesto shop for many things, including women. (Translator's note)

CHAPTER VIDisengagement from the City

The cities will perish of their own accord, [36] but we do notknow exactly when that will happen, and we must in the meantimework for the contraction and decline of the cities. It istherefore necessary for us to immediately begin building asociety in which it is possible to live without the cities. Weneed resolve, mental preparedness, countermeasures, and a warmup.

Helping the City Perish so that We Can Make the Escape

To build our resolve and begin our warmup we must prepare for thecollapse of the city. Without a rehearsal our resolve is a merefantasy, and our warmup is nothing more than flailing our armsabout without throwing the ball.

How can we, during this time when the city still stands grandlybefore us, bring about conditions under which it will perish?There is only one way, and that is to disengage ourselves fromthe city. Looking for a way to avoid the evils of the city whileat the same time receiving in full the blessings of urbancivilization is like trying to get milk from a bull. There is nodifference at all between this and the Zen priest who, whileattired in a resplendent brocaded robe, preaches to people on howto rid themselves of earthly passions. "Disengagement" from thecity is the first of the preparations we must make in order toget ready for its collapse, and it is also a means of shrinkingthe city.

So disengagement from the city comes first — but this is easiersaid than done. Once one makes the attempt, one finds that thereare countless obstacles, and that virtually all of them aredifficult to overcome since they are not of our making (forexample, a lack of courage or resolve), but are obstacles put inour path by the city.

The Structure of the City Does Not Readily Permit "Disengagement"

For example, the city (government) commands us to pay taxes."Since, as a citizen of the state and of your local government,you receive their benefits, it is only natural that you berequired to help support them," it explains. And what happens ifone replies in the following manner? "You make it look that way,but in actuality tax money is none other than the capital for thenourishment of state power and for your compulsory, excessiveservices. With your power and services, and with the farmingvillages as your springboard, you maintain the urban socialstructure, develop the urban economy, spur on urban prosperity,and protect and nurture urban civilization and culture. I do notneed the blessings of the nation-state or of the localgovernment, and so I'm not going to pay taxes." And with thatthey come to take it from you, a classic example of power inaction. Should you remove them by force, you are arrested andthrown in prison.* * *The city also orders us to pay for education (textbooks, schoolsupplies, transportation, uniforms, etc.). "Education isnecessary," says the city, "so that you can live as a member ofmodern society." Our reply is, "Though it first appears that way,education in actuality only teaches people how to be idle andgluttonous. It merely teaches people that which is used forcontamination, destruction, and waste. I do not want to pay moneyfor education that endangers the future of humanity." The citycomes back with, "Don't you realize how helpful education is inthe formation of human character?" "Are you telling me that oneof the gifts of education is the skillful concealment ofevildoing by those in positions of power? Wild animals receive noeducation, yet we see not one criminal among them." At this thecity waves tradition, custom, and the constitution in front ofus, and finds a way to force education on us.* * *Shrines and temples (these are also the city) try forcing us tocontribute money. "That family over there gave some tens ofthousands of yen; the family next door donated several thousand.Please give what you can…" It is only natural, they say, thatthe believers (?) bear the costs of decorating the temples andbuying new robes for the priests. "You idle and gluttonousbloodsuckers! The insolence of you to try and clothe yourself inwarm robes and fill your bellies, without tilling the soil, bythe mere glib chanting of some sort of incantation. I won't giveyou a single red cent." And at this their eyes emit fire and theyreply with a threat: "You'll pay for this! May the gods (Buddha)punish you immediately. In the near future you will be visited bycalamity, so get ready!" And then they continue to press fordonations through the back door by sending the shrine or templerepresentative who is some influential citizen of the village.* * *The farmers' co-op comes to ask for help in raising more capital."The co-op is a cooperative union which exists for the sake ofthe farmers. It is natural that the members must come up with thecapital to support the co-op's activities." "The coop as a unionfor the farmers exists only in charter; in actuality it isoperated solely for its own benefit. Is this not the reason theco-op, whether it be loans or sales, constantly exploits thefarmers? It is as if the co-op has switched from 'cooperativeunion' to 'corporation.' I cannot give you money for capitalwhich will be used for corporate profits, or to exploit thefarmers." And the reply is, "So you have no need for loans orfarm machinery or fertilizer, do you? Well then, don't comecrying to the co-op when your crops are destroyed by blight orweevils!"* * *The United States tells us to stimulate domestic demand in orderto redress the trade imbalance, and the politicians join thechorus, promoting aggressive fiscal policies (throwing wads ofmoney in every direction), and insisting that we must vitalizethe economy. Of course the manufacturers are delighted, and putpressure on us to Buy! Buy! However, we have reached thesaturation point, and cannot consume any more; we have no moretime or energy to expend on consumption (our drawers are full ofclothes, our houses are full of all manner of electricalappliances, and our bellies are ready to burst; we have to playgolf, we have to travel, we have to play pachinko and mahjong, wehave to enjoy our stereos and video recorders, we have to readnewspapers and weekly magazines — all 24 hours of the day willnot take care of it). We don't want anything else; don't come atus with the need to stimulate domestic demand, we say, but theycounter by asking if we are traitors who intend to stand by andwatch as our country goes down. It's all right if your bellybursts, so eat more bread! Use a car for only one year and thentrash it and buy another! Wear clothes only once and then throwthem away! Forget and leave your camera at the station! Throwyour watches in the ocean! And so the government and corporationsimperiously demand. Let us note incidentally that Japan became atrading country precisely because there was no hope for anincrease in domestic demand. If there is a trade imbalancebecause of excess exports, they ought to address the cause. Infine, it would help much if they would stop overproduction. Itdoes not make any sense to compete with other manufacturers inoverproduction, and then try to shove the products down people'sthroats. Could we hope that they won't try to solve this problemby war?

The Only Possible, Sensible Way Is the Practice of "Independent
Farming"

We have seen, therefore, that it is virtually impossible todisengage oneself from the city completely since the city clingsto us tenaciously. It is said that when Saigyo [37] was ready toleave on his sea voyage he kicked his own child away from theboat — that is, he shook off earthly passions — and departedresolutely. However, the city will not bow out so readily; withthe strongest manacles (and, when the need arises, with police,courts, and the military) it tries to prevent our leaving. Thiscannot be helped. If we cannot then completely rid ourselves ofthe city's entanglements, then we must allow only the leastpossible involvement with the city, and shake off the majorrestraints it imposes on us. Let us do as the lizard does when itflees, leaving only the tip of its tail. There is no other way toflee from something that clings to us like our very shadow.

To be specific, the only way to accomplish this is to practice"independent farming." Unless we do this, there is no way at allto escape the city. For example, let us say one quits a whitecollar job and takes up painting in order to support oneself.This will not do, for unless one is recognized by the city forone's art and is compensated for it — that is, joins the plunderactivities of the city — then there is no way to make a living.Indeed, such activity is the city itself.

Independent farming, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, isnatural cycle farming, which depends upon nothing but Nature;animal and human wastes are returned to the soil, and the produceof the land then feeds the animals and human beings. As long asone continues this type of farming, there is no room for the city— government, co-ops, manufacturers, corporations, and consumers— to butt in. One is self-sufficient and independent, and thereis no fear of failure whatever may come.

Reducing One's Contact with the City to the Least Possible Extent

These are the basics of readying oneself for the demise of thecity. If one does just this much, then it does not matter whenthe city perishes. However, during the transition period, onecannot escape the entanglements of the city, so while receivingin the smallest measure the blessings of the city (that is, whilesupplying the city with only the smallest amount), we readyourselves for the impending demise of the city, decide how todeal with it, train ourselves for it, and continue to deepen ourrelationship only with Nature. And this is also the best way tobring about the contraction of the city.

Let us now, in light of the foregoing examples, see how one can,while beginning the practice of independent agriculture, lessenone's ties with the city to the maximum possible extent.* * *The more money one makes, the more they take in taxes. If one hasonly enough income to barely get along, then under the presenttax system it is not necessary to pay very much. However, itseems that one is still bound to pay local and prefectural taxes.* * *Compulsory education as required by the constitution cannot behelped, but we should think carefully about anything more thanthat. The universities, in particular, are none other thantraining facilities for the Contamination and Destruction ReserveCorps, [38] so we must regard them as the enemy and stay away.The only education necessary to independent farmers is thefarming methods peculiar to their family and region as passed onto them by their parents, grandparents, and village elders. Thestudy of anything more than that is the sham egotism of the urbaneconomic society, the urban competitive society, the urbancultural society, or the urban glory society.

If the co-op threatens us with no more loans, no morefertilizer, and no more agricultural chemicals, this is actuallysomething to be thankful for, since to natural-cycle,self-sufficient agriculture such things are needless and harmful.Since the co-op cannot force us to do things as the governmentcan, it is all right to refuse their every request withoutworrying about being arrested and thrown in jail.* * *Since religion is a narcotic used as a means of plunder, one mustresolve never to fall for any of their tricks. The only thing weneed consider important are the laws of Nature. Though it wasnever possible for the gods and Buddha to be Good, they make themlook like a bundle of Good, and, using this to their ownadvantage (that is, for plundering), they make judgmentsconcerning Good and Evil; it is this deceptiveness of theestablished religions which we must pass judgment on. Thejudgments of the gods and Buddha must be those of Nature. Truth,equality, cold impartiality — the Net of Heaven lets norebellion against Nature go unpunished. If the religions use themagisterial authority of the gods and Buddha to extort, establishthemselves in idleness and gluttony, bring about thecontamination of their food by joining the city in exploiting thefarmers, and take part in the city's plundering, prodigality, anddestruction, then Nature (the gods) will surely make them pay.

Even if one says, "Stick it up your nose!" to the gods, one willnot be punished, but no matter how much one prostrates oneselfbefore the gods, if, at the same time, one contaminates the Landand food by spreading agricultural chemicals on them, the gods(Nature) will surely visit one with cruel punishment.* * *Independent farmers must be mentally prepared for a life ofausterity. So it should not be worth getting excited if, quitesuddenly, things like televisions, cars, cameras, computers,videotape machines, pianos, refrigerators, and washing machinesdisappear from our lives. Having them is convenient, but even ifwe do not have them, there should be no problem. In fact, suchthings only bring about sloth, obesity, and surfeit, not tomention the pollution engendered by their production and use. Itis stupid to shackle ourselves to the city for such things.

Just because we cannot go see a play or take a trip does notmean that harm will befall us, so there should be nothing toworry about. Living without such things does not even require theaforementioned warmup; as long as we have our minds made up tolive without them it does not matter even if they disappeartomorrow. Though it may be all right if we make occasional use ofneedless things during the period of transition, we must not runafter them crying when the time comes to bid a final farewell. Nomatter how often the government and big business enjoin us toconsume more in order to improve the economy, we should calmlyignore them. We must not forget that the best action we can taketo bring about the contraction of the cities is to live a life ofausterity, and to stop giving them so much food.

What Do We Need Most in Order to Guarantee Our Survival?

In order to keep themselves alive, what do wild [39] animalswant, search for, and find value in? They desire no government,they desire no agricultural cooperatives, they desire noeducation or learning, paintings, travel, glory, or praise andrecognition (no medals and awards). They desire food (findingfood sums up their existence) and a simple place to sleep. And alittle sex once or twice a year…

With only those things wild animals find everything they need tolive out their lives. To them, all other things (like education,government, religion, the Tee Vee, automobiles, travel, andmedals — that is, the city) have not the slightest valuewhatsoever. Even automobiles worth millions of yen, andpaintings worth billions of yen are not worth a pig's tail tothem. It is only human beings who madly seek things which are, tothe sustenance of life, utterly worthless, thereby bringing uponthemselves incalculable harm, and hurrying down the road to ruin.

Human Beings must Learn from Wild Animals

It should be quite evident, then, what is most necessary forsurvival. The sun, air, water, the land — these are by far andwithout a doubt the most precious things to us. Yet, even if wedo not seek them, Nature will give us unlimited amounts free. Orperhaps one should say that it is always there in the form of"Nature itself"; as long as we do not contaminate it, destroy it,or cover it with concrete, it will always be there for us. Justas with wild animals, if human beings have food, a modestdwelling, and clothing, it is possible to survive,self-sufficient and independent. Most other things are add-ons,playthings, luxuries, trouble, disaster (like recessions), andpoisons (like cigarettes and food additives).

Therefore, indispensable to us now is preparation — a warmup —this in order to get the things we really need. As for all otherthings, especially those which are to Nature worthless andharmful — convenience, extravagance, ease, glory, praise, andall other urban paraphernalia — it would be best to shut themout of our lives from the start.

One does not need gorgeous clothing. The desire for beautifulclothing is the desire for a means to conceal one's ownshortcomings. Clothes make the man, as they say; trying toincrease one's own value by dressing in fine clothes is a way ofadvertising one's own worthlessness. A uniform is a means ofboasting of the city's power; military uniforms, medals,parliamentary ID tags, and priests' splendorous robes are allmeans of domination devised to make people bow down before them.And decorating armor and helmets, which are supposedly meant toward off arrows and swords, was the creation of displaycalculated to impress, not only one's enemies, but also alliesand common people with one's majesty.

If the stable boy gets nice clothes, then why not a militaryuniform on a fox, and a fancy kimono on a badger? But whether ornot their status rises as a result is another matter. First ofall, they hate wearing such troublesome things, and will showconsiderable resistance if someone tries to put them on; you maynot be able to get them on the animal at all. It is because theyare natural. And it is here that we find the difference betweenthe city, which is built upon human law, and wildness, whichfinds its foundation in the law of Nature.

The purpose of clothing is to ward off the cold and to keep fromgetting wet in the rain. If need be, we should be prepared to cuta hole in a gunny sack for our head and wear that. And we shouldwear light clothing, because it is best for our health to exposeour skin to the outside air. Let us begin preparing ourselvesright now.

Preparation for our Escape from the City

Concerning living quarters: Putting up grand buildings, equippingthem with all sorts of conveniences, and decorating them lavishlyis, just as with clothing, done to boast of one's own greatness,and in order to satisfy one's desire for convenience,extravagance, and ease. And most important, in order to buildsuch structures, precious resources are used unsparingly, greatdestruction and contamination are wrought by the mining,transport, and processing of the said resources, and greatamounts of pollution are generated by the use of such homes orworkplaces. What is more, this increase in the number ofbuildings causes the further decrease in the area of the country,and the cities continue their expansion.

There is no limit to the desire for an anti-Nature, modern urbanlifestyle. Small or old houses are continually being torn down(the remains are discarded in the country or in the ocean), andbig, new buildings are put up. They call this the development ofthe cities, but just as I have demonstrated, this development isactually what is threatening the continuing existence of thecities.

It was some foreigner who made fun of Japanese houses by callingthem "rabbit hutches," and a certain idiotic Japanese critic thenused the same expression as an instrument of self-deprecation.However, Kamo no Chomei [40] demonstrated that a ten-foot squarehut was quite big enough as a place to live. If the populationcontinues to increase at the present rate, without war,epidemics, or famine, in 700 years we will reach a populationdensity at which there will be one person per square foot,including the mountains. It seems to me that it would be muchmore important to put up with living in rabbit hutches andsaving our farmland.

Living in cramped, stuffy apartment buildings and falling onyour face every time there is an earthquake is naturally theprice one should pay for living in the city in order to realize alife of ease. If you do not like it, then leave the city and goto live in the country. Build a log cabin in the country and livethere. Even if it is destroyed by a typhoon or an earthquake, youcan repair it the very next day. What is more, you can repair itby yourself, without the help of anyone else.

It would do us well to prepare ourselves by learning how tobuild the sunken dwellings of ancient times. We should readyourselves by recognizing that it is best for human beings to liveon a dirt floor.

Is It Possible to Produce Food without the City?

Concerning food: The intervention (interference) of the city(that is, the secondary and tertiary industries) in theproduction of food is considerable, and for this reason it hasbecome possible to produce great quantities of high-yield cropswith reduced labor. If the city's participation were to disappearit would mean the instant disintegration of this productionsystem, and agriculture would be dealt a severe blow. At leastthis is the way the city boasts of its superior position, andcauses the country to bow before it, cutting a magnificentfigure.

But we should not worry too much about this. The kind ofagricultural system that would become unable to function withoutthe city is actually none other than a suck-up-to-the-cityagriculture that is locked into the city's plunder system.However, to natural cycle, small-scale, self-sufficientagriculture, the city's meddling is actually a nuisance; as longas we have the blessings of Nature there is not the slightestdifficulty. The object of the city's interference is to continueplundering the country.

There is here perhaps one thing we should be aware of, and thatis the necessity of certain tools — not tilling and threshingmachines, but such things as sickles and hoes. Without the helpof the city it might be difficult to find such things unless werevive the part-time blacksmiths of the Edo Period or earlier. Informer times the part-time farmers who made water conduits,baskets, and sifters lived in every village. When they were notworking in the fields they made and repaired farm implements andhousehold goods. But since their main occupation was farming,they had little time to make such things, and thus did not becomereal merchants. They do not make things to sell, but when theywere asked (modern industries that produce too much can learnsomething here). And there should be no need for large-scale ironworks if they get the raw materials from iron sand as theswordsmiths did.

Abandon Anti-Nature Urban Dietary Habits

The city haughtily tells us that we must have, if notrefrigerators, electric rice cookers, propane gas, blenders,artificial flavoring, and sugar, then at least essential itemslike pots and bowls and salt, and that without such urbanblessings we would not be able to go on living. But let us notget excited.

If there be a need, we should be ready to do without even potsand bowls and salt. And if at the same time we make up our mindsto do without such things, and begin the preparations for a newdietary life, we begin to see to what extent urban dietary lifeis anti-Nature, and how it is leading us down the road toself-destruction.

Wild animals all eat what is natural for them to eat. Squirrelseat nuts, cats eat mice. Should we ignore this simple fact,feeding mice to squirrels and chestnuts to cats, neither will beable to go on living. This is the great iron hammer of Heaventhat falls on those who ignore these laws.

What an animal naturally eats is decided by instinct, andinstinct here is preference, and the ability to obtain what itneeds. A cat is not able to eat chestnuts, nor does it care atall for the taste or flavor of chestnuts; a squirrel, on theother hand, has the claws and teeth with which to open and eatchestnuts, and it finds them quite delicious as well.

But how about human beings? Extremely clever and arrogant asthey are, human beings ignored the laws that governed what theyshould eat. Learning how to use utensils, fire, and variousseasonings, they were able to eat things which, originally, theycould not eat, or should not eat.

The things human beings desire and can obtain and eat withoutthe use of tools or fire are, for example, nuts and fruit,plants, seeds, potatoes, small fish, and eggs (if you give amonkey an egg it will skillfully break the shell and suck out thecontents — monkeys and human beings naturally eat the samethings). So it is that, no matter how much of a brave and strongTarzan one is, it is probably quite impossible to catch andbutcher bovine animals and whales with one's bare hands.

The Human Diet: Crime and Punishment

By the use of utensils, fire, and seasonings human beings changedtheir natural diets, thereby increasing almost limitlessly thethings they can eat, and by transforming themselves into hunting,eating animals, have increased their numbers dramatically. On theother hand, however, they weakened themselves physically. Notonly that, they also process their natural foods with heat andseasonings, thus killing the life within their food, destroyingthe cells, and substantially decreasing the beneficial effects ofthe food. Thus if we do not stuff our bodies full we cannot getenough nutrition, and this has brought about the transformationof the human being into the greatest eating animal on Earth.

Note first of all that human beings suffer serious tooth decay,something we don't see much in wild animals. We catch colds allthe time. We are troubled by chronic digestive disorders (onlyhumans use bathroom tissue; if an animal is healthy its excrementwill not stick to its body). We perspire profusely (sinceperspiration is a means of getting rid of wastes, sweating a lotis proof that one's body is full of sewage; no matter how hot itis, one should perspire only moderately). And in recent years wehave come to live in fear of chronic illness brought on by thecompound effects of many chemical substances that are foreign toour bodies.

Though the net of Heaven is course, it has not overlooked thehuman rebellion against our natural diet. The fact that humanbeings have barely managed to survive in spite of this is due tothe fact that we have continued, as we should, to consume somefruit and vegetables raw. Raw vegetables with meat, pickledvegetables with white rice, and fruit for dessert.

Our Modern Diet has Brought about Sickness and the Weakening of
Our Bodies

Utensils and fire and seasoning — the great transformation inthe natural diet of human beings, and the great rebellion againstNature. This is known as cooking or cuisine. And in cooking wefind the following three regrettable elements:

How can one, using utensils and heat and seasonings, make itpossible to eat things which one cannot ordinarily eat?

How can one make things taste good, and stuff a lot into one'sstomach?

How can one destroy the life and cells of one's food, therebydiminishing its effect?What we must be aware of here is that even the provincial cookingof a hundred years ago varies not a bit from these themes, andeven if we look back 50 or 100 thousand years, there is littledifference. They say that our remaining canine teeth prove thatprimitive human beings were carnivorous animals, but I do notbelieve it. Almost a million and a half years ago human beingshad already learned how to use fire, thereby changing theirnatural diets. Canine teeth were no doubt used to open and eatchestnuts and other hard nuts.

Human beings are born with both fists tightly clenched. If youput a stick in a baby's hands it will hang from the stick, and ifyou lift the stick, the upper half of the baby's body willfollow. If you provide some stimulus to the soles of its feet,the baby's toes will bend as if they are trying to graspsomething. This indicates that, even now, the structure of thehuman body is adapted to climbing trees in search of fruit andnuts, and it has changed little from millions of years ago. Thisalso shows that there ought to be no change in the human diet,either. It was, after all, quite impossible for human beings tobecome lions or hyenas.

In addition to (or in connection with) the three elements ofcooking described above, human beings have committed furthercrimes: They have changed the shape and appearance of their food,pulverized it, analyzed it, extracted it, mixed it, andcompounded it.

Wild animals eat what is natural for them to eat, and they eat itin its original form, thereby obeying this iron-clad law ofNature. Thus they maintain their health without a single doctor,a single pill, or a single hospital. It is only human beings thatmake brown rice into white rice; remove the hull of wheat andgrind it into white powder; remove the head and bones of fish,leaving only the soft flesh; separate the fats from milk and makeit into butter; or extract vitamins and make them into pills.Because of this it is only human beings that suffer fromcorpulence, undue loss of weight, sickness, and early aging anddeath. Seeing that they were in trouble, people then founded thenutritional sciences, and began calculating everything — consumea certain percent of this, so many grams of this, or so manymilliliters of that. But it turns out to be half-baked, for wecan see that the results of those school lunches, which aremodels of nutritional science, are fat and sickly children. Justcompare these children with wild animals, which do not study thenutritional sciences, but manage to keep themselves fit and trim.

Let Us Begin Training Ourselves to Eat Things Raw

We ought to begin training ourselves to eat things raw and intheir original form, and we should eat things that we can obtainwith our bare hands. Even if it is only a handful a day, weshould try eating brown rice, wheat, and corn (not to mentionfruit and vegetables) raw and unprocessed. We should notunderestimate the positive effect of even this little bit. Eatingeven one grain raw will do us that much good. The net of Heavenis coarse but lets nothing escape — those who make light of onegrain of brown rice will find themselves bound by the erroneousidea of "permissible levels." There is no gainsaying that, forevery one milligram of food additives one consumes, the liversuffers correspondingly. The law of permissible levels, which isconvenient for the manufacturers of such additives, is not to befound in Nature.

One must chew a hundred times and secrete three cupfuls ofsaliva in order to eat a handful of uncooked brown rice. It isimpossible to eat it otherwise. Is the reader aware that the hullportion of cooked brown rice passes through the gut and is foundin great quantity in one's excrement? This is the result ofcooking the rice in order to make it easier to eat, but if oneeats it uncooked the hull too is well chewed. In saliva there isa hormone called parotin which helps order the body's functions.What is more, chewing something hard strengthens the teeth, andalso stimulates the working of the brain.

In addition, the real flavor of something is revived by eating itraw. For instance, if one eats and compares raw corn and cake,one is well aware of how the cake is a tasteless lump of deadmatter, and how the raw corn is most delicious, and overflowingwith life force. Just try offering a lion raw and cooked meat, ora chicken wheat and crackers, and see for yourself which one theywill choose.

For those people whose sense of taste has been artificiallydeadened and who claim that they cannot eat raw food because ittastes terrible, I offer the following advice: Go a day withouteating and then try it. And those who have bad teeth and cannoteat raw grain can grind it into powder with a stone mortar andknead it with water.

Health Recovery and Food Conservation: Eat it Raw

If you eat cooked brown rice instead of cooked white rice, youwill need only two-thirds as much, and if you eat the brown riceuncooked, you will find you can eat only one-third as much. Bymaking white rice one discards the best part, and by cooking itone kills the cells and the life within; thus, in order to takein sufficient nutrients, one must stuff great amounts into one'sstomach. By eating it uncooked, one needs only one-third as much.If you cook your greens you can eat a lot, but uncooked you canonly eat about one-third as much.

And this leads us to a great discovery — that eating things rawand uncooked contributes substantially to food conservation. Aspecial program on NHK noted that, in the event that foodimports were totally halted, even if we made all our golf coursesand superhighways into bean and potato fields, still 35 millionpeople would starve to death. But if we ate all our food raw, allthose people would be saved. In addition, by eating things rawthere would be no leftovers. It is said that in Japan cooked andkilled leftovers that are discarded amount to 10 millions tons ayear, but if we eat, for example, brown rice and corn uncooked,then there will never be any leftovers.

And even if we converted all our rice paddies to organicproduction, causing the yield to drop to one-third, there wouldbe no shortage of rice even under present conditions if everyoneate uncooked brown rice.

It Is the City that Needs the Country

So we have seen that, just as I wrote earlier, eating things intheir original form, as well as unprocessed and raw, cancontribute to the recovery of health. In addition, it will alsohelp conserve food. We will not be troubled in the least when thefood imports stop, or when the hospitals and drug companies fold.What is more, there is yet a third great service done by eatingthings raw and in their original form: It is possible to becometotally independent of the city. When we become independent thecity will be in a pickle, but we shall not suffer.

As long as we have hands and feet and a mouth, it is possiblefor us, just as it is for wild animals, to nourish ourselveswithout bowls, chopsticks, pots and pans, propane gas, knives,chopping boards, oil, soy sauce, sugar, or even salt.

Wild animals do not take in an especially large amount of salt,and yet I have never heard of wild animals damaging their healthbecause of this. It is only human beings who take in abnormallylarge quantities, thereby suffering from arteriosclerosis andhigh blood pressure. It is said that human beings only require0.1 grams of salt per day. But Japanese on the average take in 20grams per day, and even those people who are on reduced saltdiets ingest 10 grams a day, so this means that we are taking inbetween 100 and 200 times the needed amount. One-tenth of onegram is an amount naturally found in food, and that should beenough; human beings should not be any different from wildanimals. The salt refining factories and the salt retailers cango belly up any time they like. It is idiotic to believe thatpeople must ingest the same proportion of salt as is contained inthe blood. One should consider that 0.1 gram of salt hasaccumulated in the blood.

If you suddenly reduce the amount of salt you ingest you willexperience a kind of "cold turkey" in which you feel tired, butthis is just because the body is used to a lot of salt. If youput up for just one week, it will pass. One should require nowarmup even in order to reduce one's salt intake to 1/100th ofthe usual.

We have therefore seen the city's last bastion of control —salt — crumble before our very eyes. We do not need the city atall in order to live. It is the city that needs the country inorder to continue its existence.

Chapter VI Notes

The cause of the city's demise will be, for example, a lack ofresources, the insufficiency of food, or the contamination ofthe environment. However, this all depends much upon the changessurrounding the city, so perhaps one should say that the citywill perish from "without." Still, the entity responsible forengendering this cause from without is none other than the city(it is the city which squanders resources, brings ruin upon thefarming villages, and contaminates the environment), so I thinkit is correct to say that the city will perish "automatically."

Buddhist monk and poet (1118-1190). (Translator's note)

It goes without saying that some disciplines, like technicalchemistry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and nuclearphysics are directly linked to the destruction and contaminationof the environment, but those leisurely disciplines that seem todo no harm, like the fine arts, archeology, and anthropology, areindirectly responsible for harming the Earth since theirpractitioners refuse to sweat or dirty their own hands, andcontinue to pat their fat bellies, which are full of the laborsof the few remaining farmers, thus forcing the farmers into laborsaving, high-yield, contaminating, plundering farming methods.

The characters for "wild" are here read as those for "natural."
The author therefore equates "wild" with "natural."
(Translator's note)

Poet and writer (1155-1216). Nakashima refers in particular to awork called Hojoki, written when Kamo no Chomei lived in a smallhut.

CHAPTER VIIThe Disintegration of the City

Even if we do absolutely nothing, and let things continue on asthey are, the city will automatically perish. Even if I shouldswing at the ground with a maul and miss, the demise of the citywill surely come to pass.

Indulging in Ease, the City Destroys the Future

In a corner of northern Africa, out on the desolate sands, therewas a small stand of trees, barely keeping itself alive. In thetop of a tree was a boy lopping off branches with a hatchet, andbelow there were a few goats greedily eating the leaves. This wasa scene of Africa's final hour as shown on television. [41]

Around the trees, as far as one could see, there was only barrenland; after the goats consumed the leaves on these trees, therewould be nothing. The goats were facing starvation, and the boy,who lived on the goats' milk, would be visited by the same fate.

"Does this boy know," said the voice of the television, "that heis cutting his own throat? Even if he does, this is the only wayto live until tomorrow."

You, in the cities! Can you view this merely as the misfortune ofothers? The fate of this boy is the fate of the city.

You too are cutting limbs off trees every day. In order to livethrough the day (or, more precisely, in order to continueenjoying convenience, extravagance, and ease, to continue thepursuit of profit, to seek glory and praise, and to continue yourstupid competition) you keep on lopping off branches. It does notmatter to you if this is the march of death; you continue towaste the few remaining resources, to destroy and contaminate ourirreplaceable natural environment, to reduce the amount offarmland, which is your lifeline. How much longer do you thinkyou can live while sacrificing your own future?

Petroleum: the City's Support;
Petroleum: the City's Demise

Even if the prediction that petroleum will run out in another 30years is wrong, this does not mean that there is an unlimitedamount. It is an undeniable fact that, for every drop ofpetroleum used, the reserves will be reduced by that same amount.

And it is not just petroleum, for the same rule holds true foriron, copper, aluminum, and uranium, and it is no different forthe so-called new materials. As long as there is no proof thatthese new materials are made from a vacuum, and that theirprocess of manufacture requires no energy, there is no denyingthat any new material invented is subject to the same fate.

Let us note also that since these buried resources are used inclose conjunction with one another, the city will be threatenedby a lack of even one of them. For example, should there be ashortage of manganese, steelmaking will suffer. If we run shortof copper, there will be no more motors that use copper wire intheir coils, and whole industrial sector will be paralyzed. Herethey cannot say that "even if we run out of copper, we can usetin or nickel."

Petroleum is the same in that there is no replacement. We hearthat nuclear power will act in its place, but then nuclear powercannot be used as the raw material for manufactured articles, andeven in the field of energy it is said that, if we do not have anamount of petroleum which corresponds to one-fourth the energygained from nuclear power, it is impossible to operate thenuclear power plants.

Nature's Retaliation Is Assured

So we have seen that when the petroleum runs out (whether it be30 or 50 years in the future, it does not matter) the modern citywill perish, but there is one other noteworthy matter here, andthat is, before the oil wells run dry, the city must perish twicefor the sake of petroleum.

One reason is that, because of the poisons released bypetroleum, the city will become uninhabitable. We have alreadyseen that, when one traces them back to the source, the physicalcause of all forms of pollution is petroleum. No matter to whatextent the city was made to flush untreated wastes into therivers and oceans, no matter how impudent the urbanites are, andno matter how much the people at the Environment Agency shirktheir duties, if petroleum suddenly disappeared from before ourvery eyes, it is sure that 80 percent of our present pollution(including chemicals, food additives, and agricultural chemicals)would disappear along with it. Will the city perish because ofpetroleum's poisons, or because of its disappearance?

It is almost as if petroleum was discovered for the purpose oferadicating the cities. Verily, the sum total of the petroleumpoisons in the whole world is exactly that needed to get rid ofthe cities. Nature is making an example of the cities for us. Nomatter what reason there could be, the arrogant and extravagantcity cannot be expected to give up petroleum until it hasconsumed the last drop, so noting what the future will bring,Nature promised the Earth that the cities would perish. The citymust pay a price commensurate with the convenience andextravagance (in reality, the destruction and contamination) ithas thus far enjoyed, and that price is the demise of the city.This is the great Iron Hammer of Nature (Nature's retaliation).

The Petroleum Grabfest Will End in Total Nuclear War

The second way in which the city will perish for the sake ofpetroleum is the total nuclear war brought on by the franticscramble for petroleum. The city will have no choice. Theurbanites are steeped in the prosperity of the city —convenience, extravagance, ease, the Pursuit of Profit,production competition, glory, and praise, all gained by means ofsquandering petroleum — and there is no mistaking that, whenthey begin to have that terrible feeling that the oil is about torun out, they will go mad and try to rob it from others. [42]Should the city just try to be gentlemanly about the matter, itwill be totally paralyzed, so no matter what stands in the way,the city will without reserve begin the fight for petroleum.Nuclear war will begin in this way, and most of the cities in theworld — including the urbanized country — will be destroyed. Itwill be the end of humanity except for those in the back countryof New Guinea or the Amazon.

When this time comes it will be too late for warnings,countermeasures, or practice of any kind. We must realize thatour time for extinction has come, and calmly reap as we havesown. [43]

The Inevitable Fate of the City:
Development = Doom

"Digging one's own grave" — Here is the expression which hasdescribed the city since it first appeared on Earth. In ChapterIV, I noted that the city itself is the explosive that came intobeing in order to get rid of the city, and verily, the city has,by means of choosing the course of growth and development, rusheddown the road to oblivion since the time it first appeared. Therehas never been an instance of the city lessening, even for a day,its efforts to destroy itself, or resting in its labors to digits own grave. The reason for establishing the city is to achieveease and gluttony, and the attainment of this objectivenecessitates plunder, destruction, and contamination; this isnone other than the rush down the road to ruin. There is no otherpossible course for the city to follow. Should one hope foranother course for the city to follow, it would have to be thecomplete negation of the city's reason for being, and thecessation of ease and gluttony (plunder, destruction, andcontamination, i.e., the functions of the city). One must alwayskeep in mind that, should one, with one's mind set on ease andgluttony, establish the city and allow it to continue itsactivities, ruin is its inevitable fate.

Therefore, since ruin is the city's mission, it is only naturalthat the city's all-pervading image is that of a person digginghis own grave. And then, in order that the city can execute itsmission with even greater effectiveness, it continues adding on,stacking up, coupling, compounding, and amplifying, in that wayhelping to hasten its own demise. Recently the New City Image hasmade its appearance.

The Self-Destructive Apparatus of Civilization Cannot Be Stopped

A robot manufacturing company introduced robots into its ownrobot factory. This is because it was impossible for the companyto compete in the marketplace unless it made an example of itsown factory. No longer able to continue operations, it went bellyup. In this way the manager of the robot factory was forced torisk his life in the establishment of a roboticized robotfactory. Upon completion of the factory, the manager and 600employees all lost their jobs. It was for that reason (and alsoto become a model for the industry) that they did it. In order toremain on the cutting edge of technology and stay out in front ofthe competition it was necessary to build a factory that wouldallow the presence of not a single human being.

"Right now we are working like bees in order to build anapparatus that will cut our own throats," said one of theemployees in a television interview. "This will eventually takeplace in all factories. It can't be helped — if we don't do it,the company will fold. Lately I've been giving serious thought tobecoming a hired hand on a dairy farm in Hokkaido after I losethis job."

But not all 600 could find jobs herding cattle, and not all ofthem could do the job even if they were asked. An economy basedon money generates legions of idle people hungry for money, andthey come up with all sorts of schemes to make a living, such asthe investment magazines, and the recent Toyota Trading Companyscandal. [44]

Nowadays robots can do just about anything, and we rejoice overhow convenient and quick everything has become, and overcivilization's progress, but we had better look again, becausecivilization is robbing us of our jobs. Whether in developed ordeveloping countries, civilization is the enemy of humansurvival.

I have described one of the new conditions under which the citywill self-destruct (or become uninhabited). The city, which onceachieved prosperity by means of civilization, will soon perish bymeans of civilization. How could this possibly be stopped?

The Contradictions and Tyranny of the City Render Recycling
Impossible

I have noted many times that by means of destroying the forestsand transforming the land into desert the city is not onlybringing about crises for the developing countries, but is alsothreatening its own existence. Knowing just this is enough totell us that the city has not long to live. It should be evidentto anyone that the city is responsible for the fearsomely rapidspread of the deserts in the developing countries, the increasein barren land, the decrease in the amount of oxygen, theincrease in the amount of carbon dioxide, and, more than anythingelse, the shortage of pulp.

The future of the city depends in a large measure upon itsall-important paper — wrapping paper, cardboard boxes, bathroomtissue, newspapers, magazines, and computer printing paper. Sothe city is saddled with the contradiction that it cannot stopits profligacy. The regions which produce the wood for this paperare turning into deserts minute by minute.

The other day an employee of a factory that makes chips fromimported wood came to see my chickens. "Every day my factoryconverts an awesome amount of imported wood into chips," he said,"and it is all used to produce the wrapping paper used indepartment stores. For stupid vanity and convenience we areplunging the developing countries into crisis, and cutting ourown throats at the same time. I can no longer bear the futility,or being party to the great crime of doing such work. I want tobecome a self-sufficient farmer, and so came to see yourchickens."* * *I also noted earlier that the city continues its limitlessexpansion on a global scale, and that, inversely proportional tothis, farmland is limitlessly plundered. This too shows us thatthe city is not long for this world. The contradictions andtyranny of the urbanites, who seek to continue their gluttonyeven as they steal the farmland that produces their food, arebeyond the comprehension of the ordinary person.

A short time ago I happened to visit a public facility in Fukui,and spoke to one of the personnel. "This area used to be primerice paddies," he explained. "But as you can see, it is now afine public meeting hall and a big parking lot. In this way wecontinue to lose farmland. When I think of what will eventuallyhappen, shivers run down my spine."

In the neighborhood of my daughter's farm they are talking aboutmaking a golf course. If they go through with the plan, thedevelopers will purchase the fields and wooded areas around mydaughter's farm and make it all into a golf course. I asked ifanyone was opposing this plan and was told that not one person inthe village was against it. If anyone were to oppose the planthey would be ostracized from the village since, once the golfcourse is completed, not only will the fields and woods betransformed into piles of money, but there will be a restfacility, a restaurant, and jobs. In this way little effort isrequired of the city in order to steal more farmland and urbanizeit. And what is really surprising is that I have not yet heard ofany plan to convert the city into farmland.

Biotechnology: Violating the Province of Nature

The city is replete with evidence of self-destruction, and itprojects many images of people digging their own graves, so onecould not possibly write about all of them. But I would like toadd a final word about biotechnology.

The work of evolving and fostering the species is the province ofNature, and has taken billions of years. Whether it be a singlegrass seed or a single tree leaf, nothing came into beingovernight; each thing is the product of the complex and wondrousinteraction of species that have repeated adaptation andselection over an incomprehensibly long time. If, in this net ofinteraction among species, even one of the nodes should exhibitunusual development or disappear, the balance of the ecosystem isdisturbed; species that cannot stand the strain will perish, andthe ecosystem then reorganizes itself to seek a new point ofbalance. This is what I mean by natural selection (thedispensation of Nature).

But now we see those cleverly conceited, high-handed, andarrogant human beings invading the province of Nature, and tryingtheir hand at biotechnology; in a short period of time they areattempting to change that which Nature has taken billions ofyears to make, or to create something new. The species adapt totheir environments (air, water, sunlight, the Land, and the netof interactions among species) and survive by maintaining theirbalance through mutual assistance, but in order to do this itrequires the total history of its own evolution since the time itappeared.

If human beings now carry through with their desire to makesudden changes in the species, there is a danger that the balanceof the ecosystem will require a great upheaval (the iron hammerof Nature) in order to correct the distortion brought about byhuman violence and seek the next level of balance. This isNature's retaliation.

Nature's retaliation will first of all attack human beingsdirectly (in correcting the imbalance brought about bybiotechnology, there is no better way than striking down itsinventor, human beings).

If we continue eating strange new creations which are not of theearth and which violate the natural diet of human beings (forexample, soybean protein cultured in tanks with colonic bacteria,or isomerized sugars and oligosaccharides made from transformedbiomass) cell regeneration will be adversely affected, andassimilation will be disturbed. By changing our diets andingesting synthetic chemical compounds we will increase theincidence of cancer and liver disorders.

Because the purveyors of news will perish as well, they will notgive us the news that "humanity perished after eating artificialfood." By producing our own food and by assimilating theblessings of Nature in our own locale, we can at least preservethe unurbanized portion of the land. The city will take a lotwith it when it goes.

Chapter VII Notes

The reason Africa is turning into a wasteland is not because ofdrought, but because of the city's meddling. It was thedeception of the city that made the native peoples of Africa, whoformerly, though poor, managed to provide themselves with alltheir own food, believe they must escape poverty, keep domesticanimals, destroy their verdure, and ultimately dig their owngraves. (Rain clouds do not arise in regions with no trees.Droughts are man-made, and they further make it difficult toreestablish trees. In this way deserts form, and the land diesfor good.)

It appears that the United States, in order to prepare for thefuture shortage of petroleum, is now embarking upon a policy ofclosing its own oil fields and depending solely upon imports.When the world's petroleum starts to run out and other countriesbegin to panic, the U.S. will quietly tap its own carefullystocked reserves, and, ignoring the panic of other countries,work for its own prosperity and world hegemony.

But it remains to be seen if things go as they plan. If the U.S.tries to keep all the oil to itself it will have to fight withother countries, whether they be enemies or allies, and it willno doubt come under concentrated nuclear attack.

Gensuikin [The Japanese Congress against A and H Bombs] isexpecting too much if they believe that world peace will comeabout with the disappearance of nuclear weapons. If you want toget rid of a skin eruption you must see to the health of yourentire body; it does no good just to remove the eruption. Shouldyou get rid of nuclear weapons but leave the city — totallydependent upon petroleum and other buried resources — just as itis, new eruptions will continue without end. Even if there are nonuclear weapons, new machines of mass killing will appear withoutend. In time the oil will begin to run out, and the city willsense that it is about to perish; at this point the GreatPetroleum Grabfest will inevitably begin, and it will not matterwhether or not there are nuclear weapons. After all, the citywill be desperate. The city will no doubt use chemical weapons.It will spread deadly bacteria all over the place. It will useneutron bombs and death rays as well. The city will make use ofthe latest high technology, and all manner of new weapons whichhave been secretly developed will have their first battlefieldtests here.

Once this war begins there will be none of those half-heartedattempts at talking peace. If, because of a reconciliation manyhuman beings remain, the problem of who gets the oil will stillremain, and everyone will feel as if they have not attained theobject of their war, which is the maintenance of the prosperityof the indolent classes. In this war it is impermissible to allowthe continued existence of those who do not belong to theindolent classes.

Prisoners of war and slaves are nothing but an impediment. Aslong as one has oil (and mineral resources) machinery will act asone's slaves and servants. That is why the urban indolent classeswill start the petroleum war.

By "indolent classes" I mean those people who claim that they"cannot live" without elevators, air conditioners, refrigerators,jets, trains, cars, telephones, computers, robots, vacuumcleaners, washing machines, propane gas, instant noodles, bread,ice cream, sake, beer, cigarettes, songs, dancing, sports,television, newspapers, and magazines. These people are, in otherwords, the city people, the secondary/tertiary industry people.If they did not have oil, it would be impossible for them tomaintain the civilization and culture I have described above, soto them oil has a greater and more necessary existence than doesthe Earth. The disappearance of oil is of greater significance tothem than the disappearance of the Earth. This is why they willdo everything in their power to seize the oil.

A company that allegedly cheated countless people out of greatamounts of money by means of high-pressure sales tactics and fakegold. (Translator's note)

CHAPTER VIIIEverybody Farms

— Escaping the City, Becoming a Farmer —

Since the city is the Great Evil that will ruin humanity and the
Earth, we must somehow get rid of it.

In order to accomplish this, it is important for as many peopleas possible to break away from the city and become independentfarmers, and to take up Natural Cycle Farming, in which one doesnot depend upon the city, but only upon the blessings of Nature.It follows that the conventional professional farmers mustextricate themselves from modern urbanized high-quantityagriculture and establish themselves in self-sufficient compoundsmall-scale farming.

As the numbers of such farmers grow, the city will shrink andweaken, and when the effect has grown sufficiently, the city willperish.

A Society in which Everyone Farms Guarantees Our Future

Above is the blueprint for the eradication of the cities that Igave in Chapter V. To express it succinctly, it is the return toprimitive communistic society in which everyone farms; it is thesliding back into an anarchistic agrarian society that has noneed of state power; it is the realization of an agrarian societythat has ceased all harmful and wasteful activities (i.e., theactivities of the secondary and tertiary industries). [45]

Getting out of the city and beginning to farm is, as I noted inChapter VI, easier said than done owing to a number ofdifficulties. Especially difficult to the city white collarworker is getting land.

I have repeatedly said that the agriculture problem is one ofagrarian population, [46] and that the problem of the agrarianpopulation is one of land. [47] Not only is the land problem theroot of the agricultural problem, it is of such greatsignificance that it influences, not only the city, but also allof humanity, all other living things, and yes, the fate of theentire Earth (just look at the present state of things — thecity digs up the land and continues to cover it with concrete;the end result is that we will have starvation in the middle ofconvenience).

The Land Is Nature Itself

And now we arrive at the obvious question — who shall possessthe Land? The answer is that it shall not be possessed byindividuals; it is not the territory of local governments nor ofnation-states; it was not meant for the public use of all thepeoples of the world; and it is not held in common by all theliving things on the Earth.

The Land is none other than Nature itself. Long before livingthings — including human beings — appeared on the Earth theLand already existed. It is therefore perfectly well for us toconclude that the Land belongs to no one; it is the Earth itself,it is Nature itself. So it is unpardonable for anyone, no matterwho, to destroy or contaminate the Land. It is the vilest act ofdesecration to use the Land for selfish purposes, or to use itarbitrarily for the benefit of a group or a nation-state.

What is known to the city as construction and development is toNature (the country) nothing less than violent acts ofdestruction and contamination. The countless large buildings inthe big cities (which look like the many monuments in acemetery), paved roads, amusement parks, subways, factories, andpublic facilities found in the country also tear up the Land andcover it with concrete. [48] None of these things can be madewithout hurting the Earth.

There is no need to go into detail over what will happen as thefinal result of destroying the Land and wounding the Earth. It ismistaken to believe that Nature will continue to put up with thehigh-handedness of the city. Nature has been bent almost as faras it can be bent, and when it reaches its limit it will slapback at us with a force equal to that exerted upon it (just likean earthquake). Nature will surely deal a great blow, and sadly,that time is near. [49]

The Only Laws We Need Follow Are Those of Nature

As things stand now, there is no future for humanity or theEarth. We are hopelessly locked into the mechanism of theeconomic society, but if we do not put a stop to all constructionwork now, we will regret it forever. We must find the resolutionto overthrow the economic society (the city). Material productivepower is a poweful force that shackles us with money, so we mustfirst of all reexamine material productive power, and then returnto the ancient past (material productive power did surely notexist from the start) to see how things were.

What we will probably find is that, while there were no "rules ofthe economic society," there were the Laws of Nature. Since wildanimals all live according to these laws you will never find awolf or a pheasant destroying the Earth. What wild animal hasever tried to make the Land its private possession, and then usedit for its own selfish purposes?

Abolish Private Ownership of Land

The Land is, most emphatically, the property of Nature, yea, itis Nature itself. Human beings also, when they use the Land,merely borrow it from Nature for the time they need it; when wehave finished we must return it to Nature in its original state.

Returning the Land in its original state — this requires theabolition of private land ownership. Human beings, presumptuousas they are, mistakenly believe that the Land is their own, andthat is why they harm it without a moment's reflection.

The same goes for farmland. Since farmland is treated as aprivate asset, people occupy it and try to increase their wealth;they fall prey to the idea that because it is their own they cando whatever they like with it (like contaminating it withagricultural chemicals); and they believe that land is acommodity, and so they scheme to make money by selling it. Theculmination of these effects has brought about the present, allbut hopeless, plight of agriculture. (Though it is called"agriculture," modern agriculture is actually a harmful practiceand a rebellion against Nature. It is only natural cycleagriculture that can claim the right to borrow land from Nature.)

At first sight, it looks as though the private ownership of landengenders a feeling of loving attachment to one's farmland, andsupports an ideology by which the land is well taken care of,but it is actually the opposite. "It's my land, so if I want totear it up or sell it, that's my business." And particularlydepressing is the fact that ruining the land before selling itbrings in a higher price!

The tenant farmers of yore, though they did not own their land,took care of it as they did their own children, maintaining andbuilding its fertility by applying great amounts of compostedorganic matter. Nowadays everyone farms their own land, but wesee that in all parts of the country the farmland is going toruin. (Another major factor influencing the degree of farmlanddeterioration is the amount of imported food.)

So what I would like to see the government do here is, in placeof Nature, take full responsibility for the preservation of theLand, and embark upon a program of national management (it is ofcourse best if we can live like animals in Nature, for theyexperience no disorder even without government, [50] but since itwill be some time before we reach that stage, this is the onething I would like the government to do).

Private ownership of farmland (and all other land, too, for thatmatter) should be abolished, and the government, acting onbehalf of Nature, should lend the farmland to those who wish totill it, and only for the time they actually use it. When thetiller has finished, the land is returned, and the governmentlends it to the next person. If the government reorganizes thepresent Registry Office and brings in the necessary personnel,they should be able to take care of this much without the use ofcomputers. If they attach a serial number to each plot and lendfarmland according to the number of family members, this could bedone even without the Ministry of Agriculture. Even if everyonein Japan decides to farm, and requests flood the Registry Office,there should be about five ares of land for each person, which isenough to grow one's own food. Needless to say, the large-scalefarms should be dismantled.

Even if those in the city want to farm but can find no land bythemselves, we should be able to help them find it. We must notoverlook the fact that those who have had it with big city life(or those who sense the danger in big city life) are burningwith the desire to take up farming. Without these conditions, itis impossible to get people out of the cities and onto the farm.Under the present system the people have a right to quit farming,but urbanites have no opportunity to take up farming. This faultypolicy is responsible for the drop in the farming population, andthe rise of the urban population.

The sons and daughters of farmers, who show aversion to farmingare free to seek destruction by moving to the city, buturbanites who fear the collapse of the city are unfortunatelyprevented from leaving because of the land ownership system. Itseems to me that, rather than those who hate farming and run tothe city, the urbanites who, deeply concerned with the future ofhumanity, have given up on the city and burn with the desire totake up farming, will be of far more use to the future ofhumanity and the Earth.* * *And now a word to those who, hunkering down in the city, continueto dream of a luxurious and pleasant life:

As long as you exploit the farmers, and live in the city withthe intention of continuing your easy, gluttonous lifestylewithout dirtying your own hands, it is only natural that you mustbe satisfied with very little space and with an anti-Natureenvironment. That is urbanization. If the population did notabandon the country, gather together in one place, and destroythe natural environment, urbanization would be impossible.

Not satisfied with their cramped quarters and unpleasantenvironment, the deluded politicians and arrogant urbanites cameup with the "Urban Planning Law," which is legislation meant toseize more farmland, and by means of this law they force theconversion of more farmland into urbanized areas. The urbaniteshad best not forget that the farmland which they desire tourbanize produces the food that keeps them alive. Perhaps theywant to live in great mansions without eating anything.

The spacious gardens we find in the Tanaka Mansion and othersuch places should be used to grow soybeans and vegetables, andthe urban residents, including the rich, should put up withliving in cramped, high-rise buildings. It is only natural thatsuch people, seeking ease in the city, pay such a price. Thoughtheir buildings fall over in an earthquake, and though they arecramped and stuffy, they must accept these conditions. When thetime comes, as it inevitably will, they will have to make up forthe shortage of imported food by growing their own in baseballfields, parks, and roadsides.* * *In the dominating classes of the present system there are greatnumbers of people who, using the institution of private landownership as a basis to make money, attempt to maintain their ownsuperior position (there are very few famous politicians who havenever conducted any land dealings), so hoping for the abolitionof this institution is like seeking hot water under the ice. Tothese dominators, losing land (or losing the means to pacify theland-dazzled dominated classes with land) means loosingeverything, and that everything is power and property; they wouldbe cutting their own throats. Since abolishing private landownership is far easier said than done, we must push forward withour plans for escape from the city and taking up farming whileunder the present system.

It is fine for those with financial resources to buy land in andepopulated part of the country, but it is not advisable forthose without money to borrow it and buy land.

Money moves around according to the laws of business andindustry, so trying to match it to the speed of agriculture,which is bound by the laws of Nature (an extremely slow-pacedproductivity) is like entering an automobile race with ahorse-drawn cart. Unless one is, from the very beginning,prepared for failure, it is dangerous to borrow money to getone's start. Even if the interest rate is half that for business,or if someone will pay the interest for you (as with a subsidy,for example), it is likely that you will be paying the loan backfor the rest of your life. No matter how much you work the amountyou owe will not diminish, but will in fact increase steadily dueto the devilish plundering effect of money (a stratagem known asthe market principle). Thus it is best to borrow or rent landfirst.

The age when people inherited farms from their parents is comingto a close. Children who grew up watching their parents laborhard on the farm rarely ever choose to follow in their parents'footsteps, and experiences. Of course things are different forpeople who are in line to be doctors, teachers, or actors —professions which can skim the sweet juices (jobs which, nomatter how hard one must study, offer far greater financialrewards than farming) — but most farm children choose not tofollow in their parents' footsteps, so they study hard, get intoa university, and choose a fruitful profession (one that makesthem a lot of money).

The eldest son (almost all children are eldest sons) goes to theuniversity, gets a job, and settles down in the city. In timehis parents on the farm grow old, and find that there is no oneto inherit the farm and carry on the work; the parents cannot, atthis point, demand that their son return to the farm, and theson, for his part, has gained a respectable position, and doesnot want to sacrifice this in order to become a farmer (besides,he has tasted fully the sweetness of idleness and gluttony, andcould not possibly, in such a physical condition, take on thework of a farmer). So he has no choice but to take in his agingparents and look after them. And thus the reduction in thefarming population continues.

This phenomenon can be found in every farming village in thecountry. The people who flowed into the city on the crest of therapid economic growth tidal wave are now, 30 years later, findingthat the time has come to take in their parents, whether theylike it or not. This problem will grow rapidly more seriouswithin the next 10 years or so.

Needless to say, as is symbolized by such officialese as"farmland mobility," "coordination of farmland use," and"fostering core farmers," the farmland that thus goes unused willbe gathered up and passed into the hands of aggressive farmoperators (i.e., those who affirm the good of mass offerings tothe city and who like to be on the receiving end of the city'splundering), whereupon they will increase the scale of theiroperations and carry on with the industrialization of agriculture(this is known as the "intensive" use of farmland). Because ofthis policy most of the farmland will either be sucked up by suchfarmers, or will be invaded and exploited by other industries.

However, this policy will be successful only in theeasily-accessible farming villages. There will be no dilettanteswho, knowing from the start that they will lose money, will rentmuch farmland in the inconvenient mountain villages where peoplenever made much money to start with. We can therefore expect thefarmland in the remote villages to fall into permanent disuseafter the aged farmers move to the city.

For those who wish to get out of the city and take up farming,such isolated mountain villages are good places to borrow landand get started. Long ago human beings lived and survived in thefoothills of the mountains, so such a place — the border betweenthe plains and the mountains, is certainly the ideal environmentfor people. Though it may be an economically poor place to live,it is ecologically ideal.* * *Even though one may have left the city and fled to aninconvenient mountain village to take up farming, it isimpossible to guarantee that one will thus be able to surviveinto the twenty-first century. Even if, in the event of a nuclearwar, one managed to avoid a full-scale nuclear attack, the Earthwill cool as a result of nuclear war, and agriculture will suffera severe blow. There is no assurance that those who have left thecity and taken up farming in the mountains will be safe. One mayof course conceal about two years' worth of grain in a pit solo,but there are yet difficult problems such as residual radiationand the pillaging of starving people.

Still, when the city destroys itself by means of its own poisons(the peace of waste, contamination, and destruction), theindependent farmers will not, as the modernized mass-offeringfarmers will, be dragged down with it.

I shall explain the reason for this in the final chapter.

Chapter VIII Notes

[The author actually uses a term meaning literally "all themembers of an ethnic group farm."] The reason I say "ethnic-groupfarming" instead of "citizen farming" is because I deny theexistence of the nation-state. I believe that the nation-state isa power structure, a structure of domination and plunder (i.e.,the root of urban evils). If we negate the great evils of thenation-state, then of course the nation-state itself is negated.If we negate the nation-state, then of course there are no"citizens," and what remains is a group of people known as anethnic group or race.

On the other hand, the use of distinguishing terms like "ethnicgroup" and "race" breeds racism, small-mindedness, andexclusivism, so perhaps it would be better to employ terms like"humanity" or "Earth people."

But since my discussion in this chapter concerns mainly theisland country of Japan, I will ask the reader's indulgence andslip by with this makeshift term.

A social structure in which few farmers feed a great number ofidlers forces the farmers into labor-saving, high-yield,mass-supply agriculture, and this necessitates the heavy use ofagricultural chemicals and chemical fertilizers, as well asmaking the farmers neglect the application of compost to theland. The inevitable result is oil-soaked fields and a kind ofagriculture characterized by contamination, plunder, anddestruction. One could also say that the idlers, by means of theprogress of science and technology, have promoted themechanization and contamination of agriculture, thus making itpossible for a handful of farmers to feed legions of idlers. Thecity sucks up everything.

Therefore food contamination is, simply put, brought about bythe social structure, not by the laziness and greed of farmers.

Needless to say, the contempt for agriculture and the priority ofthe secondary and tertiary industries are also causes of the fallin the farming population. When over half the people werefarmers, half the content of our language and song books werebased in the farming villages, and the stories and songsglorified agriculture and the farmers, but now that less thanhalf the population are farmers, such stories and songs have allbut disappeared. For the same reason, one rarely if ever sees thefarming villages or the farmers in television shows or in thepiles of magazines and novels.

In this case it is an inversion to say that the contempt foragriculture and the respect for urban industries have broughtabout the reduction in the farm population. Changes in the socialstructure are brought about by the power relationships ofmaterial productive capacity (or the money economy); socialtrends and consciousness is merely a reflection of such.

Therefore the contempt for agriculture is not a problem ofeducation or attitude, but decidedly one of social structure.

This is the main theme of this chapter, and so I will write inmore detail about this later. But now I would like to emphasizehere that increasing the agrarian population (that is, sendingthe secondary/tertiary population back to the farms), gettingeveryone to pull weeds by hand, make compost, give upagricultural chemicals, and produce modest quantities of cleanvegetables, while being our goal, is quite impossible andunrealistic unless we solve the land problem.

There is no other building material which has so well built thearrogant city and wrought such damage to the Land as concrete.Has there ever been an instance in which cement was used for apurpose other than to plaster over the Land? Whether it is madeinto buildings, fences, wharves, Hume pipe, or to make channels,its ultimate role is inevitably to block off the Land. So forevery bag of cement that is produced, that much more of the Landwill be covered over. And the cement factories are running atfull capacity every day, turning out great amounts of cement (tocover over the Land), and sending it to be sold in the city."Urbanization" can now be perfectly equated to "concretization."

Nostradamus hinted that "the crisis of humanity will comeraining down from the sky," but, while I have no intention ofcontending with the Great Nostradamus, I believe that the crisisof humanity will come from the Land — not as fast as fallingfrom the sky, but just as surely.

I have said it many times, and I will say it again: As long asour present "peace" continues as it is — destruction of theforests, desertification, the loss of topsoil and theaccumulation of salts, the contamination of soil and water withsynthetic chemicals, and the accompanying expansion of the cities— we will see the desolation of the Land continue. "Peace"signifies the stability, prosperity, and prodigality of the city,and it is impossible to maintain this kind of peace withoutsacrificing the Land.

It is "peace" that destroys the Land and leads humanity to ruin.Furthermore, if a war should start Nostradamus will be correct;either way, it means we have no future.

The only thing that will barely guarantee our survival is ascaled-down life, a life of regression and austerity. To put itanother way, our survival depends solely upon the disappearanceof the Maker of Peace (the peace of prosperity and ease), thatis, the city.

The reason wars over land do not occur in the natural world asthey do in the human world is because other living things takeand accumulate no more than they need. A lion kills no more thanit needs to eat its fill, and a sparrow will not store up moreinsects and seeds after it has eaten enough. Only human beings,for whatever reason, establish economic societies, and go wildover the accumulation of wealth. If we too do not knowsufficiency we will surely perish. Wild (natural) animals shouldbe our model.

CHAPTER IXIndependent Farming

Of all the occupations on Earth, the only one that allows us tobe independent is farming. All occupations other than farmingmust depend at least upon agriculture, or else they have nosource of life; for this reason independence is impossible. If,as a result of their contempt for agriculture, the otheroccupations try to become independent of it, their practitionerswill soon die!

Agriculture is, at the least, none other than a "means in itself"for maintaining one's own life, so as long as one does not seekexcesses such as convenience, extravagance, and ease, and isprepared for a life of austerity, it is possible to becometotally independent.

What on earth do people mean, then, when they say, "It'simpossible to get along just by farming. One can't keep food onthe table by being a farmer"? It is one thing if one is referringto factories or apartment buildings in the concrete cities, butsuch a remark is quite incomprehensible if the speaker is aperson who has the land which produces the food by which he cankeep himself alive. But of course we know that these people meanit is impossible for them to acquire the trinkets and gimcracksand pleasures that urban extravagance offers.

The secondary and tertiary industries, in their infinite mercy,make their governments grant subsidies to agriculture, which isthe only occupation on earth capable of independence, but this isnothing less than a clever reversal meant to pull the wool overour eyes. That agriculture must continually curry favor withothers as well as suffer great difficulties is without a doubtbecause of the deception, dirty tricks, and schemes of Money (orthe schemes and plundering of the money economy, known as the"market principle"), as characterized by agricultural subsidies.Could there possibly be any other reason?

I therefore believe that in order for agriculture to avoid theinterference of the secondary and tertiary industries, it mustfirst become independent of money. Money cheats the farmers; thedevilish machinery of the money economy makes the farmers take ondebts, and its phantom money (loans) make double plunderpossible.

Note well that the ultimate cause of the farmers' privation liesin the exchange of food for pieces of paper, and that subsidiesare mere bait to prepare for plunder.

Money: An Instrument of Plunder

The mint churns out tons of money, and with government bonds asthe medium, wads of this money roll to all corners of the country(as, for example, the salaries of public employees andappropriations for public works projects). [51] Some of thispaper money is saved, and some of it is used to buy food. If youtake it to the store and throw it into a shopping basket, itchanges magically into food. So there is absolutely no basis forasserting that money will not be used for the plunder of food. Ifthere were no such plunder by means of money, it would beimpossible for the city to survive for even a day unless it tookfood by force.

Let us assume now that part of that money which was saved is nowlent out to the farmers in the form of agricultural loans. Itwill be immediately consumed by the purchase of machinery,fertilizers, and agricultural chemicals, whereby it is returnedto the pockets of Capital; all that remains with the farmers aredebts. And just as I pointed out before, these debts contribute,over a long period of time, to the plunder of agriculturalproducts. In order to pay back their loans, the farmers must workthemselves into the ground, continually offering great quantitiesof farm products to the city.

Money is none other than a weapon for the purpose of ripping offagricultural produce.

Control of Agriculture with Debts

During a meeting at which was discussed the internationalizationof agriculture, Ibuka Masaru, the Honorary President of Sony,said that "Agriculture has only 1/1,500th the productive power ofindustry." Since money as well is produced at 1,500 times theefficiency of food, it too functions according to the same logicas industry does. (For example, let us say that you borrow moneyfrom the bank. If you turn out goods at the rate of several tensa minute, you can pay back the principle with interest in only ashort time. Or, if you move several thousand units of yourproduct around in a certain way, you can always pay back themoney you borrowed for capital.) But Nature moves according tovery slow rhythms, and agriculture is bound by the laws ofNature; to try and make agriculture move at the fast pace ofmoney inevitably means that agriculture will be left behind.Should one borrow money in order to get started in agriculture,one will find that, even if the interest is half what it would befor business or industry (or even if one gets someone to pay theinterest for one — for example, a subsidy), it will be quiteimpossible to pay back the loan by means of agricultural producealone.

The same goes for dairy farmers in Hokkaido, for those who raisecattle, for those who raise broilers and laying chickens, forcitrus farmers, for mechanized farmers, and even for theAmerican farmer, the incarnation of the large-scale modernfarming method (it is said that, as of 1985, American agricultureis54 trillion in debt). And this is not the only way moneyoppresses agriculture, for it has yet to rout the farmerdecisively.* * *If, for example, there is a bumper crop of cabbage, the totalcost of harvest, sorting, packing, shipping and kickbacks at themarket is sometimes far greater than the selling price of thecabbage. The more the farmers ship, the more money they lose, andso there are times when they plow the cabbage into the fieldswith a bulldozer.

The more the farmers work (the more food they offer the city),the more money they lose. Has there ever been such an idioticsystem? And that is money economics for you — the devilishmachine (the market principle) invented by the city.

It is quite true that, after a certain point, one needs no moreagricultural products since stuffing oneself full might bringabout digestive disorders. An excess of other products will notbring about indigestion, and as long as one has a place to putthem, it is possible to have many in order to feed one's vanity.It is the market principle that takes advantage of this one weakpoint of agriculture.

The market principle — another way of expressing this is"business." For example, the price of eggs is not decided as aresult of competitive selling on the market; in actuality, a fewmarket big shots make the decision after seeing how many and whatkind of eggs are being shipped into the market at Tokyo. Localprices are based upon the price in Tokyo, so when Tokyo gets alot of eggs, the price in other places is low even if there arenot enough eggs. Therefore the market principle is a businesstechnique, the art of wheeling and dealing.

Back a hundred or so years ago, this was a tea-producing region.Every year at tea-picking time the broker would visit thefarmers. "This year the price of tea is higher than ever. Give iteverything you've got, and pick every last leaf."

Joyful at the news, the farmers would work their hardest,squeezing every last bit out of their tea fields. The broker,watching for the moment when the tea was ready, would runbreathlessly to the farmers with a telegram in hand: "This isterrible! I've just received a telegram from Yokohama — theprice for new tea has fallen to rock bottom!" Thus it was thesimplest thing for the merchant to use business technique todeceive the farmers.

Thus the merchants, waving the golden banner of "marketprinciple," used the necessity and preservability of agriculturalproducts to their own advantage. We must not fall for suchtricks. Food is none other than that which supports life. Even ifthe harvest brings in more than is needed, the food that ends upin the stomachs of the idlers must have, as that which supportstheir lives, a very great value. If, Mr. Ibuka, agriculture hasonly 1/1,500th the productive capacity of industry, thenagricultural produce must have 1,500 times the value ofindustrial products, right? This is the true market principle,and the just appropriation of value. A proper deal would exchange1,500 transistor radios at30,000 each for one bag of rice.

Thus the market principle is a tricky scheme whereby themerchants do the same with the essential portion of agriculturalproduce (i.e., that which goes into the bellies of the idlers) asthey do with the excess — they cause the price to hit rockbottom. In Nature, where there is no such scheming, there is alsono market principle. No matter how many zebras there are, if allit takes is one to fill the belly of a lion, the lion will findinfinite value in that one zebra.

Therefore, the market principle is the illegitimate child of themoney economy. Merchants cannot carry on business without money.It is money that causes prices to nose-dive. With bartering, itis impossible to get a head of cabbage from someone withoutgiving something fair in return. Getting that head of cabbagewithout giving something of like value in return is robbery, pureand simple. The techniques of business, then, are the same as thelaws by which robbers operate.

We must get rid of the robbers. We must also get rid of thecity, which inevitably brings robbers into existence. And we mustget rid of money, which makes possible the functions andactivities of the city. If we allow the continued existence ofmoney, it will not only keep plundering agriculture, but it willalso destroy us.

Getting away from Money: The Bagworm Revolution

Money makes us squander resources, destroy Nature, andcontaminate the environment. These urban evils (the activities ofthe city) are all carried out "under duress" because of money. Itis because of money (the pursuit of profit) that, even thoughthere is absolutely no need, we continue to squander resources,strew pollution, and compete madly in the production of yet more.[52] It is because of money that we search desperately for moreconstruction work to do. The purpose of public works projects isto "make the money circulate," but this cannot be done withoutdestroying Nature. Money is trashing the Earth.

"Money is the root of all evil. Since money appeared, all ofcreation has been dark, and greed and evil have ruled the world."Shoeki was already saying this in the middle of the Edo Period,before the advent of industrial society.

Money is the root of all the above evils, and if we do notimmediately (it may already be too late) banish it from theEarth, we will experience a most grave crisis, but since money isthe life blood of the city, banishing it will require anearthshaking occurrence, and the useless softies in the city willnot be able to bear it. They will put up a desperate struggle,and, using everything at their disposal (the cream of science andtechnology), they will try to preserve money. It is for this veryreason that we will be unable to avoid disaster.

This is a despairing situation. We must despair of banishingmoney, and we must despair of avoiding catastrophe. Previously Iexamined this problem from a different angle, and said that wemust not waste our effort trying to change something that ishopeless to change, but that we should begin by putting distancebetween ourselves and money. Should we continue to cling to, anddepend upon, that which is a weapon of plunder and the ultimatecause of destruction, the plundering will become worse, and wewill advance toward ruin with ever greater speed. Before anythingelse, we must cease our tightrope act. Getting away from moneywill not insure our safety, but we can at least avoid directentanglement. The more we depend upon economic ties with thecity, the greater is the danger, but the more distance we can putbetween ourselves and the city's poisons, the less chance thereis of our being dragged directly into the morass when the citybegins to disintegrate. To depend completely upon the city(listen up, you large-scale farmers!) while expecting at the sametime to come out unscathed when the city falls is like hoping forsafety in an airplane that is about to crash. When the citybegins to disintegrate, shrink, and recede, pollution will lessenand Nature's power of recovery will awaken by the same degree. Intime we will again have a livable environment.

Until that time comes, we must, without the help of the city,
establish ourselves so that we can survive without it. This is
the Bagworm Revolution.
City Prosperity, Country Destitution

Parting company with money is exactly the same as parting companywith the city. In Chapter VI, I wrote in detail about this, but Iwould like to make some comments here on lessening one'sdependence on the city, and increasing one's dependence onNature. Here I offer some concrete proposals for Natural CycleOrganic Farming.

Until relatively recently, almost all Japanese farmers practicedself-sufficient farming; they had some domestic animals, returnedthe manure and their own wastes to the Land, and fed themselvesand their animals with the food harvested from the Land. If onefarms thus, it is not at all difficult to be independent, and theblessings (i.e., interference) of the city are totallyunnecessary. Even though these farmers are independent, they werepoverty-stricken, but this was not at all due to theretrogressive and closed nature of self-sufficient agriculture.Their destitution was due fully to the high-handed plunder of thecity. You critics out there! You must not evade the realquestion. If the farmers of both former and modern ages weredestitute because of agriculture's retrogressive character, thenwhy is modern petroleum-based agriculture, as represented byAmerican agriculture, suffering under such onerous debts? Therehas never been any problem other than that which has alwaysdogged agriculture: the plunder of the city. The problem is thatthe critics and politicians take for granted their right to filltheir bellies without soiling their own hands.

Note that the proletariat and farmer literature of the recentpast examined in detail the destitution, greed, and ignorance ofthe farmers, and wrote that almost all of it had been broughtabout by the high-handedness of the bourgeoisie and the evillandlords, but this is ridiculous. As I demonstrated in ChapterV, the true criminals are the vast hordes of non-tilling,gluttonous idlers, the proletariat writers among them. Thelandlords, who were held up for criticism as the bad guys, weremerely the medium though which the city carried on its plunder.Such off-the-mark literary investigation does not even rate asnort.

If, as Shoeki wrote, we establish a system wherein emperors,scholars, and beggars all till the soil and produce their ownfood, then how can there possibly be "the glory that plunders,""the prosperity of the city," and "the destitution of thecountry"?

Independent Agriculture

Let us now imagine a kind of agriculture that is like the naturalcycle self-sufficient farming of former times (the kind they toldus needed nothing as long as they had salt), but which inaddition is not the object of plunder. And, using this as ablueprint, let us see how we can establish it in this modernworld, in which modern agriculture is flourishing.

Since I have some chickens, I will talk about this from my ownexperience of chicken farming. If one has chickens then rice isfree, vegetables are free, potatoes and fruit are free; thingswe human beings eat — that which keeps us alive — are all free.

Since I produce rice to feed myself, I do not sell it, and I donot produce much more than I need. And of course there is noneed to pile on agricultural chemicals. Even if for this reasonthe amount harvested drops a little, no one will complain. Aslong as I grow enough to eat for one year, it is not worthworrying about the amount of the harvest. If one applies poisonsand produces so much poisoned rice that one cannot eat it at all,the final result is only damage to one's health.

I sell a few eggs. Since they are natural eggs, they have greatvalue, sometimes selling for twice the market price. I feed thechickens many things that are ordinarily thrown away, so I spendabout half as much as usual on feed. Even when the chickens layfewer eggs than usual I always come out ahead. The money I getfrom these eggs represents what I described in Chapter VI: thesmallest possible link with the meddling city. With this money Ipay what I must, like taxes, contributions, education, and thelike. When the cities perish I will no longer need this money,and I will not have to sell eggs any more. When that time comes Iwill substantially reduce the number of chickens down to where Ican supply all their feed myself.

Every year I apply chicken manure to my fields to build up thesoil, so my plants are highly resistant to insects and disease.Of course there are insects, and disease sometimes occurs duringcold and wet weather. However, I have never lost everything toinsects or disease, and for the past 30 years I have always hadenough to eat.

Healthy human beings have resistance to worms, tuberculosis,tooth decay, and viruses, but sickly people are always sufferingillness. We can observe the same phenomenon in food plants. Ifone raises the plants organically and supplies them sufficientlywith the blessings of Nature (air, sunlight, water, the Land),one will have healthy plants that are highly resistant to diseaseand insects. Even if you lose 20 percent, the other 80 percentwill survive. We need only eat this to insure our own survival.This is what I mean by self-sufficient agriculture.

We must also supply ourselves with farm implements and items forhousehold use. Our forebears all did this, and that is why theyapparently "needed only salt." In addition, almost all of theseimplements were made of recyclable materials like bamboo, wood,and straw, where they did not have to live in fear of running outof underground resources, and they did not pollute theenvironment in their manufacture. What is more, once thesethings wore out, they could be discarded just as they were, forthey would in time decompose and return to the soil.

Is there any room in this kind of agriculture for contamination,destruction, and profligacy? What need is there of money, or ofliving in fear of the self-destruction brought about by money?

Become a Lone Wolf

To summarize: Independent farming signifies that which isindependent of money, and independence from money is the same asindependence from the city. Independence from the city meansindependence from government, from agricultural cooperatives,from the manufacturers and services, and, if we go a little bitfurther, independence from the consumers. The consumers are notbeing kind to the farmers by buying their produce; the farmersare blessing the consumers with what is left over after they growenough for themselves. So if we stop giving food to theconsumers, we will become independent of them.

The independence described above is independence from ourimmediate enemy, so our mission is clear. If one has thedetermination and resolution to carry through it should somehowbe possible. As a matter of fact, though our numbers are stillsmall, people doing just this are scattered throughout the entirecountry, so it is not at all impossible. Though difficult, onecan in fact avoid the disaster assured by our present society ofprosperity.

But there is one thing I would like to emphasize here, and it isthat we must endeavor to achieve an even more difficult kind ofindependence. Allow me to explain.

First of all, independence from one's neighbors (this can beconstrued as independence from custom, from convention, and fromhistory).

"Solidarity" and "cooperation" sound good, but in reality thismeans merely giving in to the meddling of one's neighbors, andwhat is more, those neighbors are repulsive cowards who havebeen dirtied by their toadying to the city. The "common sense"and "reality" that they value so highly are none other than theold customs that have been cultivated in order to make themnourish and preserve the city. Do you have the bravery to becomeindependent of these shackles?

The farmer spirit is almost the same as the sycophant spirit.That spirit of sycophancy — it is licking the boots of thefeudal lords, the landlords, the politicians, and theagricultural cooperatives; it is sucking up to the extravagantand self-centered city housewives, to the teachers, to thepolicemen, to the celebrities and writers and critics (justrecall the servile fawning of the farmer who is asked to saysomething on television in front of some celebrities).

That spirit of sycophancy is directly concerned with the farmernext door. If the neighbor does it, I will too. "What? Theneighbor got a new combine? Quick — call the co-op!" In theworld there are legions of farmers like this. They must stayabreast of their neighbors in everything. They cannot stand toget behind their neighbors in rice planting, harvesting,contributions, or travel.

But it is not only their neighbors. They observe the movements ofeveryone in the neighborhood, worrying so much about gettingbehind that they are quite forlorn. This mental state has beenbrought about by the strong will to stay together with the otherfarmers, a strategy which was meant to help them bear theoppression of the city. It is not mistaken to say that thiscrisis mentality — the constant fear of falling out of step withthe group and being trampled to death — has engendered thiscomplex toward "the farmer next door."

Every farmer should become a lone wolf. Any farmer who is notprepared to become a lone wolf is not qualified to preachindependent farming. Only a perverse person will establish trueindependence. "The neighbor planted his rice? Well then, I willwait another month before I plant mine." This kind of perversitywill bring about true independence. As long as one produces foodonly for oneself, why should it be necessary to keep watchingone's neighbors and worry about what they are doing? Even if youmake a mistake and harvest only half of what you had planned,then consume that half and survive on it. If that is not enough,then eat wild plants. Independent farming does not necessarilymean following in the footsteps of large-scale agriculture, whichproduces an overabundance of contaminated food and makes greatofferings of food to the city (in actuality, this is none otherthan urban-dependent agriculture).

Go ahead and laugh (it is the laugher who must expend theeffort; the act requires nothing of me), but we must plant whenand what we please. Still, this does not mean we should ignorethe right time to plant. It does not matter if we havecoincidental similarities with our neighbors. Perversity for thesake of perversity is not good.

If you want to reduce your acreage then do it without worryingabout government policy. If you are producing enough rice foryourself, then there is no need for any more paddy acreage.Instead produce beans or potatoes, or whatever you like. But whenyou reduce paddy acreage, you must not consider taking subsidiesfor it. This is just a clever government device for shacklingyou.* * *But there is an unfortunate side to this as well: We must evenconsider becoming independent of our families.

Even a family is an individual subject to independence. It has acharacter with its own individuality. Even the education mothers[53] know very well that things never go the way they wish. "Theneighbor has planted his rice," say Grandpa and wife, "so if wedon't plant ours soon, we'll become the laughing stock of thecounty." And they keep harping on this. If one plants rice tooearly it will grow too quickly, and one is sure to be visited byblight, leafhoppers, and blow-downs. Yet, one's family members,in their drive to do as the neighbors do, continue to insist onearly planting. But here is where one must firmly stand one'sground, and standing one's ground means independence from thefamily. No matter what Grandpa and the wife say, stand by yourown beliefs. If they will not listen, then let them plant theirown half early, and when their paddies are overrun with blightand insects, make sure they realize that it is their own fault.

Farmers should note well that true independence signifies anexistence of splendid isolation in which one holds to one's ownprinciples.* * *If in this way lone wolves (i.e., self sufficient, austere peopleof splendid isolation) populate the world, and if, no matterwhere one looks, there are only perverse farmers who do not toadyto the city, then before we know it (that is, without the needfor violence) and inevitably, the social revolution will havetaken place. The city, on its way to deconstruction, will beginto shrink (the city will not be able to bear the food shortage),[54] and the secondary and tertiary industries will find there isno way to stop their decline. Therefore the pollution of theEarth — the waste, contamination, and destruction — willdecrease precipitously, and we will be able to have a little hopefor the future of humanity and the Earth. It is then we willrealize that there is still a little hope of saving ourselves.When that time comes, we will want to tear down the now uselesscity buildings and return the Land to its original form, but wewill find that tearing them down and discarding the wasterequires vast amounts of energy, and that, no matter where wediscard this rubble it will cover Land, so the city may justbecome a huge ghost town. Therefore we must now try to preventits further spread.

The people will till the little remaining land, and willreproduce only as many people as that arable land will support.

Thus, if we take a cold, hard look at the future, we see thatthe only way for us to survive is to either exterminate the urbanpoison, or to eke out an existence as lone-wolf farmers.

Even if the city perishes, we must not let it take us down withitself.

Chapter IX Notes

Government bonds are ordinarily distributed among, and forcedoff on the city banks, and after a time the Bank of Japan paysthe interest and purchases them. Then the government buys themback from the Bank of Japan with the paper money it hasoverproduced. Problems such as whose account book the bonds arelisted in, when they will be redeemed, etc., are of onlysuperficial concern because the principle objective is to spreadoverproduced money around the country. It is just like a magiciantransforming leaves into wads of money, for there is hardly anysleight of hand which is as easy, advantageous, or interesting.And since every government in the world is competing in thismaneuver, no one can avoid inflationary government debts.Inflation during times of recession is a strange phenomenon thatowes its existence to this magician's trick. That is why everyyear sees a rise in prices and countering pay raises, as well asgreater amounts of money in circulation. On the other hand, ifthere were no inflation (i.e., if they did not print more moneyand flood the country with it), there would probably be anothereconomic panic as there was in the 1930s when the big capitalistshad all the money and everyone else had none.

One could say that the spirit of urban competition and glory hasbrought about excessive production, but this spirit has beennurtured by the money economy itself. It is no mistake to saythat, if there were no money, there would also not be such insanecompetition and glory-seeking.

Term describing a common type of mother in Japan. Since peopleare usually judged not by ability, but by their academiccredentials, the education mothers send their children to privateevening schools and make them study hard so the children will beable to pass the difficult examinations for the most prestigioushigh schools and universities. (Translator's note)

When this time comes, there will be no way to get by on importedfood. The city will forget that it has repeatedly invaded andplundered other countries, driving them to desperation, and will,in order to continue its own gluttony, attempt to maintain itsfood imports by force, ignoring the starvation of other peoples.But where on this depleted planet is the city going to find theland to nourish itself?

End of Project Gutenberg's Down with the Cities, by Tadashi Nakashima

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