If human beings now carry through with their desire to make sudden changes in the species, there is a danger that the balance of the ecosystem will require a great upheaval (the iron hammer of Nature) in order to correct the distortion brought about by human violence and seek the next level of balance. This is Nature's retaliation.
Nature's retaliation will first of all attack human beings directly (in correcting the imbalance brought about by biotechnology, there is no better way than striking down its inventor, human beings).
If we continue eating strange new creations which are not of the earth and which violate the natural diet of human beings (for example, soybean protein cultured in tanks with colonic bacteria, or isomerized sugars and oligosaccharides made from transformed biomass) cell regeneration will be adversely affected, and assimilation will be disturbed. By changing our diets and ingesting synthetic chemical compounds we will increase the incidence of cancer and liver disorders.
Because the purveyors of news will perish as well, they will not give us the news that "humanity perished after eating artificial food." By producing our own food and by assimilating the blessings of Nature in our own locale, we can at least preserve the unurbanized portion of the land. The city will take a lot with it when it goes.
41
The reason Africa is turning into a wasteland is not because of drought, but because of the city's meddling. It was the deception of the city that made the native peoples of Africa, who formerly, though poor, managed to provide themselves with all their own food, believe they must escape poverty, keep domestic animals, destroy their verdure, and ultimately dig their own graves. (Rain clouds do not arise in regions with no trees. Droughts are man-made, and they further make it difficult to reestablish trees. In this way deserts form, and the land dies for good.)
42
It appears that the United States, in order to prepare for the future shortage of petroleum, is now embarking upon a policy of closing its own oil fields and depending solely upon imports. When the world's petroleum starts to run out and other countries begin to panic, the U.S. will quietly tap its own carefully stocked 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 with other countries, whether they be enemies or allies, and it will no doubt come under concentrated nuclear attack.
43
Gensuikin [The Japanese Congress against A and H Bombs] is expecting too much if they believe that world peace will come about with the disappearance of nuclear weapons. If you want to get rid of a skin eruption you must see to the health of your entire body; it does no good just to remove the eruption. Should you get rid of nuclear weapons but leave the city — totally dependent upon petroleum and other buried resources — just as it is, new eruptions will continue without end. Even if there are no nuclear weapons, new machines of mass killing will appear without end. In time the oil will begin to run out, and the city will sense that it is about to perish; at this point the Great Petroleum Grabfest will inevitably begin, and it will not matter whether or not there are nuclear weapons. After all, the city will be desperate. The city will no doubt use chemical weapons. It will spread deadly bacteria all over the place. It will use neutron bombs and death rays as well. The city will make use of the latest high technology, and all manner of new weapons which have been secretly developed will have their first battlefield tests here.
Once this war begins there will be none of those half-hearted attempts at talking peace. If, because of a reconciliation many human beings remain, the problem of who gets the oil will still remain, and everyone will feel as if they have not attained the object of their war, which is the maintenance of the prosperity of the indolent classes. In this war it is impermissible to allow the continued existence of those who do not belong to the indolent classes.
Prisoners of war and slaves are nothing but an impediment. As long as one has oil (and mineral resources) machinery will act as one's slaves and servants. That is why the urban indolent classes will 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, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, propane gas, instant noodles, bread, ice cream, sake, beer, cigarettes, songs, dancing, sports, television, newspapers, and magazines. These people are, in other words, the city people, the secondary/tertiary industry people. If they did not have oil, it would be impossible for them to maintain the civilization and culture I have described above, so to them oil has a greater and more necessary existence than does the Earth. The disappearance of oil is of greater significance to them than the disappearance of the Earth. This is why they will do everything in their power to seize the oil.
44
A company that allegedly cheated countless people out of great amounts of money by means of high-pressure sales tactics and fake gold. (Translator's note)
— Escaping the City, Becoming a Farmer —
Since the city is the Great Evil that will ruin humanity and theEarth, we must somehow get rid of it.
In order to accomplish this, it is important for as many people as possible to break away from the city and become independent farmers, and to take up Natural Cycle Farming, in which one does not depend upon the city, but only upon the blessings of Nature. It follows that the conventional professional farmers must extricate themselves from modern urbanized high-quantity agriculture and establish themselves in self-sufficient compound small-scale farming.
As the numbers of such farmers grow, the city will shrink and weaken, and when the effect has grown sufficiently, the city will perish.
A Society in which Everyone Farms Guarantees Our Future
Above is the blueprint for the eradication of the cities that I gave in Chapter V. To express it succinctly, it is the return to primitive communistic society in which everyone farms; it is the sliding back into an anarchistic agrarian society that has no need of state power; it is the realization of an agrarian society that has ceased all harmful and wasteful activities (i.e., the activities of the secondary and tertiary industries). [45]
Getting out of the city and beginning to farm is, as I noted in Chapter VI, easier said than done owing to a number of difficulties. Especially difficult to the city white collar worker is getting land.
I have repeatedly said that the agriculture problem is one of agrarian population, [46] and that the problem of the agrarian population is one of land. [47] Not only is the land problem the root of the agricultural problem, it is of such great significance that it influences, not only the city, but also all of humanity, all other living things, and yes, the fate of the entire Earth (just look at the present state of things — the city digs up the land and continues to cover it with concrete; the end result is that we will have starvation in the middle of convenience).
The Land Is Nature Itself
And now we arrive at the obvious question — who shall possess the Land? The answer is that it shall not be possessed by individuals; it is not the territory of local governments nor of nation-states; it was not meant for the public use of all the peoples of the world; and it is not held in common by all the living things on the Earth.
The Land is none other than Nature itself. Long before living things — including human beings — appeared on the Earth the Land already existed. It is therefore perfectly well for us to conclude that the Land belongs to no one; it is the Earth itself, it is Nature itself. So it is unpardonable for anyone, no matter who, to destroy or contaminate the Land. It is the vilest act of desecration to use the Land for selfish purposes, or to use it arbitrarily for the benefit of a group or a nation-state.
What is known to the city as construction and development is to Nature (the country) nothing less than violent acts of destruction and contamination. The countless large buildings in the big cities (which look like the many monuments in a cemetery), paved roads, amusement parks, subways, factories, and public facilities found in the country also tear up the Land and cover it with concrete. [48] None of these things can be made without hurting the Earth.
There is no need to go into detail over what will happen as the final result of destroying the Land and wounding the Earth. It is mistaken to believe that Nature will continue to put up with the high-handedness of the city. Nature has been bent almost as far as it can be bent, and when it reaches its limit it will slap back at us with a force equal to that exerted upon it (just like an 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 the Earth. We are hopelessly locked into the mechanism of the economic society, but if we do not put a stop to all construction work now, we will regret it forever. We must find the resolution to overthrow the economic society (the city). Material productive power is a poweful force that shackles us with money, so we must first of all reexamine material productive power, and then return to the ancient past (material productive power did surely not exist from the start) to see how things were.
What we will probably find is that, while there were no "rules of the economic society," there were the Laws of Nature. Since wild animals all live according to these laws you will never find a wolf or a pheasant destroying the Earth. What wild animal has ever tried to make the Land its private possession, and then used it for its own selfish purposes?
Abolish Private Ownership of Land
The Land is, most emphatically, the property of Nature, yea, it is Nature itself. Human beings also, when they use the Land, merely borrow it from Nature for the time they need it; when we have finished we must return it to Nature in its original state.
Returning the Land in its original state — this requires the abolition of private land ownership. Human beings, presumptuous as they are, mistakenly believe that the Land is their own, and that is why they harm it without a moment's reflection.
The same goes for farmland. Since farmland is treated as a private asset, people occupy it and try to increase their wealth; they fall prey to the idea that because it is their own they can do whatever they like with it (like contaminating it with agricultural chemicals); and they believe that land is a commodity, and so they scheme to make money by selling it. The culmination of these effects has brought about the present, all but hopeless, plight of agriculture. (Though it is called "agriculture," modern agriculture is actually a harmful practice and a rebellion against Nature. It is only natural cycle agriculture that can claim the right to borrow land from Nature.)
At first sight, it looks as though the private ownership of land engenders a feeling of loving attachment to one's farmland, and supports 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 to tear it up or sell it, that's my business." And particularly depressing is the fact that ruining the land before selling it brings 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 and building its fertility by applying great amounts of composted organic matter. Nowadays everyone farms their own land, but we see that in all parts of the country the farmland is going to ruin. (Another major factor influencing the degree of farmland deterioration is the amount of imported food.)
So what I would like to see the government do here is, in place of Nature, take full responsibility for the preservation of the Land, and embark upon a program of national management (it is of course best if we can live like animals in Nature, for they experience no disorder even without government, [50] but since it will be some time before we reach that stage, this is the one thing I would like the government to do).
Private ownership of farmland (and all other land, too, for that matter) should be abolished, and the government, acting on behalf of Nature, should lend the farmland to those who wish to till it, and only for the time they actually use it. When the tiller has finished, the land is returned, and the government lends it to the next person. If the government reorganizes the present Registry Office and brings in the necessary personnel, they should be able to take care of this much without the use of computers. If they attach a serial number to each plot and lend farmland according to the number of family members, this could be done even without the Ministry of Agriculture. Even if everyone in Japan decides to farm, and requests flood the Registry Office, there should be about five ares of land for each person, which is enough to grow one's own food. Needless to say, the large-scale farms should be dismantled.
Even if those in the city want to farm but can find no land by themselves, we should be able to help them find it. We must not overlook the fact that those who have had it with big city life (or those who sense the danger in big city life) are burning with the desire to take up farming. Without these conditions, it is 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 faulty policy is responsible for the drop in the farming population, and the rise of the urban population.
The sons and daughters of farmers, who show aversion to farming are free to seek destruction by moving to the city, but urbanites who fear the collapse of the city are unfortunately prevented from leaving because of the land ownership system. It seems to me that, rather than those who hate farming and run to the city, the urbanites who, deeply concerned with the future of humanity, have given up on the city and burn with the desire to take up farming, will be of far more use to the future of humanity and the Earth. * * * And now a word to those who, hunkering down in the city, continue to dream of a luxurious and pleasant life:
As long as you exploit the farmers, and live in the city with the intention of continuing your easy, gluttonous lifestyle without dirtying your own hands, it is only natural that you must be satisfied with very little space and with an anti-Nature environment. That is urbanization. If the population did not abandon the country, gather together in one place, and destroy the natural environment, urbanization would be impossible.
Not satisfied with their cramped quarters and unpleasant environment, the deluded politicians and arrogant urbanites came up with the "Urban Planning Law," which is legislation meant to seize more farmland, and by means of this law they force the conversion of more farmland into urbanized areas. The urbanites had best not forget that the farmland which they desire to urbanize produces the food that keeps them alive. Perhaps they want to live in great mansions without eating anything.
The spacious gardens we find in the Tanaka Mansion and other such places should be used to grow soybeans and vegetables, and the urban residents, including the rich, should put up with living in cramped, high-rise buildings. It is only natural that such people, seeking ease in the city, pay such a price. Though their buildings fall over in an earthquake, and though they are cramped and stuffy, they must accept these conditions. When the time comes, as it inevitably will, they will have to make up for the shortage of imported food by growing their own in baseball fields, parks, and roadsides. * * * In the dominating classes of the present system there are great numbers of people who, using the institution of private land ownership as a basis to make money, attempt to maintain their own superior position (there are very few famous politicians who have never conducted any land dealings), so hoping for the abolition of this institution is like seeking hot water under the ice. To these dominators, losing land (or losing the means to pacify the land-dazzled dominated classes with land) means loosing everything, and that everything is power and property; they would be cutting their own throats. Since abolishing private land ownership is far easier said than done, we must push forward with our plans for escape from the city and taking up farming while under the present system.
It is fine for those with financial resources to buy land in an depopulated part of the country, but it is not advisable for those without money to borrow it and buy land.
Money moves around according to the laws of business and industry, so trying to match it to the speed of agriculture, which is bound by the laws of Nature (an extremely slow-paced productivity) is like entering an automobile race with a horse-drawn cart. Unless one is, from the very beginning, prepared for failure, it is dangerous to borrow money to get one'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 back for the rest of your life. No matter how much you work the amount you owe will not diminish, but will in fact increase steadily due to the devilish plundering effect of money (a stratagem known as the market principle). Thus it is best to borrow or rent land first.
The age when people inherited farms from their parents is coming to a close. Children who grew up watching their parents labor hard on the farm rarely ever choose to follow in their parents' footsteps, and experiences. Of course things are different for people who are in line to be doctors, teachers, or actors — professions which can skim the sweet juices (jobs which, no matter how hard one must study, offer far greater financial rewards than farming) — but most farm children choose not to follow in their parents' footsteps, so they study hard, get into a university, and choose a fruitful profession (one that makes them a lot of money).
The eldest son (almost all children are eldest sons) goes to the university, gets a job, and settles down in the city. In time his parents on the farm grow old, and find that there is no one to inherit the farm and carry on the work; the parents cannot, at this point, demand that their son return to the farm, and the son, for his part, has gained a respectable position, and does not want to sacrifice this in order to become a farmer (besides, he has tasted fully the sweetness of idleness and gluttony, and could not possibly, in such a physical condition, take on the work of a farmer). So he has no choice but to take in his aging parents and look after them. And thus the reduction in the farming population continues.
This phenomenon can be found in every farming village in the country. The people who flowed into the city on the crest of the rapid economic growth tidal wave are now, 30 years later, finding that the time has come to take in their parents, whether they like it or not. This problem will grow rapidly more serious within 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 will be gathered up and passed into the hands of aggressive farm operators (i.e., those who affirm the good of mass offerings to the city and who like to be on the receiving end of the city's plundering), whereupon they will increase the scale of their operations and carry on with the industrialization of agriculture (this is known as the "intensive" use of farmland). Because of this policy most of the farmland will either be sucked up by such farmers, or will be invaded and exploited by other industries.
However, this policy will be successful only in the easily-accessible farming villages. There will be no dilettantes who, knowing from the start that they will lose money, will rent much farmland in the inconvenient mountain villages where people never made much money to start with. We can therefore expect the farmland in the remote villages to fall into permanent disuse after 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 land and get started. Long ago human beings lived and survived in the foothills of the mountains, so such a place — the border between the plains and the mountains, is certainly the ideal environment for 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 an inconvenient mountain village to take up farming, it is impossible to guarantee that one will thus be able to survive into the twenty-first century. Even if, in the event of a nuclear war, one managed to avoid a full-scale nuclear attack, the Earth will cool as a result of nuclear war, and agriculture will suffer a severe blow. There is no assurance that those who have left the city and taken up farming in the mountains will be safe. One may of course conceal about two years' worth of grain in a pit solo, but there are yet difficult problems such as residual radiation and the pillaging of starving people.
Still, when the city destroys itself by means of its own poisons (the peace of waste, contamination, and destruction), the independent farmers will not, as the modernized mass-offering farmers will, be dragged down with it.
I shall explain the reason for this in the final chapter.
45
[The author actually uses a term meaning literally "all the members of an ethnic group farm."] The reason I say "ethnic-group farming" instead of "citizen farming" is because I deny the existence of the nation-state. I believe that the nation-state is a power structure, a structure of domination and plunder (i.e., the root of urban evils). If we negate the great evils of the nation-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 an ethnic group or race.
On the other hand, the use of distinguishing terms like "ethnic group" and "race" breeds racism, small-mindedness, and exclusivism, so perhaps it would be better to employ terms like "humanity" or "Earth people."
But since my discussion in this chapter concerns mainly the island country of Japan, I will ask the reader's indulgence and slip by with this makeshift term.
46
A social structure in which few farmers feed a great number of idlers forces the farmers into labor-saving, high-yield, mass-supply agriculture, and this necessitates the heavy use of agricultural chemicals and chemical fertilizers, as well as making the farmers neglect the application of compost to the land. The inevitable result is oil-soaked fields and a kind of agriculture characterized by contamination, plunder, and destruction. One could also say that the idlers, by means of the progress of science and technology, have promoted the mechanization and contamination of agriculture, thus making it possible for a handful of farmers to feed legions of idlers. The city sucks up everything.
Therefore food contamination is, simply put, brought about by the social structure, not by the laziness and greed of farmers.
Needless to say, the contempt for agriculture and the priority of the secondary and tertiary industries are also causes of the fall in the farming population. When over half the people were farmers, half the content of our language and song books were based in the farming villages, and the stories and songs glorified agriculture and the farmers, but now that less than half the population are farmers, such stories and songs have all but disappeared. For the same reason, one rarely if ever sees the farming villages or the farmers in television shows or in the piles of magazines and novels.
In this case it is an inversion to say that the contempt for agriculture and the respect for urban industries have brought about the reduction in the farm population. Changes in the social structure are brought about by the power relationships of material productive capacity (or the money economy); social trends and consciousness is merely a reflection of such.
Therefore the contempt for agriculture is not a problem of education or attitude, but decidedly one of social structure.
47
This is the main theme of this chapter, and so I will write in more detail about this later. But now I would like to emphasize here that increasing the agrarian population (that is, sending the secondary/tertiary population back to the farms), getting everyone to pull weeds by hand, make compost, give up agricultural chemicals, and produce modest quantities of clean vegetables, while being our goal, is quite impossible and unrealistic unless we solve the land problem.
48
There is no other building material which has so well built the arrogant city and wrought such damage to the Land as concrete. Has there ever been an instance in which cement was used for a purpose other than to plaster over the Land? Whether it is made into buildings, fences, wharves, Hume pipe, or to make channels, its ultimate role is inevitably to block off the Land. So for every bag of cement that is produced, that much more of the Land will be covered over. And the cement factories are running at full capacity every day, turning out great amounts of cement (to cover over the Land), and sending it to be sold in the city. "Urbanization" can now be perfectly equated to "concretization."
49
Nostradamus hinted that "the crisis of humanity will come raining down from the sky," but, while I have no intention of contending with the Great Nostradamus, I believe that the crisis of humanity will come from the Land — not as fast as falling from the sky, but just as surely.
I have said it many times, and I will say it again: As long as our present "peace" continues as it is — destruction of the forests, desertification, the loss of topsoil and the accumulation of salts, the contamination of soil and water with synthetic 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 without sacrificing 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 a scaled-down life, a life of regression and austerity. To put it another way, our survival depends solely upon the disappearance of the Maker of Peace (the peace of prosperity and ease), that is, the city.
50
The reason wars over land do not occur in the natural world as they do in the human world is because other living things take and accumulate no more than they need. A lion kills no more than it needs to eat its fill, and a sparrow will not store up more insects and seeds after it has eaten enough. Only human beings, for whatever reason, establish economic societies, and go wild over the accumulation of wealth. If we too do not know sufficiency we will surely perish. Wild (natural) animals should be our model.
Of all the occupations on Earth, the only one that allows us to be independent is farming. All occupations other than farming must depend at least upon agriculture, or else they have no source of life; for this reason independence is impossible. If, as a result of their contempt for agriculture, the other occupations try to become independent of it, their practitioners will 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 seek excesses such as convenience, extravagance, and ease, and is prepared for a life of austerity, it is possible to become totally independent.
What on earth do people mean, then, when they say, "It's impossible to get along just by farming. One can't keep food on the table by being a farmer"? It is one thing if one is referring to factories or apartment buildings in the concrete cities, but such a remark is quite incomprehensible if the speaker is a person who has the land which produces the food by which he can keep himself alive. But of course we know that these people mean it is impossible for them to acquire the trinkets and gimcracks and pleasures that urban extravagance offers.
The secondary and tertiary industries, in their infinite mercy, make their governments grant subsidies to agriculture, which is the only occupation on earth capable of independence, but this is nothing less than a clever reversal meant to pull the wool over our eyes. That agriculture must continually curry favor with others as well as suffer great difficulties is without a doubt because of the deception, dirty tricks, and schemes of Money (or the 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 the interference of the secondary and tertiary industries, it must first become independent of money. Money cheats the farmers; the devilish machinery of the money economy makes the farmers take on debts, and its phantom money (loans) make double plunder possible.
Note well that the ultimate cause of the farmers' privation lies in the exchange of food for pieces of paper, and that subsidies are mere bait to prepare for plunder.
Money: An Instrument of Plunder
The mint churns out tons of money, and with government bonds as the medium, wads of this money roll to all corners of the country (as, for example, the salaries of public employees and appropriations for public works projects). [51] Some of this paper money is saved, and some of it is used to buy food. If you take it to the store and throw it into a shopping basket, it changes magically into food. So there is absolutely no basis for asserting that money will not be used for the plunder of food. If there were no such plunder by means of money, it would be impossible for the city to survive for even a day unless it took food by force.
Let us assume now that part of that money which was saved is now lent out to the farmers in the form of agricultural loans. It will be immediately consumed by the purchase of machinery, fertilizers, and agricultural chemicals, whereby it is returned to the pockets of Capital; all that remains with the farmers are debts. And just as I pointed out before, these debts contribute, over a long period of time, to the plunder of agricultural products. In order to pay back their loans, the farmers must work themselves into the ground, continually offering great quantities of farm products to the city.
Money is none other than a weapon for the purpose of ripping off agricultural produce.
Control of Agriculture with Debts
During a meeting at which was discussed the internationalization of agriculture, Ibuka Masaru, the Honorary President of Sony, said that "Agriculture has only 1/1,500th the productive power of industry." Since money as well is produced at 1,500 times the efficiency of food, it too functions according to the same logic as industry does. (For example, let us say that you borrow money from the bank. If you turn out goods at the rate of several tens a minute, you can pay back the principle with interest in only a short time. Or, if you move several thousand units of your product around in a certain way, you can always pay back the money you borrowed for capital.) But Nature moves according to very slow rhythms, and agriculture is bound by the laws of Nature; to try and make agriculture move at the fast pace of money 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 be for business or industry (or even if one gets someone to pay the interest for one — for example, a subsidy), it will be quite impossible to pay back the loan by means of agricultural produce alone.
The same goes for dairy farmers in Hokkaido, for those who raise cattle, for those who raise broilers and laying chickens, for citrus farmers, for mechanized farmers, and even for the American farmer, the incarnation of the large-scale modern farming method (it is said that, as of 1985, American agriculture is 54 trillion in debt). And this is not the only way money oppresses agriculture, for it has yet to rout the farmer decisively. * * * If, for example, there is a bumper crop of cabbage, the total cost of harvest, sorting, packing, shipping and kickbacks at the market is sometimes far greater than the selling price of the cabbage. The more the farmers ship, the more money they lose, and so there are times when they plow the cabbage into the fields with 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 idiotic system? And that is money economics for you — the devilish machine (the market principle) invented by the city.
It is quite true that, after a certain point, one needs no more agricultural products since stuffing oneself full might bring about digestive disorders. An excess of other products will not bring about indigestion, and as long as one has a place to put them, it is possible to have many in order to feed one's vanity. It is the market principle that takes advantage of this one weak point of agriculture.
The market principle — another way of expressing this is "business." For example, the price of eggs is not decided as a result of competitive selling on the market; in actuality, a few market big shots make the decision after seeing how many and what kind of eggs are being shipped into the market at Tokyo. Local prices are based upon the price in Tokyo, so when Tokyo gets a lot of eggs, the price in other places is low even if there are not enough eggs. Therefore the market principle is a business technique, 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 the farmers. "This year the price of tea is higher than ever. Give it everything 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 run breathlessly to the farmers with a telegram in hand: "This is terrible! I've just received a telegram from Yokohama — the price for new tea has fallen to rock bottom!" Thus it was the simplest thing for the merchant to use business technique to deceive the farmers.
Thus the merchants, waving the golden banner of "market principle," used the necessity and preservability of agricultural products to their own advantage. We must not fall for such tricks. Food is none other than that which supports life. Even if the harvest brings in more than is needed, the food that ends up in the stomachs of the idlers must have, as that which supports their lives, a very great value. If, Mr. Ibuka, agriculture has only 1/1,500th the productive capacity of industry, then agricultural produce must have 1,500 times the value of industrial products, right? This is the true market principle, and the just appropriation of value. A proper deal would exchange 1,500 transistor radios at 30,000 each for one bag of rice.
Thus the market principle is a tricky scheme whereby the merchants do the same with the essential portion of agricultural produce (i.e., that which goes into the bellies of the idlers) as they do with the excess — they cause the price to hit rock bottom. In Nature, where there is no such scheming, there is also no market principle. No matter how many zebras there are, if all it takes is one to fill the belly of a lion, the lion will find infinite value in that one zebra.
Therefore, the market principle is the illegitimate child of the money economy. Merchants cannot carry on business without money. It is money that causes prices to nose-dive. With bartering, it is impossible to get a head of cabbage from someone without giving something fair in return. Getting that head of cabbage without giving something of like value in return is robbery, pure and simple. The techniques of business, then, are the same as the laws by which robbers operate.
We must get rid of the robbers. We must also get rid of the city, which inevitably brings robbers into existence. And we must get rid of money, which makes possible the functions and activities of the city. If we allow the continued existence of money, it will not only keep plundering agriculture, but it will also destroy us.
Getting away from Money: The Bagworm Revolution
Money makes us squander resources, destroy Nature, and contaminate the environment. These urban evils (the activities of the city) are all carried out "under duress" because of money. It is because of money (the pursuit of profit) that, even though there 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 more construction work to do. The purpose of public works projects is to "make the money circulate," but this cannot be done without destroying Nature. Money is trashing the Earth.
"Money is the root of all evil. Since money appeared, all of creation 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 not immediately (it may already be too late) banish it from the Earth, we will experience a most grave crisis, but since money is the life blood of the city, banishing it will require an earthshaking occurrence, and the useless softies in the city will not be able to bear it. They will put up a desperate struggle, and, using everything at their disposal (the cream of science and technology), they will try to preserve money. It is for this very reason that we will be unable to avoid disaster.
This is a despairing situation. We must despair of banishing money, and we must despair of avoiding catastrophe. Previously I examined this problem from a different angle, and said that we must not waste our effort trying to change something that is hopeless to change, but that we should begin by putting distance between ourselves and money. Should we continue to cling to, and depend upon, that which is a weapon of plunder and the ultimate cause of destruction, the plundering will become worse, and we will advance toward ruin with ever greater speed. Before anything else, we must cease our tightrope act. Getting away from money will not insure our safety, but we can at least avoid direct entanglement. The more we depend upon economic ties with the city, the greater is the danger, but the more distance we can put between ourselves and the city's poisons, the less chance there is of our being dragged directly into the morass when the city begins to disintegrate. To depend completely upon the city (listen up, you large-scale farmers!) while expecting at the same time to come out unscathed when the city falls is like hoping for safety in an airplane that is about to crash. When the city begins to disintegrate, shrink, and recede, pollution will lessen and Nature's power of recovery will awaken by the same degree. In time 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 isthe Bagworm Revolution.City Prosperity, Country Destitution
Parting company with money is exactly the same as parting company with the city. In Chapter VI, I wrote in detail about this, but I would like to make some comments here on lessening one's dependence on the city, and increasing one's dependence on Nature. Here I offer some concrete proposals for Natural Cycle Organic Farming.
Until relatively recently, almost all Japanese farmers practiced self-sufficient farming; they had some domestic animals, returned the manure and their own wastes to the Land, and fed themselves and their animals with the food harvested from the Land. If one farms thus, it is not at all difficult to be independent, and the blessings (i.e., interference) of the city are totally unnecessary. Even though these farmers are independent, they were poverty-stricken, but this was not at all due to the retrogressive and closed nature of self-sufficient agriculture. Their destitution was due fully to the high-handed plunder of the city. You critics out there! You must not evade the real question. If the farmers of both former and modern ages were destitute because of agriculture's retrogressive character, then why is modern petroleum-based agriculture, as represented by American agriculture, suffering under such onerous debts? There has never been any problem other than that which has always dogged agriculture: the plunder of the city. The problem is that the critics and politicians take for granted their right to fill their bellies without soiling their own hands.
Note that the proletariat and farmer literature of the recent past examined in detail the destitution, greed, and ignorance of the farmers, and wrote that almost all of it had been brought about by the high-handedness of the bourgeoisie and the evil landlords, but this is ridiculous. As I demonstrated in Chapter V, the true criminals are the vast hordes of non-tilling, gluttonous idlers, the proletariat writers among them. The landlords, who were held up for criticism as the bad guys, were merely the medium though which the city carried on its plunder. Such off-the-mark literary investigation does not even rate a snort.
If, as Shoeki wrote, we establish a system wherein emperors, scholars, and beggars all till the soil and produce their own food, then how can there possibly be "the glory that plunders," "the prosperity of the city," and "the destitution of the country"?
Independent Agriculture
Let us now imagine a kind of agriculture that is like the natural cycle self-sufficient farming of former times (the kind they told us needed nothing as long as they had salt), but which in addition is not the object of plunder. And, using this as a blueprint, let us see how we can establish it in this modern world, in which modern agriculture is flourishing.
Since I have some chickens, I will talk about this from my own experience of chicken farming. If one has chickens then rice is free, vegetables are free, potatoes and fruit are free; things we 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 do not produce much more than I need. And of course there is no need to pile on agricultural chemicals. Even if for this reason the amount harvested drops a little, no one will complain. As long as I grow enough to eat for one year, it is not worth worrying about the amount of the harvest. If one applies poisons and 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 great value, sometimes selling for twice the market price. I feed the chickens many things that are ordinarily thrown away, so I spend about half as much as usual on feed. Even when the chickens lay fewer eggs than usual I always come out ahead. The money I get from these eggs represents what I described in Chapter VI: the smallest possible link with the meddling city. With this money I pay what I must, like taxes, contributions, education, and the like. 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 I will substantially reduce the number of chickens down to where I can supply all their feed myself.
Every year I apply chicken manure to my fields to build up the soil, so my plants are highly resistant to insects and disease. Of course there are insects, and disease sometimes occurs during cold and wet weather. However, I have never lost everything to insects or disease, and for the past 30 years I have always had enough to eat.
Healthy human beings have resistance to worms, tuberculosis, tooth decay, and viruses, but sickly people are always suffering illness. We can observe the same phenomenon in food plants. If one raises the plants organically and supplies them sufficiently with the blessings of Nature (air, sunlight, water, the Land), one will have healthy plants that are highly resistant to disease and insects. Even if you lose 20 percent, the other 80 percent will 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 for household use. Our forebears all did this, and that is why they apparently "needed only salt." In addition, almost all of these implements were made of recyclable materials like bamboo, wood, and straw, where they did not have to live in fear of running out of underground resources, and they did not pollute the environment in their manufacture. What is more, once these things wore out, they could be discarded just as they were, for they 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 of living in fear of the self-destruction brought about by money?
Become a Lone Wolf
To summarize: Independent farming signifies that which is independent of money, and independence from money is the same as independence from the city. Independence from the city means independence from government, from agricultural cooperatives, from the manufacturers and services, and, if we go a little bit further, independence from the consumers. The consumers are not being kind to the farmers by buying their produce; the farmers are blessing the consumers with what is left over after they grow enough for themselves. So if we stop giving food to the consumers, we will become independent of them.
The independence described above is independence from our immediate enemy, so our mission is clear. If one has the determination and resolution to carry through it should somehow be possible. As a matter of fact, though our numbers are still small, people doing just this are scattered throughout the entire country, so it is not at all impossible. Though difficult, one can in fact avoid the disaster assured by our present society of prosperity.
But there is one thing I would like to emphasize here, and it is that we must endeavor to achieve an even more difficult kind of independence. Allow me to explain.
First of all, independence from one's neighbors (this can be construed as independence from custom, from convention, and from history).
"Solidarity" and "cooperation" sound good, but in reality this means merely giving in to the meddling of one's neighbors, and what is more, those neighbors are repulsive cowards who have been dirtied by their toadying to the city. The "common sense" and "reality" that they value so highly are none other than the old customs that have been cultivated in order to make them nourish and preserve the city. Do you have the bravery to become independent of these shackles?
The farmer spirit is almost the same as the sycophant spirit. That spirit of sycophancy — it is licking the boots of the feudal lords, the landlords, the politicians, and the agricultural cooperatives; it is sucking up to the extravagant and self-centered city housewives, to the teachers, to the policemen, to the celebrities and writers and critics (just recall the servile fawning of the farmer who is asked to say something on television in front of some celebrities).
That spirit of sycophancy is directly concerned with the farmer next door. If the neighbor does it, I will too. "What? The neighbor got a new combine? Quick — call the co-op!" In the world there are legions of farmers like this. They must stay abreast of their neighbors in everything. They cannot stand to get behind their neighbors in rice planting, harvesting, contributions, or travel.
But it is not only their neighbors. They observe the movements of everyone in the neighborhood, worrying so much about getting behind that they are quite forlorn. This mental state has been brought about by the strong will to stay together with the other farmers, a strategy which was meant to help them bear the oppression of the city. It is not mistaken to say that this crisis mentality — the constant fear of falling out of step with the group and being trampled to death — has engendered this complex toward "the farmer next door."
Every farmer should become a lone wolf. Any farmer who is not prepared to become a lone wolf is not qualified to preach independent farming. Only a perverse person will establish true independence. "The neighbor planted his rice? Well then, I will wait another month before I plant mine." This kind of perversity will bring about true independence. As long as one produces food only for oneself, why should it be necessary to keep watching one's neighbors and worry about what they are doing? Even if you make 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 necessarily mean following in the footsteps of large-scale agriculture, which produces an overabundance of contaminated food and makes great offerings of food to the city (in actuality, this is none other than urban-dependent agriculture).
Go ahead and laugh (it is the laugher who must expend the effort; the act requires nothing of me), but we must plant when and what we please. Still, this does not mean we should ignore the right time to plant. It does not matter if we have coincidental similarities with our neighbors. Perversity for the sake of perversity is not good.
If you want to reduce your acreage then do it without worrying about government policy. If you are producing enough rice for yourself, then there is no need for any more paddy acreage. Instead produce beans or potatoes, or whatever you like. But when you reduce paddy acreage, you must not consider taking subsidies for it. This is just a clever government device for shackling you. * * * But there is an unfortunate side to this as well: We must even consider becoming independent of our families.
Even a family is an individual subject to independence. It has a character with its own individuality. Even the education mothers [53] know very well that things never go the way they wish. "The neighbor has planted his rice," say Grandpa and wife, "so if we don't plant ours soon, we'll become the laughing stock of the county." And they keep harping on this. If one plants rice too early it will grow too quickly, and one is sure to be visited by blight, leafhoppers, and blow-downs. Yet, one's family members, in their drive to do as the neighbors do, continue to insist on early planting. But here is where one must firmly stand one's ground, and standing one's ground means independence from the family. No matter what Grandpa and the wife say, stand by your own beliefs. If they will not listen, then let them plant their own half early, and when their paddies are overrun with blight and insects, make sure they realize that it is their own fault.
Farmers should note well that true independence signifies an existence of splendid isolation in which one holds to one's own principles. * * * If in this way lone wolves (i.e., self sufficient, austere people of splendid isolation) populate the world, and if, no matter where one looks, there are only perverse farmers who do not toady to the city, then before we know it (that is, without the need for violence) and inevitably, the social revolution will have taken place. The city, on its way to deconstruction, will begin to shrink (the city will not be able to bear the food shortage), [54] and the secondary and tertiary industries will find there is no way to stop their decline. Therefore the pollution of the Earth — the waste, contamination, and destruction — will decrease precipitously, and we will be able to have a little hope for the future of humanity and the Earth. It is then we will realize that there is still a little hope of saving ourselves. When that time comes, we will want to tear down the now useless city buildings and return the Land to its original form, but we will find that tearing them down and discarding the waste requires vast amounts of energy, and that, no matter where we discard this rubble it will cover Land, so the city may just become a huge ghost town. Therefore we must now try to prevent its further spread.
The people will till the little remaining land, and will reproduce only as many people as that arable land will support.
Thus, if we take a cold, hard look at the future, we see that the only way for us to survive is to either exterminate the urban poison, or to eke out an existence as lone-wolf farmers.
Even if the city perishes, we must not let it take us down with itself.
51
Government bonds are ordinarily distributed among, and forced off on the city banks, and after a time the Bank of Japan pays the interest and purchases them. Then the government buys them back from the Bank of Japan with the paper money it has overproduced. Problems such as whose account book the bonds are listed in, when they will be redeemed, etc., are of only superficial concern because the principle objective is to spread overproduced money around the country. It is just like a magician transforming leaves into wads of money, for there is hardly any sleight of hand which is as easy, advantageous, or interesting. And since every government in the world is competing in this maneuver, no one can avoid inflationary government debts. Inflation during times of recession is a strange phenomenon that owes its existence to this magician's trick. That is why every year sees a rise in prices and countering pay raises, as well as greater amounts of money in circulation. On the other hand, if there were no inflation (i.e., if they did not print more money and flood the country with it), there would probably be another economic panic as there was in the 1930s when the big capitalists had all the money and everyone else had none.
52
One could say that the spirit of urban competition and glory has brought about excessive production, but this spirit has been nurtured by the money economy itself. It is no mistake to say that, if there were no money, there would also not be such insane competition and glory-seeking.
53
Term describing a common type of mother in Japan. Since people are usually judged not by ability, but by their academic credentials, the education mothers send their children to private evening schools and make them study hard so the children will be able to pass the difficult examinations for the most prestigious high schools and universities. (Translator's note)
54
When this time comes, there will be no way to get by on imported food. The city will forget that it has repeatedly invaded and plundered other countries, driving them to desperation, and will, in order to continue its own gluttony, attempt to maintain its food imports by force, ignoring the starvation of other peoples. But where on this depleted planet is the city going to find the land to nourish itself?
End of Project Gutenberg's Down with the Cities, by Tadashi Nakashima