# Chapter 2

# History of Japan's Sound Material-Cycle Society

History shows that Japan did once successfully create a society in harmony with nature, as did other countries and regions, based on “mottainai,” the spirit of avoiding being wasteful with goods and a desire to keep things clean. This white paper calls this the primitive sound material-cycle (SMC) society and examines it in detail.

This chapter looks back on the Edo and later eras to analyze what kinds of systems Japan formed as part of this primitive SMC Society. In the Edo era, there were systems that are still applicable to modern society and can still serve as useful models for certain countries today.

The later part of the chapter describes Japan’s 21st century path to a new SMC Society, while looking back over how Japan has, since the Meiji era, moved towards a mass-production and mass-consumption society in order to achieve economic growth.

## Section 1 The Edo era and its systems for a sustainable society

It is believed that, in the Edo era, Japan had a SMC Society driven mainly by community activities. Compared with the modern world, people in those days were engaged in social activities involving lower carbon emissions and they lived their lives with a deeper awareness of being in harmony with nature. Evidence from this period strongly suggests that a sustainable society can be established through the comprehensive promotion of a low-carbon society, a society in harmony with nature and a sound material-cycle society.

## (1) Edo's sanitary material-cycle system

The city of Edo is believed to have been more sanitary than any other city in the world at that time in history. This is because its social system was centered on rice-growing and all organic matter such as night soil and kitchen garbage was recycled as fertilizer and returned to the soil in rural villages so that it never remained in urban areas. Modern European cities failed to take such effective measures to dispose of night soil and, consequently, infectious diseases like the plague and cholera became rampant. In Japan, such diseases were relatively rare because night soil, which could potentially transmit pathogens, was made good use of and never left uncontrolled and unattended.

The concept of “SMC blocks,” spelled out in the new Fundamental Plan for the Establishing a SMC Society, emphasizes the significance of forming a material cycle of optimal size, in accordance with the regional characteristics and properties of circulative resources (CRs). In light of this, the following sections outline how Edo successfully created a SMC Society, establishing regional SMC blocks based on the characteristics of the communities and products involved.

## A Establishment of SMC blocks that take advantage of the characteristics of the communities and products involved

People in the Edo era considered it important to make the most of the characteristics of their local communities and products. For example, they used the expression “sanri shiho,” which means that you can stay healthy and live longer if you eat vegetables grown within a radius of three ri (approximately 12 kilometers). There seems to be some variation in the travel distances cited for vegetables, as demonstrated by similar expressions such as “shiri shiho” (within a radius of four ri) and “gori shiho” (five ri) in other regions. However, these expressions all stress the importance placed on the characteristics of local com-

[A farmer carrying night soil buckets]

Source: Yowatari Fuzoku Zue (Collected Genre Paintings of the World)