If the co-op threatens us with no more loans, no more

fertilizer, and no more agricultural chemicals, this is actually

something 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 government

can, it is all right to refuse their every request without

worrying about being arrested and thrown in jail.

* * *

Since religion is a narcotic used as a means of plunder, one must

resolve never to fall for any of their tricks. The only thing we

need consider important are the laws of Nature. Though it was

never possible for the gods and Buddha to be Good, they make them

look like a bundle of Good, and, using this to their own

advantage (that is, for plundering), they make judgments

concerning Good and Evil; it is this deceptiveness of the

established religions which we must pass judgment on. The

judgments of the gods and Buddha must be those of Nature. Truth,

equality, cold impartiality -- the Net of Heaven lets no

rebellion against Nature go unpunished. If the religions use the

magisterial authority of the gods and Buddha to extort, establish

themselves in idleness and gluttony, bring about the

contamination of their food by joining the city in exploiting the

farmers, and take part in the city's plundering, prodigality, and

destruction, then Nature (the gods) will surely make them pay.

Even if one says, "Stick it up your nose!" to the gods, one will

not be punished, but no matter how much one prostrates oneself

before the gods, if, at the same time, one contaminates the Land

and 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 of

austerity. So it should not be worth getting excited if, quite

suddenly, things like televisions, cars, cameras, computers,

videotape machines, pianos, refrigerators, and washing machines

disappear from our lives. Having them is convenient, but even if

we do not have them, there should be no problem. In fact, such

things only bring about sloth, obesity, and surfeit, not to

mention the pollution engendered by their production and use. It

is stupid to shackle ourselves to the city for such things.

Just because we cannot go see a play or take a trip does not

mean that harm will befall us, so there should be nothing to

worry about. Living without such things does not even require the

aforementioned warmup; as long as we have our minds made up to

live without them it does not matter even if they disappear

tomorrow. Though it may be all right if we make occasional use of

needless things during the period of transition, we must not run

after them crying when the time comes to bid a final farewell. No

matter how often the government and big business enjoin us to

consume more in order to improve the economy, we should calmly

ignore them. We must not forget that the best action we can take

to bring about the contraction of the cities is to live a life of

austerity, 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] animals

want, search for, and find value in? They desire no government,

they desire no agricultural cooperatives, they desire no

education or learning, paintings, travel, glory, or praise and

recognition (no medals and awards). They desire food (finding

food sums up their existence) and a simple place to sleep. And a

little sex once or twice a year...

With only those things wild animals find everything they need to

live out their lives. To them, all other things (like education,

government, religion, the Tee Vee, automobiles, travel, and

medals -- that is, the city) have not the slightest value

whatsoever. Even automobiles worth millions of yen, and

paintings worth billions of yen are not worth a pig's tail to

them. It is only human beings who madly seek things which are, to

the sustenance of life, utterly worthless, thereby bringing upon

themselves 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 for

survival. The sun, air, water, the land -- these are by far and

without a doubt the most precious things to us. Yet, even if we

do not seek them, Nature will give us unlimited amounts free. Or

perhaps 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. Just

as with wild animals, if human beings have food, a modest

dwelling, and clothing, it is possible to survive,

self-sufficient and independent. Most other things are add-ons,

playthings, luxuries, trouble, disaster (like recessions), and

poisons (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 other

things, especially those which are to Nature worthless and

harmful -- convenience, extravagance, ease, glory, praise, and

all other urban paraphernalia -- it would be best to shut them

out of our lives from the start.

One does not need gorgeous clothing. The desire for beautiful

clothing is the desire for a means to conceal one's own

shortcomings. Clothes make the man, as they say; trying to

increase one's own value by dressing in fine clothes is a way of

advertising one's own worthlessness. A uniform is a means of

boasting of the city's power; military uniforms, medals,

parliamentary ID tags, and priests' splendorous robes are all

means of domination devised to make people bow down before them.

And decorating armor and helmets, which are supposedly meant to

ward off arrows and swords, was the creation of display

calculated to impress, not only one's enemies, but also allies

and common people with one's majesty.

If the stable boy gets nice clothes, then why not a military

uniform on a fox, and a fancy kimono on a badger? But whether or

not their status rises as a result is another matter. First of

all, they hate wearing such troublesome things, and will show

considerable resistance if someone tries to put them on; you may

not be able to get them on the animal at all. It is because they

are natural. And it is here that we find the difference between

the city, which is built upon human law, and wildness, which

finds its foundation in the law of Nature.

The purpose of clothing is to ward off the cold and to keep from

getting wet in the rain. If need be, we should be prepared to cut

a hole in a gunny sack for our head and wear that. And we should

wear light clothing, because it is best for our health to expose

our skin to the outside air. Let us begin preparing ourselves

right now.

Preparation for our Escape from the City

Concerning living quarters: Putting up grand buildings, equipping

them with all sorts of conveniences, and decorating them lavishly

is, 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 build

such structures, precious resources are used unsparingly, great

destruction and contamination are wrought by the mining,

transport, and processing of the said resources, and great

amounts of pollution are generated by the use of such homes or

workplaces. What is more, this increase in the number of

buildings 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 urban

lifestyle. Small or old houses are continually being torn down

(the remains are discarded in the country or in the ocean), and

big, new buildings are put up. They call this the development of

the cities, but just as I have demonstrated, this development is

actually what is threatening the continuing existence of the

cities.

It was some foreigner who made fun of Japanese houses by calling

them "rabbit hutches," and a certain idiotic Japanese critic then

used the same expression as an instrument of self-deprecation.

However, Kamo no Chomei [40] demonstrated that a ten-foot square

hut was quite big enough as a place to live. If the population

continues to increase at the present rate, without war,

epidemics, or famine, in 700 years we will reach a population

density at which there will be one person per square foot,

including the mountains. It seems to me that it would be much

more important to put up with living in rabbit hutches and

saving our farmland.

Living in cramped, stuffy apartment buildings and falling on

your face every time there is an earthquake is naturally the

price one should pay for living in the city in order to realize a

life of ease. If you do not like it, then leave the city and go

to live in the country. Build a log cabin in the country and live

there. Even if it is destroyed by a typhoon or an earthquake, you

can repair it the very next day. What is more, you can repair it

by yourself, without the help of anyone else.

It would do us well to prepare ourselves by learning how to

build the sunken dwellings of ancient times. We should ready

ourselves by recognizing that it is best for human beings to live

on 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 the

production of food is considerable, and for this reason it has

become possible to produce great quantities of high-yield crops

with reduced labor. If the city's participation were to disappear

it would mean the instant disintegration of this production

system, and agriculture would be dealt a severe blow. At least

this is the way the city boasts of its superior position, and

causes the country to bow before it, cutting a magnificent

figure.

But we should not worry too much about this. The kind of

agricultural system that would become unable to function without

the city is actually none other than a suck-up-to-the-city

agriculture that is locked into the city's plunder system.

However, to natural cycle, small-scale, self-sufficient

agriculture, the city's meddling is actually a nuisance; as long

as we have the blessings of Nature there is not the slightest

difficulty. The object of the city's interference is to continue

plundering the country.

There is here perhaps one thing we should be aware of, and that

is the necessity of certain tools -- not tilling and threshing

machines, but such things as sickles and hoes. Without the help

of the city it might be difficult to find such things unless we

revive the part-time blacksmiths of the Edo Period or earlier. In

former times the part-time farmers who made water conduits,

baskets, and sifters lived in every village. When they were not

working in the fields they made and repaired farm implements and

household goods. But since their main occupation was farming,

they had little time to make such things, and thus did not become

real merchants. They do not make things to sell, but when they

were asked (modern industries that produce too much can learn

something here). And there should be no need for large-scale iron

works if they get the raw materials from iron sand as the

swordsmiths did.

Abandon Anti-Nature Urban Dietary Habits

The city haughtily tells us that we must have, if not

refrigerators, electric rice cookers, propane gas, blenders,

artificial flavoring, and sugar, then at least essential items

like pots and bowls and salt, and that without such urban

blessings we would not be able to go on living. But let us not

get excited.

If there be a need, we should be ready to do without even pots

and bowls and salt. And if at the same time we make up our minds

to do without such things, and begin the preparations for a new

dietary life, we begin to see to what extent urban dietary life

is anti-Nature, and how it is leading us down the road to

self-destruction.

Wild animals all eat what is natural for them to eat. Squirrels

eat nuts, cats eat mice. Should we ignore this simple fact,

feeding mice to squirrels and chestnuts to cats, neither will be

able to go on living. This is the great iron hammer of Heaven

that falls on those who ignore these laws.

What an animal naturally eats is decided by instinct, and

instinct here is preference, and the ability to obtain what it

needs. A cat is not able to eat chestnuts, nor does it care at

all for the taste or flavor of chestnuts; a squirrel, on the

other hand, has the claws and teeth with which to open and eat

chestnuts, and it finds them quite delicious as well.

But how about human beings? Extremely clever and arrogant as

they are, human beings ignored the laws that governed what they

should eat. Learning how to use utensils, fire, and various

seasonings, they were able to eat things which, originally, they

could not eat, or should not eat.

The things human beings desire and can obtain and eat without

the use of tools or fire are, for example, nuts and fruit,

plants, seeds, potatoes, small fish, and eggs (if you give a

monkey an egg it will skillfully break the shell and suck out the

contents -- monkeys and human beings naturally eat the same

things). So it is that, no matter how much of a brave and strong

Tarzan one is, it is probably quite impossible to catch and

butcher 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 changed

their natural diets, thereby increasing almost limitlessly the

things they can eat, and by transforming themselves into hunting,

eating animals, have increased their numbers dramatically. On the

other hand, however, they weakened themselves physically. Not

only that, they also process their natural foods with heat and

seasonings, thus killing the life within their food, destroying

the cells, and substantially decreasing the beneficial effects of

the food. Thus if we do not stuff our bodies full we cannot get

enough nutrition, and this has brought about the transformation

of 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 all

the time. We are troubled by chronic digestive disorders (only

humans use bathroom tissue; if an animal is healthy its excrement

will not stick to its body). We perspire profusely (since

perspiration is a means of getting rid of wastes, sweating a lot

is proof that one's body is full of sewage; no matter how hot it

is, one should perspire only moderately). And in recent years we

have come to live in fear of chronic illness brought on by the

compound effects of many chemical substances that are foreign to

our bodies.

Though the net of Heaven is course, it has not overlooked the

human rebellion against our natural diet. The fact that human

beings have barely managed to survive in spite of this is due to

the fact that we have continued, as we should, to consume some

fruit and vegetables raw. Raw vegetables with meat, pickled

vegetables 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 in

the natural diet of human beings, and the great rebellion against

Nature. This is known as cooking or cuisine. And in cooking we

find the following three regrettable elements:

1.

How can one, using utensils and heat and seasonings, make it

possible to eat things which one cannot ordinarily eat?

2.

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

stomach?

3.

How can one destroy the life and cells of one's food, thereby

diminishing its effect?

What we must be aware of here is that even the provincial cooking

of a hundred years ago varies not a bit from these themes, and

even if we look back 50 or 100 thousand years, there is little

difference. They say that our remaining canine teeth prove that

primitive human beings were carnivorous animals, but I do not

believe it. Almost a million and a half years ago human beings

had already learned how to use fire, thereby changing their

natural diets. Canine teeth were no doubt used to open and eat

chestnuts and other hard nuts.

Human beings are born with both fists tightly clenched. If you

put a stick in a baby's hands it will hang from the stick, and if

you lift the stick, the upper half of the baby's body will

follow. If you provide some stimulus to the soles of its feet,

the baby's toes will bend as if they are trying to grasp

something. This indicates that, even now, the structure of the

human body is adapted to climbing trees in search of fruit and

nuts, and it has changed little from millions of years ago. This

also shows that there ought to be no change in the human diet,

either. It was, after all, quite impossible for human beings to

become lions or hyenas.

In addition to (or in connection with) the three elements of

cooking described above, human beings have committed further

crimes: They have changed the shape and appearance of their food,

pulverized it, analyzed it, extracted it, mixed it, and

compounded it.

Wild animals eat what is natural for them to eat, and they eat it

in its original form, thereby obeying this iron-clad law of

Nature. Thus they maintain their health without a single doctor,

a single pill, or a single hospital. It is only human beings that

make brown rice into white rice; remove the hull of wheat and

grind it into white powder; remove the head and bones of fish,

leaving only the soft flesh; separate the fats from milk and make

it into butter; or extract vitamins and make them into pills.

Because of this it is only human beings that suffer from

corpulence, undue loss of weight, sickness, and early aging and

death. Seeing that they were in trouble, people then founded the

nutritional sciences, and began calculating everything -- consume

a certain percent of this, so many grams of this, or so many

milliliters of that. But it turns out to be half-baked, for we

can see that the results of those school lunches, which are

models of nutritional science, are fat and sickly children. Just

compare these children with wild animals, which do not study the

nutritional 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 in

their original form, and we should eat things that we can obtain

with our bare hands. Even if it is only a handful a day, we

should try eating brown rice, wheat, and corn (not to mention

fruit and vegetables) raw and unprocessed. We should not

underestimate the positive effect of even this little bit. Eating

even one grain raw will do us that much good. The net of Heaven

is coarse but lets nothing escape -- those who make light of one

grain of brown rice will find themselves bound by the erroneous

idea of "permissible levels." There is no gainsaying that, for

every one milligram of food additives one consumes, the liver

suffers correspondingly. The law of permissible levels, which is

convenient for the manufacturers of such additives, is not to be

found in Nature.

One must chew a hundred times and secrete three cupfuls of

saliva in order to eat a handful of uncooked brown rice. It is

impossible to eat it otherwise. Is the reader aware that the hull

portion of cooked brown rice passes through the gut and is found

in great quantity in one's excrement? This is the result of

cooking the rice in order to make it easier to eat, but if one

eats it uncooked the hull too is well chewed. In saliva there is

a hormone called parotin which helps order the body's functions.

What is more, chewing something hard strengthens the teeth, and

also stimulates the working of the brain.

In addition, the real flavor of something is revived by eating it

raw. For instance, if one eats and compares raw corn and cake,

one is well aware of how the cake is a tasteless lump of dead

matter, and how the raw corn is most delicious, and overflowing

with life force. Just try offering a lion raw and cooked meat, or

a chicken wheat and crackers, and see for yourself which one they

will choose.

For those people whose sense of taste has been artificially

deadened and who claim that they cannot eat raw food because it

tastes terrible, I offer the following advice: Go a day without

eating and then try it. And those who have bad teeth and cannot

eat raw grain can grind it into powder with a stone mortar and

knead it with water.

Health Recovery and Food Conservation: Eat it Raw

If you eat cooked brown rice instead of cooked white rice, you

will need only two-thirds as much, and if you eat the brown rice

uncooked, you will find you can eat only one-third as much. By

making white rice one discards the best part, and by cooking it

one kills the cells and the life within; thus, in order to take

in sufficient nutrients, one must stuff great amounts into one's

stomach. By eating it uncooked, one needs only one-third as much.

If you cook your greens you can eat a lot, but uncooked you can

only eat about one-third as much.

And this leads us to a great discovery -- that eating things raw

and uncooked contributes substantially to food conservation. A

special program on NHK noted that, in the event that food

imports were totally halted, even if we made all our golf courses

and superhighways into bean and potato fields, still 35 million

people would starve to death. But if we ate all our food raw, all

those people would be saved. In addition, by eating things raw

there would be no leftovers. It is said that in Japan cooked and

killed leftovers that are discarded amount to 10 millions tons a

year, 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 organic

production, causing the yield to drop to one-third, there would

be no shortage of rice even under present conditions if everyone

ate uncooked brown rice.

It Is the City that Needs the Country

So we have seen that, just as I wrote earlier, eating things in

their original form, as well as unprocessed and raw, can

contribute to the recovery of health. In addition, it will also

help conserve food. We will not be troubled in the least when the

food imports stop, or when the hospitals and drug companies fold.

What is more, there is yet a third great service done by eating

things raw and in their original form: It is possible to become

totally independent of the city. When we become independent the

city will be in a pickle, but we shall not suffer.

As long as we have hands and feet and a mouth, it is possible

for us, just as it is for wild animals, to nourish ourselves

without 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 health

because of this. It is only human beings who take in abnormally

large quantities, thereby suffering from arteriosclerosis and

high blood pressure. It is said that human beings only require

0.1 grams of salt per day. But Japanese on the average take in 20

grams per day, and even those people who are on reduced salt

diets ingest 10 grams a day, so this means that we are taking in

between 100 and 200 times the needed amount. One-tenth of one

gram is an amount naturally found in food, and that should be

enough; human beings should not be any different from wild

animals. The salt refining factories and the salt retailers can

go belly up any time they like. It is idiotic to believe that

people must ingest the same proportion of salt as is contained in

the blood. One should consider that 0.1 gram of salt has

accumulated in the blood.

If you suddenly reduce the amount of salt you ingest you will

experience a kind of "cold turkey" in which you feel tired, but

this is just because the body is used to a lot of salt. If you

put up for just one week, it will pass. One should require no

warmup even in order to reduce one's salt intake to 1/100th of

the usual.

We have therefore seen the city's last bastion of control --

salt -- crumble before our very eyes. We do not need the city at

all in order to live. It is the city that needs the country in

order to continue its existence.

Chapter VI Notes

36

The cause of the city's demise will be, for example, a lack of

resources, the insufficiency of food, or the contamination of

the environment. However, this all depends much upon the changes

surrounding the city, so perhaps one should say that the city

will perish from "without." Still, the entity responsible for

engendering this cause from without is none other than the city

(it is the city which squanders resources, brings ruin upon the

farming villages, and contaminates the environment), so I think

it is correct to say that the city will perish "automatically."

37

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

38

It goes without saying that some disciplines, like technical

chemistry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and nuclear

physics are directly linked to the destruction and contamination

of the environment, but those leisurely disciplines that seem to

do no harm, like the fine arts, archeology, and anthropology, are

indirectly responsible for harming the Earth since their

practitioners refuse to sweat or dirty their own hands, and

continue to pat their fat bellies, which are full of the labors

of the few remaining farmers, thus forcing the farmers into labor

saving, high-yield, contaminating, plundering farming methods.

39

The characters for "wild" are here read as those for "natural."

The author therefore equates "wild" with "natural."

(Translator's note)

40

Poet and writer (1155-1216). Nakashima refers in particular to a

work called Hojoki, written when Kamo no Chomei lived in a small

hut.

CHAPTER VII

The Disintegration of the City

Even if we do absolutely nothing, and let things continue on as

they are, the city will automatically perish. Even if I should

swing at the ground with a maul and miss, the demise of the city

will surely come to pass.

Indulging in Ease, the City Destroys the Future

In a corner of northern Africa, out on the desolate sands, there

was a small stand of trees, barely keeping itself alive. In the

top of a tree was a boy lopping off branches with a hatchet, and

below there were a few goats greedily eating the leaves. This was

a scene of Africa's final hour as shown on television. [41]

Around the trees, as far as one could see, there was only barren

land; after the goats consumed the leaves on these trees, there

would 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 he

is cutting his own throat? Even if he does, this is the only way

to live until tomorrow."

You, in the cities! Can you view this merely as the misfortune of

others? The fate of this boy is the fate of the city.

You too are cutting limbs off trees every day. In order to live

through the day (or, more precisely, in order to continue

enjoying convenience, extravagance, and ease, to continue the

pursuit of profit, to seek glory and praise, and to continue your

stupid competition) you keep on lopping off branches. It does not

matter to you if this is the march of death; you continue to

waste the few remaining resources, to destroy and contaminate our

irreplaceable natural environment, to reduce the amount of

farmland, which is your lifeline. How much longer do you think

you 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 30

years is wrong, this does not mean that there is an unlimited

amount. It is an undeniable fact that, for every drop of

petroleum used, the reserves will be reduced by that same amount.

And it is not just petroleum, for the same rule holds true for

iron, copper, aluminum, and uranium, and it is no different for

the so-called new materials. As long as there is no proof that

these new materials are made from a vacuum, and that their

process of manufacture requires no energy, there is no denying

that any new material invented is subject to the same fate.

Let us note also that since these buried resources are used in

close conjunction with one another, the city will be threatened

by a lack of even one of them. For example, should there be a

shortage of manganese, steelmaking will suffer. If we run short

of copper, there will be no more motors that use copper wire in

their coils, and whole industrial sector will be paralyzed. Here

they cannot say that "even if we run out of copper, we can use

tin or nickel."

Petroleum is the same in that there is no replacement. We hear

that nuclear power will act in its place, but then nuclear power

cannot be used as the raw material for manufactured articles, and

even in the field of energy it is said that, if we do not have an

amount of petroleum which corresponds to one-fourth the energy

gained from nuclear power, it is impossible to operate the

nuclear power plants.

Nature's Retaliation Is Assured

So we have seen that when the petroleum runs out (whether it be

30 or 50 years in the future, it does not matter) the modern city

will perish, but there is one other noteworthy matter here, and

that is, before the oil wells run dry, the city must perish twice

for the sake of petroleum.

One reason is that, because of the poisons released by

petroleum, the city will become uninhabitable. We have already

seen that, when one traces them back to the source, the physical

cause of all forms of pollution is petroleum. No matter to what

extent the city was made to flush untreated wastes into the

rivers and oceans, no matter how impudent the urbanites are, and

no matter how much the people at the Environment Agency shirk

their duties, if petroleum suddenly disappeared from before our

very 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 of

petroleum's poisons, or because of its disappearance?

It is almost as if petroleum was discovered for the purpose of

eradicating the cities. Verily, the sum total of the petroleum

poisons in the whole world is exactly that needed to get rid of

the cities. Nature is making an example of the cities for us. No

matter what reason there could be, the arrogant and extravagant

city cannot be expected to give up petroleum until it has

consumed the last drop, so noting what the future will bring,

Nature promised the Earth that the cities would perish. The city

must pay a price commensurate with the convenience and

extravagance (in reality, the destruction and contamination) it

has 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 of

petroleum is the total nuclear war brought on by the frantic

scramble for petroleum. The city will have no choice. The

urbanites are steeped in the prosperity of the city --

convenience, extravagance, ease, the Pursuit of Profit,

production competition, glory, and praise, all gained by means of

squandering petroleum -- and there is no mistaking that, when

they begin to have that terrible feeling that the oil is about to

run out, they will go mad and try to rob it from others. [42]

Should the city just try to be gentlemanly about the matter, it

will 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 the

world -- including the urbanized country -- will be destroyed. It

will be the end of humanity except for those in the back country

of 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 that

our time for extinction has come, and calmly reap as we have

sown. [43]

The Inevitable Fate of the City:

Development = Doom

"Digging one's own grave" -- Here is the expression which has

described the city since it first appeared on Earth. In Chapter

IV, I noted that the city itself is the explosive that came into

being in order to get rid of the city, and verily, the city has,

by means of choosing the course of growth and development, rushed

down the road to oblivion since the time it first appeared. There

has never been an instance of the city lessening, even for a day,

its efforts to destroy itself, or resting in its labors to dig

its own grave. The reason for establishing the city is to achieve

ease and gluttony, and the attainment of this objective

necessitates plunder, destruction, and contamination; this is

none other than the rush down the road to ruin. There is no other

possible course for the city to follow. Should one hope for

another course for the city to follow, it would have to be the

complete negation of the city's reason for being, and the

cessation of ease and gluttony (plunder, destruction, and

contamination, i.e., the functions of the city). One must always

keep in mind that, should one, with one's mind set on ease and

gluttony, establish the city and allow it to continue its

activities, ruin is its inevitable fate.

Therefore, since ruin is the city's mission, it is only natural

that the city's all-pervading image is that of a person digging

his own grave. And then, in order that the city can execute its

mission with even greater effectiveness, it continues adding on,

stacking up, coupling, compounding, and amplifying, in that way

helping to hasten its own demise. Recently the New City Image has

made its appearance.

The Self-Destructive Apparatus of Civilization Cannot Be Stopped

A robot manufacturing company introduced robots into its own

robot factory. This is because it was impossible for the company

to compete in the marketplace unless it made an example of its

own factory. No longer able to continue operations, it went belly

up. In this way the manager of the robot factory was forced to

risk his life in the establishment of a roboticized robot

factory. Upon completion of the factory, the manager and 600

employees all lost their jobs. It was for that reason (and also

to become a model for the industry) that they did it. In order to

remain on the cutting edge of technology and stay out in front of

the competition it was necessary to build a factory that would

allow the presence of not a single human being.

"Right now we are working like bees in order to build an

apparatus that will cut our own throats," said one of the

employees in a television interview. "This will eventually take

place 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 to

becoming a hired hand on a dairy farm in Hokkaido after I lose

this job."

But not all 600 could find jobs herding cattle, and not all of

them could do the job even if they were asked. An economy based

on money generates legions of idle people hungry for money, and

they come up with all sorts of schemes to make a living, such as

the investment magazines, and the recent Toyota Trading Company

scandal. [44]

Nowadays robots can do just about anything, and we rejoice over

how convenient and quick everything has become, and over

civilization's progress, but we had better look again, because

civilization is robbing us of our jobs. Whether in developed or

developing countries, civilization is the enemy of human

survival.

I have described one of the new conditions under which the city

will self-destruct (or become uninhabited). The city, which once

achieved prosperity by means of civilization, will soon perish by

means 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 forests

and transforming the land into desert the city is not only

bringing about crises for the developing countries, but is also

threatening its own existence. Knowing just this is enough to

tell us that the city has not long to live. It should be evident

to anyone that the city is responsible for the fearsomely rapid

spread of the deserts in the developing countries, the increase

in barren land, the decrease in the amount of oxygen, the

increase in the amount of carbon dioxide, and, more than anything

else, the shortage of pulp.

The future of the city depends in a large measure upon its

all-important paper -- wrapping paper, cardboard boxes, bathroom

tissue, newspapers, magazines, and computer printing paper. So

the city is saddled with the contradiction that it cannot stop

its profligacy. The regions which produce the wood for this paper

are turning into deserts minute by minute.

The other day an employee of a factory that makes chips from

imported wood came to see my chickens. "Every day my factory

converts an awesome amount of imported wood into chips," he said,

"and it is all used to produce the wrapping paper used in

department stores. For stupid vanity and convenience we are

plunging the developing countries into crisis, and cutting our

own 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 to

become a self-sufficient farmer, and so came to see your

chickens."

* * *

I also noted earlier that the city continues its limitless

expansion on a global scale, and that, inversely proportional to

this, farmland is limitlessly plundered. This too shows us that

the city is not long for this world. The contradictions and

tyranny of the urbanites, who seek to continue their gluttony

even as they steal the farmland that produces their food, are

beyond 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 prime

rice paddies," he explained. "But as you can see, it is now a

fine public meeting hall and a big parking lot. In this way we

continue to lose farmland. When I think of what will eventually

happen, shivers run down my spine."

In the neighborhood of my daughter's farm they are talking about

making a golf course. If they go through with the plan, the

developers will purchase the fields and wooded areas around my

daughter's farm and make it all into a golf course. I asked if

anyone was opposing this plan and was told that not one person in

the village was against it. If anyone were to oppose the plan

they would be ostracized from the village since, once the golf

course is completed, not only will the fields and woods be

transformed into piles of money, but there will be a rest

facility, a restaurant, and jobs. In this way little effort is

required of the city in order to steal more farmland and urbanize

it. And what is really surprising is that I have not yet heard of

any plan to convert the city into farmland.

Biotechnology: Violating the Province of Nature

The city is replete with evidence of self-destruction, and it

projects many images of people digging their own graves, so one

could not possibly write about all of them. But I would like to

add a final word about biotechnology.

The work of evolving and fostering the species is the province of

Nature, and has taken billions of years. Whether it be a single

grass seed or a single tree leaf, nothing came into being

overnight; each thing is the product of the complex and wondrous

interaction of species that have repeated adaptation and

selection over an incomprehensibly long time. If, in this net of

interaction among species, even one of the nodes should exhibit

unusual development or disappear, the balance of the ecosystem is

disturbed; species that cannot stand the strain will perish, and

the ecosystem then reorganizes itself to seek a new point of

balance. This is what I mean by natural selection (the

dispensation of Nature).

But now we see those cleverly conceited, high-handed, and

arrogant human beings invading the province of Nature, and trying

their hand at biotechnology; in a short period of time they are

attempting to change that which Nature has taken billions of

years to make, or to create something new. The species adapt to

their environments (air, water, sunlight, the Land, and the net

of interactions among species) and survive by maintaining their

balance through mutual assistance, but in order to do this it

requires the total history of its own evolution since the time it

appeared.

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.

Chapter VII Notes

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)

CHAPTER VIII

Everybody 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 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.

Chapter VIII Notes

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.

CHAPTER IX

Independent Farming

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 is

the 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.

Chapter IX Notes

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