Sustainability & Innovation in Edo Period Japan | Baths-Farms-Toilets | Azby Brown
Azby Brown is an author, researcher, designer, and academic who has studied Japan's Edo period for secrets into how we can apply the philosophy of that successful era to a more sustainable life, society and business in modern Japan.
01:18 Story of writing "Just Enough"
03:00 Sustainability + Edo Period Research
04:40 Focus on Connections between people-planet-profits
06:00 Indigenous cultures farming similarities worldwide
06:30 Cascading Farm Design - Nature's Flow
07:25 Meaning of "Just Enough"
08:00 Avoiding excess + living life undisturbed by the unnecessary
09:45 Shifting perceptions of necessary
10:23 Lack of personal freedoms, but good social bonds
11:52 Governance
12:35 Tanaka Yuko-sensei's Edo-period research
14:15 Wealth + Power Gap - not economically sustainable
15:00 Doing simply & beautifully - not doing without
16:00 Solutions from within Japan
16:30 Multiform solution
17:16 Sento Public Bath example
19:50 Sento: dealing with issues of water+energy+hygene+social+economic in combination
25:00 Refining ideas over time - reassess and improve
26:00 Gyosui - naturally heating water from the sun for tea and baths
27:00 Toilet: Reusing and creating value from human waste
30:00 Economic value of human waste
32:40 Drawings by Azby
33:20 Research thanks to efforts of many others
34:00 Site visits, research materials of others, museum information, talking with experts
35:00 Inspired by Eric Sloane
36:30 Manuals with illustrations from the government to communities
37:00 Government commissioned researchers to publish books on agriculture
37:45 Waka- aural culture of passing on useful information
39:00 Important farming + irrigation + nature (watersheds) knowledge
42:30 Irrigation channels still exist from Edo-era
43:40 Full use of all byproducts of rice
47:00 Straw as important building material with fermented clay
48:20 Kamado efficient cooking system
50:00 Kamado oven use possibilities in Zambia
50:58 Appropriate technology is not always the most high-tech
52:00 YUI cooperative labor practices
55:21 Susowake - Distribution of Excess to others in the community
57:00 Local currency idea
57:57 Long-term use of buildings and reuse of materials should be brought back
58:30 Buildings are our stories and shared identity
59:20 Azby's next talk (1/28/2021) on traditional Japanese carpentry and architecture
