As Tokyo’s millions put in another day’s work on the coalface of capitalism, celebrity Marxist philosopher Kohei Saito and his friends are clearing rocks from a muddy mountain stream.
Saito’s core argument — that capitalism is the root cause of climate change and we need to stop chasing growth to save the planet — has struck a chord in the world’s fourth-largest economy, especially among young people.
The associate professor at the University of Tokyo has sold half a million copies of his latest book and last month spoke at music festival Fuji Rock, headlined by The Killers.
Photo: AFP
He has become a face of the global movement for “degrowth” — a word that “kind of freaks people out,” as Saito put it while he tended to his slice of collectively owned land on the capital’s western outskirts.
“Maybe it’s not the best way to convince people, especially in America,” said the 37-year-old, whose hit title Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto came out in English this year.
But using the term is one way to “provoke or challenge” widely accepted economic principles which are leading to environmental ruin, he said.
Photo: AFP
Saito is not a member of the Japanese Communist Party and he rejects the need for top-down, Soviet-style systems.
Instead he believes in grassroots change led by projects such as Common Forest Japan, his attempt to reconnect with nature and build a democratically run community.
“Unless the left or liberal, progressive side offers a more attractive vision of the future... right-wing populism will take advantage of this crisis,” Saito said.
He is a regular TV news talk show guest, and recently made headlines for saying he was boycotting the Olympics, citing its “excessive commercialism” and “double standards” over Israel’s participation and Russia’s exclusion.
‘DEGROWTH ISN’T JUST FRUGAL LIVING’
Saito’s calls for a world where fewer things are produced — reducing carbon emissions — and a break with overconsumption and long working hours have resonated with those disillusioned with the status quo in Japan.
The Japanese version of Slow Down came out in 2020, when the pandemic brought many industries to a standstill.
“I didn’t expect this was something people would be interested in, because Marx is outdated” and degrowth could sound like “some kind of negative dictatorship,” he said.
Yet coming of age after Japan’s 1980s boom years, Saito’s generation has seen decades of economic stagnation despite the pursuit of growth, he contends.
So “that kind of discussion has some attraction, especially to young people who don’t fetishize the old kind of Japanese miracle anymore.”
New technologies such as electric cars, carbon capture or nuclear fusion cannot solve the climate problem in a system that is always seeking greater profit, Saito said.
Banning private jets and “excessive public advertisements” as well as “introducing a much more radical wealth tax” could be a starting point instead.
“But I also want to emphasize that degrowth is not simply about giving up everything and living in frugality,” said Saito.
It’s about challenging capitalism’s sense of “scarcity” that makes people insecure about the future — a stress they try to overcome with shopping and other intensive consumption which in turn “destroys the planet.”
‘NO GREEDY BEHAVIOR’
On the mountainside, the slim, round-spectacled philosopher, his wife and two children, and around 20 others climbed up the stream’s banks, home to worms and wild mushrooms.
They moved stones and branches to allow the water to flow more easily, trying to reduce the risk of landslides.
Although his ideas could sound far-fetched to minds “almost dominated by the logic of capital,” Saito says the forest project exemplifies a society where there is “no greedy behavior — because it doesn’t make sense.”
Growing up in Tokyo, Saito wasn’t much of a hiker and his parents weren’t political.
He discovered socialist thinkers like Noam Chomsky as a teenager interested in his “criticism of American imperialism.” Years later, Japan’s 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster brought home “the unsustainable relationship between humans and nature.”
While pursuing his PhD in Berlin, Saito investigated Marx’s take on ecology in the German’s notebooks from his later years.
The idea of degrowth dates back to the 1970s, but has gained traction recently with a slew of new books including Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel.
Saito makes clear in Slow Down that for now his ideas only apply to the world’s rich countries, which are disproportionately responsible for climate change.
Despite being a keen observer of local politics, as a philosopher, he says tricky decisions, like how much new infrastructure is too much, are not his to make.
“I’m not a good politician. Because politics is about compromise, right?”
Anyone who has been to Alishan (阿里山) is familiar with the railroad there: one line comes up from Chiayi City past the sacred tree site, while another line goes up to the sunrise viewing platform at Zhushan (祝山). Of course, as a center of logging operations for over 60 years, Alishan did have more rail lines in the past. Are any of these still around? Are they easily accessible? Are they worth visiting? The answer to all three of these questions is emphatically: Yes! One of these lines ran from Alishan all the way up to the base of Jade Mountain. Its
The only geopolitical certainty is that massive change is coming. Three macro trends are only just starting to accelerate, forming a very disruptive background to an already unsettled future. One is that technological transformations exponentially more consequential and rapid than anything prior are in their infancy, and will play out like several simultaneous industrial revolutions. ROBOT REVOLUTION It is still early days, but impacts are starting to be felt. Just yesterday, this line appeared in an article: “To meet demands at Foxconn, factory planners are building physical AI-powered robotic factories with Omniverse and NVIDIA AI.” In other words, they used AI
Last month historian Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published an opinion piece in the New York Times with suggestions for an “America First” foreign policy for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Of course China and Taiwan received a mention. “Under presidents Trump and Biden,” Wertheim contends, “the world’s top two powers have descended into open rivalry, with tensions over Taiwan coming to the fore.” After complaining that Washington is militarizing the Taiwan issue, he argues that “In truth, Beijing has long proved willing to tolerate the island’s self-rule so long as Taiwan does not declare independence
Nov. 25 to Dec. 1 The Dutch had a choice: join the indigenous Siraya of Sinkan Village (in today’s Tainan) on a headhunting mission or risk losing them as believers. Missionaries George Candidus and Robert Junius relayed their request to the Dutch governor, emphasizing that if they aided the Sinkan, the news would spread and more local inhabitants would be willing to embrace Christianity. Led by Nicolaes Couckebacker, chief factor of the trading post in Formosa, the party set out in December 1630 south toward the Makatao village of Tampsui (by today’s Gaoping River in Pingtung County), whose warriors had taken the