![Getty Images A man looks at recycled clothing (Photo: Getty Images)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j836c4.jpg.webp)
Made from tattered fabrics, recycled clothing symbolizes the ingenuity of what may have been one of the world’s first large-scale ecological civilizations.
Imagine yourself standing on the old wooden Nihonbashi Bridge in the commercial heart of Edo, now known as Tokyo, the ancient capital of Japan, around 1750 during the Edo period, the period when the Tokugawa shogunate ruled from 1603 to 1868. Tokugawa Shogun.
You’ll be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of locals chattering under twirling umbrellas, seafood vendors dashing across the bridge with fully loaded baskets slung on their shoulders, and workers carrying rice and cloth to the market stalls on either side of the riverbank. The smells of the famous Nihonbashi Fish Market waft through the air.
It’s a metropolis of about one million people, much bigger than London or Paris at the time. You’ll notice that almost everything is made of wood: the houses, the carts, and the bridges themselves. But what’s less known is that you’re witnessing perhaps one of the world’s first large-scale ecological civilizations.
![Alamy Bustling Nihonbashi Bridge in Edo (Tokyo) during the Tokugawa period (Credit: Alamy)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j836tg.jpg.webp)
Ancient Japan, I argue in my new book Tomorrow’s Historyprovides inspiration for creating the sustainable society we so desperately need today. Humanity’s material footprint is almost twice as large as the Earth can safely sustain. We are almost Two Earths Every year, we generate huge amounts of electricity, gas, and water. Think of the mountains of e-waste, the loss of biodiversity, oceans polluted with microplastics, and the deforestation to graze the cattle we need to feed our insatiable appetite for meat. And most of this ecological excess is caused by consumers in rich countries. The rich are eating the world.
Edo was different. Critical resources like cotton and wood were scarce, in part due to a government ban on foreign trade. As a result, Edo was a city with no waste. Almost everything was reused, repaired, repurposed, or eventually recycled, in what we would today call a circular economy. The Edo economy “operated as a highly efficient closed-loop system,” sustainability historians argue. Eisuke Ishikawa.
traditional yukata A simple cotton summer kimono is worn until the fabric wears out, at which point it softens and is turned into pajamas, then cut into diapers that can be washed again and again, then turned into floor cloths, and finally burned as fuel.
Because cotton was so valuable, a tradition called patchwork developed. Boro Boroboro cloth, which literally means “tattered cloth,” developed throughout Japan when poor villagers collected discarded scraps of fabric and sewed them into coats and other garments that were passed down from generation to generation.
![Alamy Boro, a Japanese textile, is repaired and patched using scraps of fabric that would otherwise be discarded (Credit: Alamy)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j837gj.jpg.webp)
Edo was home to over 1,000 renovation and recycling businesses. Collected for reuse Candle wax drippings were reused, old metal pots were melted down, human hair was sold to wig makers, modular house designs meant floorboards could be easily removed, scraped down and reused in new buildings, down-on-his-luck samurai repaired umbrellas, and leftover straw from rice farming was used to make sandals and rope, to wrap household items and eventually as fertilizer and fuel.
Paper recycling was a huge industry. Even used toilet paper, made from the tough fibers of tree bark, was recycled. You didn’t pay sewage collectors to process your human waste; they paid you and sold their precious cargo as fertilizer for agriculture.
This deep culture of sustainability Strict regulations To address timber shortages. Japan’s economy was as dependent on timber as it is on fossil fuels today. When the Tokugawa Shoguns came to power, they were faced with a severe shortage of this vital resource. The ancient forests had been greatly diminished, partly due to population growth, and there was a real threat of economic collapse.
To avoid this fate, the regime imposed logging bans, including limiting the felling of trees of certain sizes and types, to allow for reforestation. Fines were heavy, and in some areas breaking the rules was punishable by death. There was also a widespread system of timber rationing for the construction of homes and other new buildings. The rules were closely tied to status, and those higher up in the social hierarchy, such as samurai and feudal lords, could use more of the scarce timber and build bigger houses, but they were also limited.
![Alamy Himeji Castle has remained unchanged for nearly 700 years (Credit: Alamy)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j837sq.jpg.webp)
In addition, the Tokugawa embarked on one of the most massive reforestation programs in the world. Villagers were paid cash for planting new trees, and new rules were introduced to encourage forest leasing: villagers planted trees on land, sold the timber up front to merchants, and then decades later, when the trees were cut down, replanted and the land was rented out again. Over the course of a century, from about 1750, tens of millions of trees were planted, reforesting degraded land.
This combination of sustainable circularity and resource recovery isEdnomy“In pre-industrial Japan.” It was born not only out of a lack of resources and a desire to protect the country for the descendants of the Tokugawa family, too good to waste – The principle of sufficiency – eliminating waste and “just enough”.
The circular economy of our forefathers
The Edo period is one of the best historical examples of what a large-scale regenerative economy operating within safe ecological limits could look like.“The circular economy of our forefathers” It dates to pre-colonial Hawaii, the environmental scientists write. Eiichiro Ochiaiis a model for Spaceship Earth, which “took every possible step to maintain zero waste, zero emissions principles long before such terms were recognized.”
It is important to recognize that ancient Japan was not a utopia. It was a feudal society ruled by a military dictatorship where patriarchal oppression of women was the norm. However, it is equally remarkable that Edo’s low-environmental-impact economy was sustained for almost two centuries, creating an extraordinary period of cultural prosperity.
![Getty Images The ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi is the visible repair of broken pottery (Photo credit: Getty Images)](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0j838hn.jpg.webp)
The poetry of Basho, the artwork of Hiroshige, street performances, sumo, Potterycalligraphy, flower arrangement. If anyone ever argues that living an environmentally conscious lifestyle means we are living primitive lives and living in caves, just tell them about the Edo period.
But what will it take to create an Edo 2.0 that is adapted to the environmental realities of the 21st century? What insights can we draw from the past?
One lesson is that we can follow Edo’s example and aim to create a waste-free, circular economy: we can “edit” the old linear “take, make, use, lose” industrial system and replace it with a circular one where materials are used multiple times. iPhone Cell phones, which contain two-thirds of the elements in the periodic table, would be discarded after just four years. Instead, they could be made from a sustainable model, such as: Fairphone in the NetherlandsIt’s made from recycled plastics and copper, and every component is reused, from the screen to the battery. Easy to repair or replaced by the owner.
Giving companies five years to prepare for the regulations would give them time to adapt to the new rules, as cities such as Paris are already doing to prepare for bans on fossil fuel cars. The European Union is leading the way with new “right to repair” legislation. Only 7.2% Currently, 50% of the global economy is circular, and if we want to bring this up to Ed’s level, companies like Apple, Samsung and Tesla need to have a legal obligation to promote the circular economy.
The second lesson is for wealthy countries, in particular, to consider following the example of Edo-period rationing and reducing consumer demand to sustainable levels—in our case, the rationing of substances that have a huge environmental impact, like carbon and red meat. While rationing often conjures up images of dreary wartime austerity or heavy-handed governments taking away freedoms, a growing global movement of policymakers and think tanks believes that rationing, as long as it is done fairly and not biased in favor of the wealthy, is a viable, even necessary, response to the global environmental crisis.
“Develop a system of personal carbon cards,” writes the French economist. Thomas Piketty“Rationing is sure to become part of the essential institutional tools to meet the challenge of climate change.”Personal Carbon Allowance” “.
If the Tokugawa Shoguns were alive today, they might well have instituted rationing as an emergency measure for a planet in danger. In an election year when half the world’s population goes to the polls, the newly elected government might be wise to look to Japanese history for inspiration and guidance. As the Maori proverb goes, Kia whakatomuri te hare whakamua – “I am walking backwards towards the future with my eyes fixed on the past.”