2011-10-27

Takeshi Yoro explains why the Edo period endured for 265 years by examining its limited but stable energy system and its reliance on human ability.
He contrasts Edo Japan with twentieth-century America, where oil, machines, and money came to determine social value, ultimately weakening craftsmanship and hollowing out industry.

This really made me laugh.
Takeshi Yoro was in absolutely top form.
The following is from the October 31 issue of the weekly magazine AERA.

Why the Edo Period Lasted So Long

Takeshi Yoro
When you think about it, the Edo period lasted a very long time.
From the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 until the restoration of political authority to the Emperor, it continued for no fewer than 265 years.
Why did it last for so long?
I believe that one reason was the stability of its energy supply.
By a stable energy supply, I mean that the only available energy was energy produced by plants.
During the Edo period, firewood and charcoal were the basic sources of energy.
If people became too greedy in their consumption of energy, the trees, forests, and mountains would disappear.
In other words, energy was scarce.
The reason people were nevertheless able to sustain their lives was that they made the fullest possible use of the wealth possessed by human beings—that is, human ability.
The Edo period was also an age in which human talent was discovered and employed more effectively than at almost any other time.
Consider outstanding figures such as Arai Hakuseki, Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, and Tanuma Okitsugu.
Judging from their social status, they were not necessarily people who could ordinarily have expected to be appointed to the highest levels of the shogunate.
Why, then, did they rise to the top?
As long as energy remained scarce, society had no choice but to rely upon human ability.
Naturally, this made it necessary to discover highly capable people.
It required the ability to judge human character and talent.
In the present age, the ability to judge people is not considered particularly necessary.
Rice fields, for example, were once cultivated by people.
Today, cultivation machines do the work.
Because human beings invented the cultivator, we tend to imagine that rice fields can now be cultivated more quickly because human ability has improved.
In reality, however, that is not what happened.
The cultivator is powered by oil.
The United States became a great power in the twentieth century because it possessed enormous quantities of oil.
It not only possessed oil but also created a system for using it.
The United States was one of the first countries to understand the power of petroleum, including the importance of controlling the oil-producing nations of the Middle East.
What was the result for America?
Put simply, it became a society ruled by money alone.
In the real economy, money is another name for energy.
Those who use energy most effectively rise to positions of success.
When human beings are measured according to that standard, the value of the individual approaches zero.
The decline of America’s manufacturing ability and the hollowing out of its industries probably occurred for precisely this reason.
This is the real energy problem.
No matter how many times I reread this, it made me laugh.
I therefore decided to share it with all of you, so that you, too, might go to sleep laughing.