Great Construction

A Civilization That Ignores Nature

     Why should it be that despite the past and continued progress of civilization in Japan, today various kinds of impasses arise in certain quarters and civilization does not advance as expected. From the way I see matters, it is because at the fundamentals there is a great fallacy which the public at large does not seem to perceive.
     In the world of politics, for example, we constantly see in the newspapers that even those government proposals that have been deliberated upon and passed by the national Diet, when executed, end only in partial success most of the time. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that the political columns in the newspapers are primarily a record of policy failures. The reason for this never-ending stream of failure can be put simply, from my perspective, to the consequence of disregarding nature. Not limited to politics, it is most troubling that human beings in the contemporary world consider it permissible to ignore nature and handle all matters by human effort alone which is firmly believed to be a mark of civilized progress. Such false belief gives birth to unnecessary, even ultimately damaging policies that get proposed and executed, whether in the world of politics or in any field of human endeavor. This false belief manifests itself in laws being enacted for everything and anything; we have been placed in the middle of a forest of laws.
     Everyone talks about liberalism and freedom these days, but from my experience, it seems the Japanese people probably enjoyed more freedom during the Meiji and Taisho eras (1868-1926). In contrast, the world today is certainly oppressive. Because the people are enveloped in laws and ordinances, as I just mentioned, we are immobilized. Interestingly, though, it is not only the general populace that is so bound. Bureaucrats themselves are tied by the ropes of regulations as well. The clearest proof of this is that when something that appears might be a problem and there is no common sense or compassionate reason why any measures are needed, bureaucrats will say, “We have no other choice because it is the rules.” Occasionally is heard the bureaucrat who laments how troublesome it is that the rules bind them as well. Someone has said that Japan leads the world in its great amount of laws, which is surely apt.
     The idea that too many laws make for too many crimes is certainly apropos these days, I feel. When the reason for this situation is investigated, there are various causes, but the most compelling is in how much effort has been put into making people like machines. A machine is set in one place and made to move only in one way. A machine has no freedom. Every once in a while lubricants are applied and the gears are adjusted. Human beings have come to be treated just like machines. The mechanized human being has been constructed who cannot say what it wants when it wants, has no freedom, and can not eat what it wants. In order to make human beings mechanical a mold is needed, and that mold is the body of laws and regulations. The control economy that remains in Japan even after the war is one of those molds.
     In order to form the population into machines many bureaucrats are needed. During the war, so-and-so agencies and such-and-such boards were established within the government and the number of bureaucrats increased many fold from the normal amount to mechanize the Japanese people. The augmented number of bureaucrats continues to remain even today. The amount in salaries of these bureaucrats in one year alone totals over thirty billion yen, an astounding figure. If this situation were only limited to excess expenditures, it would still be a manageable issue, but there is another great problem lurking that escapes attention. The surplus of government bureaucrats results in simply too many workers for the amount of work to be done. Since bureaucrats cannot just skip work, they go about looking for things to do, and what catches their attention is the revision of laws and ordinances. This is a most distressing issue, because once new laws and ordinances are enacted and put into effect, all the effort these bureaucrats had expended, all that had become a part of themselves in their work so far, comes to naught, and methods and procedures that suit the new laws have to be formed. As those involved with these new laws energetically devote themselves to implementation, the work comes to proceed more smoothly, and what would have taken a week to accomplish, can be completed in three days. At this point, both bureaucrats and the general public find affairs easier to manage, but the bureaucrats again come to have time on their hands, and again they begin to think about revising laws. The proliferation of laws and their revisions is quite a serious issue. Society must awake to this one point and reduce the number of bureaucrats. There is no other way to accomplish this than to make one big cut in the number of government officials and undertake a consolidation of administrative offices.
     The changes I have described above would both directly and indirectly cause great loss to the Japanese national state. I understand that in England and in the United States there are many workers who pursue the same occupation for decades, but I have not heard this about Japan. There is probably no other nation in the world where matters on all levels change as noticeably as they do in Japan. If I were to describe simply the fundamental reason behind this phenomenon, I would say it is the result of the disregard for nature by the Japanese people these days. The approach centered on human effort alone to all matters in society is thought to be the progress of culture.
     The discussion so far relates to the political sphere, but I have many things to say about other areas as well. One, for example, is the non fertilizer cultivation method I advocate that has shown excellent results. Every edition of this newspaper since its inaugural issue has carried factual reports of the results of this method. The method concerns itself only with the quality of the soil and compost, but whether in quality or quantity astounding results have been reported. The fundamental principle of non fertilizer cultivation is based on a respect for and adoption to nature, but because farmers do not grasp these principles, for a long time they have thought permissible artificial measures that use human excrement and chemicals, have spent great amounts of money and labor, have killed the soil and created harmful pests, all the while being consumed by grinding toil, and still they agonize over the poor results of their methods. The stupidity can not be described. This predicament results from a complete disregard for nature. The reason my agricultural cultivation method places importance on compost is because its components are fallen leaves and dry grasses, which are nature itself.
     As another example of the harm that arises from disregard for nature, I mention medical treatment. Because disease is generated within the human body as a purification of the toxins that have accumulated for various reasons, disease is a natural physiological function vital to human health. Purification cleanses the body and augments health through elimination in such forms as fever, coughing, phlegm, nasal mucous, and sweat, so disease is providence for the improvement of health, indeed a great blessing provided by God. In spite of this benefit, disease has been interpreted in opposite terms, and because current medical practice considers permissible bringing the elimination of toxins to a stop, the error is indeed grave. Actually, the simplest form of eliminating toxins is the common cold. Catching a cold helps to avoid inflammation of the lungs and pulmonary tuberculosis, so it is as clear as day that the encouragement of colds would decrease the number of cases of these two diseases by a great percentage. Unaware of the efficacy of colds, medical science has adopted an opposing theory that uses various means to stop the elimination of toxins. The progress of medical science is much touted which should mean that the number of cases of tuberculosis and inflammation of the lungs has decreased, but the most convincing proof of the error of medical science can be seen in the increase of these diseases. Naturally, all these problems result from disregard for nature.

 Hikari, Issue 9, May 14, 1949
translated by cynndd