New thinking on Japanese community development in the information age

TECHNOLOGICAL

FORECASTING

AND

SOCIAL

CHANGE

45, 79-92 (1994)

New Thinking on Japanese Community Development in the Information Age* KAORU YAMAGUCHI

AND HIROYUKI NIWA

ABSTRACT

A new-thinking paradigm in economics is first briefly discussed. Then a history of postwar industrial-age community development in Japan is reviewed with a focus on the recent government policy to reactivate local communities. And some new-thinking traits that have been observed in these community developments are discussed. Finally, using this new-thinking economic paradigm several suggestions are made for the advancement of community development in Japan.

A New-Thinking Paradigm in Economics MECHATRONIC

TECHNOLOGY

The industrial age, which began to emerge with the Industrial Revolution in the middle of the eighteenth century, has created three mutually exclusive and antagonistic economic paradigms: the capitalist market economy, the welfare mixed economy, and the socialist planned economy. A so-called information revolution is swiftly eradicating the foundations of this industrial age. This revolution is global. It is proceeding to bring all nation-states into a global community. Hence, both capitalist and (former) socialist countries as well as developing countries need to make a radical effort to pursue a new vision suitable for the information age. Even local communities are beginning to feel its influence on their developmental processes and planning. One of the authors has put forth a new economic paradigm to fit the information age [8, 91, and has applied this new-thinking paradigm to the islands’ economic development [ 101. In this paper, we try to apply the paradigm to community development in Japan. For the sake of brevity, we will describe the new-thinking paradigm in economics to the extent that it is related to the discussion that follows. The industrial age has been constructed on mechanistic technology, which is best conceived of as an extension of clock-making technology. The essence of this technology is to mass-produce goods and create pollutants as by-products. This mechanistic technology is now being replaced by mechatronic technology: a combination of mechanistic and electronic technology. It is best symbolized by robots, which consist of mechanistic arms * The original version of this paper was presented at the Second Global Conference in Shanghai, ChinaNew Trends in Science, Technology, Economy and Society, April 8-12, 1991. The conference is hosted by Science and Technology Academy of Shanghai and internationally sponsored by Center for Urban Community Development, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Pacifica Foundation, Seattle. Address reprint requests to Prof. Kaoru Yamaguchi, School of Business Administration, Nagoya University of Commerce, Sagamine, Nisshin-Cho, Aichi 470-01, Japan. 0

1994 Elsevier Science Inc.

C@lO-1625/94/$7.00

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and an electronic nervous system. This new technology enables a customized production of info-goods, info-services and knowledge. Thus, in the information age information is pervasive in all types of product. Computers and communication technology are nothing but symbolic indicators of the information age. One feature of information is that it can be shared; that is, its original owner can still use it after it is given to other users. Moreover, its reproduction cost is a mere copying cost that is socially negligible. In the face of rising production costs of original information, sharing (or joint) use of information becomes the most efficient way to use it. Hence, sharing constitutes a crucial feature of the information age. The information age is also considered a postindustrial age in which the service (tertiary) sector dominates. To emphasize this feature, the postindustrial economy is sometimes called a service economy (which we prefer to call an info-service economy). In this economy, info-service and service-labor productivity is most effectively attained when workers are self-motivated to work for themselves in self-managed organizations. Hence, self-management becomes crucial to enhancing competitiveness and efficiency in the information age. To sum up, sharing and self-managing become inherent features of the information age. POSSESSION

AS AN ECOLOGICAL

NICHE

In the industrial age mass-produced goods have to be exclusively owned, accumulated and exchanged. To facilitate the exclusive usage of products, private ownership has to be institutionalized as a legal system. At the same time, as a negation of private ownership, collective and public ownership is institutionalized. What type of legal system, then, has to be imposed in the information age in place of ownership? It has to be the one that is able to facilitate the workings of the main features of the information age: sharing and self-managing. We contend that it is a system of possession as an ecological niche.’ Under such a new legal system, those who join a production unit can automatically possess it jointly and participate in its management as co-workers. Moreover, they are no longer forced out of their workplaces as used to be the case under private ownership. Accordingly, such a system of possession makes it possible to provide every coworker with his/her ecological niche. As the industrial age is transformed into the information age, a transition from ownership to possession will be more apparent. Let us point out some examples. In the United States, “the ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) is fast becoming a way of life at many of the nation’s best-known companies. An estimated 200 public companies have set up ESOPs during the past 2 years alone. Overnight, employees typically become their company’s single biggest shareholder bloc” [ 1, pp. 116-71. Although this plan allows anticapitalistic features such as worker participation and profit-sharing, its rationale is to “move toward the most important goal of all: boosting productivity enough to make U.S. companies more competitive in world markets” [l, p. 1161. In short, in order to suit the information age, the capitalist market economy has no choice but to adopt self-destructive plans such as ESOP. No one seems to be able to stop this trend as the information revolution progresses. A second example of a transition from ownership to possession is the Community Land Trust (CLT) [7]. This is part of the American “green movement” by a nonprofit corporation that acquires land through purchase or donation. The land thus acquired is used according to the following principle: 1 For more detailed discussions

on the concept of possession see [8, Chapter

81.

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Neither the CLT nor the leaseholder holds the land itself as a commodity. (p. 19) The CLT typically offers use rights only to those who will use the land themselves. (p. 23) Leaseholders will never be forced from their homes, or from the land they use. (p. 20) The CLT provides the assurance that not only the leaseholders’ property (the buildings and improvements which they own) but also the leasehold itself (the right to continue the use of the land) may be passed on to their heirs. (p. 21)

This type of land management by CLT is consistent with the system of possession that is applied to a piece of privately possessed land. In socialist China, farmers are recently allowed to obtain long-term land leases. This new system of land management in China is also consistent with the system of possession. As a third example of possession, we can point out a recent trend of UNIX culture in which computer software is shared, that is, it is distributed under the terms of the General Public License provided by the Free Software Foundation.* The General Public License is briefly explained as follows: In essence, the General Public License states that anyone who receives GNU Emacs has the right to give copies of Emacs to others; that anyone who receives Emacs may not place further restrictions on its distribution; and if you distribute any improvements to Emacs, they must be distributed under the same terms as the original program itself. You are allowed to charge for distributing Emacs, so “free software” isn’t necessarily cheap in that sense. However, you cannot restrict anyone’s (including your customers’) ability to use the program of to give it away. The license was crafted to make sure that GNU Emacs and other programs would remain free. . . It prevents a practice that’s unfortunately common in the industry: a vendor finds a good piece of public domain improved

program

proprietary.

software,

improves it in some way, and then makes the

[2, pp. 355-3561

The General Public License thus summarized can be an application of a new legal system of possession in the area of computer software. It is indeed unfortunate that, with an introduction of intellectualproperty rights, most computer software is commercialized so as to be exchanged in the currently prevailing markets and exclusively used by the buyers, like other goods. In other words, information-age products like software are forced to fit to the effete industrial-age framework of the capitalist market system. Without the intellectual property rights, software could be freely distributed and utilized to make someone else better off without sacrificing the wellness of its owner. Hence, a market economy fails to attain Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality in the case of software transactions. But, distribution of software under the General Public License aims to attain Pareto efficiency. Just like land under the CLT can no longer be a target of investment but part of our life, software under the General Public License can be part of our intellectual life in the information age. On the basis of the legal system of ownership, nation-states have been created with artificial borders, borders which ignore natural ecological boundaries. Through the transformation of ownership to possession as an ecological niche, such artificial borders will gradually disappear and be replaced with ecological boundaries based on nature’s vegetation, habitats, and biosphere cycles. That is, nation-states will be ultimately replaced with new ecological regions that share not only ecologically knit habitats and vegetation but also traditions and culture. We call such a region an eco-share region.

* The best known software provided by the Free Software Foundation is GNU Emacs [2], a most powerful editor widely used among UNIX community. In fact, one of the authors is writing this article with GNU Emacs. TEX, a powerful typesetting and text formatting software, is another such public domain software. He has also used it to print out this article. Hence this article is produced only through free software-an informationage work!

K. YAMAGUCHI

82

A MURATOPIAN

AND H. NIWA

ECONOMY

The industrial age, which is founded on mechanistic technology and private ownership, produced five separations to facilitate mass production of goods and services: consumers from producers, employees from employers, savers from investors, land owners from tenants, and man from nature. These separations in turn generate corresponding markets in which goods, services, capital, and land are exchanged: the commodity market, the labor market, the financial capital market, and the housing and real estate market. Unfortunately, only the separation of man from nature fails to create a market. As to the workings of a market economy in the industrial age, three mutually antagonistic schools in economics have emerged: the Walrasian (neoclassical), the Keynesian, and the Marxian. The Walrasian school believes in a self-adjusting market mechanism and Pareto efficient allocation of resources at the market equilibrium. Thus it plays a role as a conservative proponent of a capitalist market economy. The Keynesian school, however, disproves a full-functioning market mechanism, but believes that imperfect market mechanism can be supplemented by purposive government policies. Hence, it supports a liberal reformist vision of mixed welfare economy. In contrast, the Marxian school argues that capitalist economy is an anarchic system that is cyclically hit by economic crises, and that it is also a system of exploitation of workers by capitalists. Thus it advocates socialism as the best system to solve the problems caused by a capitalist economic system.3 In the information age, mass production of goods is replaced with customized products of info-goods, info-services, and knowledge. It is apparent that the traditional market system can no longer handle these information-age products efficiently. Therefore, the role of the market as a mere exchange place under uncertainty has to be altered to meet the new requirement of these information-related types of products and technology. What economic system, then, should be created in place of the traditional market? The effete framework of traditional economics, whether it be Walrasian, Keynesian, or Marxian, cannot answer the question properly. When the system of possession is institutionalized in the information age, the five separations of the industrial age will tend to be reunified. And five new actors will eventually emerge on the main stage of the information age. They are prosumer, coworker, self-financer, inhabitant, and villager. They will begin to act on a networking theater rather than on a traditional market. Their activities will be beyond the market. And they will ultimately create a new economy with the following three features. l

l

Information-sharing network. Prosumers and coworkers will begin to communicate with one another through communication network systems for their mutual benefits. For instance, the SIS (Strategic Information System) will directly unify producers and consumers through computer and communication networks by circumventing a traditional market mechanism. Self-management and participatory democracy. Co-workers and self-financers will be self-motivated to start managing their own production unit and its financial activities by themselves, as traditional corporate organizations of top-down hierarchy gradually lose their competitiveness due to their inefficiencies in the information age.

3 After the sudden collapse of USSR in summer 1991, most Marxian economists, losing their faith in Marxian theory, no longer advocate socialism openly. However, we believe its critical analysis of capitalist economy as a system of exploitation still holds.

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Sustainable development. Villagers and inhabitants will realize their living area as essential property for their own life and become more aware of the soundness and sustainability of their own community environment, simply because they are no longer forced out of their living niche as used to be the case under private and collective ownership.

Mindful interplays of these new actors will in this way begin to construct a new economic reality in the information age. Let us call such an economy a MuRatopian economy [8]. The Japanese word mura literally means village. The mind of the information age is envisioned in the spirit and practice of a Japanese traditional village where village people live in a self-sufficient community, help each other cooperatively at the busiest time of harvest, and respect nature’s way of life. The one character word mura may also be considered as consisting of two different characters: Mu and Ra. Mu implies “nothingness” or “emptiness”the most fundamental concept of Zen Buddhism, and hence compactly reflects new-thinking philosophy that the world is wholistically interrelated and interdependent. A word Ra means “being naked” or “having no possession.” Accordingly, the implication of MU (nothingness) and Ra (dispossession) are associated with mura (village). Topia is from the Greek topos, which means place. Hence the word MuRatopia was coined to signify this new way of thinking that reflects the information age. Will the MuRatopian economy work, then? The MuRatopian economy in the information age is shown to be able to overcome many problems of a capitalist market economy such as unemployment, economic disequilibria, and unfair income distribution. Hence, the MuRatopian economy is a system superior to that of the capitalist market economy (see [8] for a detailed analysis). Moreover, economic incentives and efficiency are also attained in self-managing and information-sharing MuRatopian organizations. Obviously, freedom and participatory democracy are guaranteed to everybody as a fundamental requirement for the economy to work. Thus, the MuRatopian economy can also be claimed to be superior to a socialist planned economy. In short, we propose it to be the most suitable economic system for the information age. Industrial-Age POSTWAR

Community

ECONOMIC

Development

DEVELOPMENT

We are now in a position to apply the new economic paradigm to the advancement of community4 development in Japan. (See Table 1.) Our arguments here will also be applicable to community development in general. Let us briefly review a postwar history of regional economic development, which was predominantly influenced by the industrialage thinking. Postwar economic development in Japan originated from several democratic economic reforms such as the zaibatsu dissolution and land reforms in 1945. It was accelerated by the windfall demand created by the Korean war in 1950. Since the time when the postwar reconstruction period was said to be completed in 1955, a miraculously rapid economic growth has taken place. One of the national development policies was to develop seaside industrial complexes-a policy to reclaim a tract from the sea on which petrochemical and other heavy (smokestack) industrial complexes were built. It was believed to be the most suitable development practice for Japan, which is a geographically small mountainous country surrounded by the ocean. 4 Community is used in this paper interchangeably with cities, towns and villages irrespective of present administrative regions with a hope that those regions will be reorganized into eco-share regions as proposed below.

K. YAMAGUCHI

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AND H. NIWA

TABLE 1 A New-Thinkine

Industrial Technology

Parsdkm

in Economics

age

Information

age

Mechanistic technology: Mass production of goods & services; pollutants as by-product

Mechatronic technology: Customized and recycling-oriented production info-goods, info-services and information (knowledge)

Institution

Ownership (private, public and collective) - Nation-states

Possession (as an ecological niche) + Eco-share regions

Mode of production

Markets by separations Consumer from Producer Employee from Employer Saver from Investor Land Owner from Tenant Man from Nature

Beyond markets: Prosumer Coworker Self-manager Inhabitant Villager

Economy

Capitalist market economy Welfare mixed economy Socialist planned economy

MuRatopian economy l Information-sharing network l Self-management and participatory l Sustainable development

of

Reunification

democracy

The seaside development policy that started in 195Os, however, induced an enormous amount of air and other complex pollutions, causing diseases of respiratory and internal organs among the people living around such complexes nationwide. Victims began to fight against the pollutions by bringing the cases to court. The Yokkaichi asthmatic suit and the Minamata suit against mercury poisoning are typical of those struggles that drew nationwide attention. In many cases the government and corporations were blamed for the pollution, and the victims won the suits. Through these struggles, the Japanese industrial development policies have begun to shift away from a single-minded industrial-age objective: the pursuit of productivity and profits. Gradually an emphasis has been placed on people’s health and a clean environment. That is to say, people and corporations began to realize that they are in the same boat. Consequently, new development policies were implemented such as a diffusion of industries throughout the nation by an appointment of the New Industrial Cities in 1962, and by a creation of the Fourth Comprehensive National Development Plan in 1987. The Japanese economy was gradually reconstructed from an industrial age to a postindustrial age in the 1970s. Unfortunately, the policies to diffuse integrated industrial complexes nationwide failed. Socioeconomic and industrial powers as well as political powers continued to concentrate in the Tokyo area. Some local communities and regions were successful in inviting big corporations to their areas. It turned out, however, that relocation of big corporations to the local areas did not bring the economic returns that were initially expected. Socioeconomic infrastructures in the local communities improved and local employment increased. But human development among local people were not promoted and technological transfer of know-how did not take place as was originally planned. Local government and people failed to take an initiative to establish their own identities, resulting in more dependence on the central government and a massive concentration in the Tokyo area. In this way, Japanese economic development in the postwar period failed to develop self-reliant communities and local regions.

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As a challenge to the industrial-complex development mentioned above, the former governor Kazuji Nagasu of Kanagawa prefecture (which is located next to Tokyo on the west) proclaimed “the age of local community” in 1977. This initiated a movement to restore the self-reliance of community as furusato and to revive its cultural heritage. On the other hand, the central government took a step to strengthen its control over local communities through its financing powers. Accordingly, the gap between cities, towns, and villages began to widen, disabling the effort to attain “the age of local community.” To meet this devastating situation, Kawasaki city in Kanagawa prefecture held a symposium in 1987 that was attended by many cities, towns and villages, and presented a vision of a new age of local community. The vision comprised an autonomous solution of regional problems through a close cooperation between local government and community people, and through an establishment of interregional networking among different communities and residents. The vision materialized in Ohita prefecture as a movement in which each village aims to produce its own specific product, and in Kumamoto prefecture as a movement to restore lost cultural heritages that are worth national attention. (Both prefectures are on the southern island of Kyushu.) This furusato vision was aimed at the restoration of a local picturesque landscape and a local taste, which were lost at the price of industrial and commercial development in the postwar period. During that period local communities tended to be underpopulated due to a domestic migration of young people to large cities. It is true that during the 1960s and 1970s when industrial development was under way this domestic migration helped supply labor forces to the industrial-complexes and contributed to rapid economic growth in Japan. The result was, however, to widen a gap between large cities and sparsely populated local communities. Only aged people were left behind in the local communities. Hence, the furusato vision was also aimed to stop this trend. As the Japanese economy restructured itself toward the information age in the late 7Os, large cities once again began to attract younger people, this time as a brain force. The information age requires an integration of research and development, value-added production, and production of information and software. The integrated information itself produces powerful knowledge. It is possible to transmit such knowledge through network communication. However, spoken information can hardly be networked without a direct face-to-face contact of people themselves. This is why both information and brain power needed to be accumulated in the Tokyo metropolitan area. It is ironic that the information age, which is supposed to help decentralize economic and political powers, promoted this domestic concentration of brain power. The furusato vision could not stop it. With an intention to reverse this trend of concentration of powers in the Tokyo area, former prime minister Noboru Takeshita introduced a policy called “Renewing Furusato” in 1988 with a catch-phrase: “Renewing Furusato of ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves.” It was indeed an eye-catching policy that provided 100 million yen equally and unconditionally to all cities, towns, and village nationwide as a seed fund to renew furusato. Local government recipients were allowed to use the fund at their discretion: building infrastructures, holding festivals, establishing a foundation for continuing education among local people, etc. The policy was intended to encourage local communities ’ Furusato is a Japanese word which literally means a birthplace or a native place. It is actually referred to a village or a town where people grew up or used to live or are currently living. It also refers to a place where people feel dear to their heart. Hence, for the Japanese the word furusato implies not only a geological place but, more importantly, a mental place they revert to spiritually.

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to come up with new ideas and unique projects so that their regions would be rejuvenated. The central government later created the Furusato Foundation in order to further finance such activities free of interest. It has already started financing projects. The policy was heavily criticized for blindly distributing money to gain popularity of the Takeshita government and the Liberal Democratic party, which held the majority in the government. Initial enthusiasm also seemed to have faded away in spite of an effort by the government to encourage people to get directly involved in the activities. This is because local offices of cities, towns and villages have to make reports to their prefectural government concerning their fund-related activities and ask its administrative advice in return. In this sense, the fund is a tied-aid. Even so, some projects were reported to be well initiated by local people. For a closer examination of how the fund was used let us zero in on the central area of the Japanese main island: Gifu, Aichi, and Mie prefectures. In mountainous Gifu prefecture, it was reported that 81% of all cities, towns, and villages distributed questionnaires on the projects that local people wanted to propose. And 94% of projects were participated in by local people. This indicates a mutual cooperation between local government and local people for a creation of better ideas of projects. In Aichi prefecture, which is located on the Pacific Ocean east of Gifu prefecture, participation of local people in projects was also encouraged to make a better use of the furusato fund of 100 million yen. In fact, 90% of the projects were partially designed with the participation of local people. However, only 29% of the projects were actually managed by local people and the remaining 71% were run by the officials of local government. This revealed a traditional (that is, feudalistic) attitude of local government that the use of money provided by the central government should be under the control of the heads of local government. Accordingly, questionnaires on projects seemed to be intended, on the one hand, as an excuse to show the central government that they were cooperating with local people for a better use of the furusato fund, and on the other hand to fool local people into believing that they were indeed invited to join the projects. Tables 2 and 3 are constructed from the 1990 reports of Aichi, Gifu, and Mie prefectures on the furusato projects [4, 5, 61 (Mie is located west of Gifu, facing the Pacific Ocean.) These show how the furusato fund of 100 million yen was used among these three prefectures. New Thinking ECOLOGICALLY

in Renewing SUSTAINABLE

Furusato DEVELOPMENT

The government-led policy of renewing furusato has so far failed to renew local communities and reverse the trend of a concentration to mega-cities in Japan. This is because the policy has been pursued within an effete industrial-age framework. However, some projects seemed to be in accordance with our new-thinking paradigm. This section highlights some new-thinking features observed in the furusato-renewing movement. Let us first examine the development projects in Takasu village of Gifu prefecture, located deep in mountains. Its population was once 4,400 in 1947, but dropped to 3,380 in 1960. To stop this decreasing trend of population, the village encouraged the production of dairy farming and radishes, and a ski resort business, all of which are suitable for its natural surroundings, that is, a cool and rainy summer and a snowy winter with an average snow accumulation of 120 centimeters high. As these projects succeeded, tax revenue of the village from these business activities increased. Moreover, young people who once migrated to urban areas began to return to the village because of new job opportunities. And the population of the village increased to 3,630 by March 1991. These

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TABLE 2 Classification of Projects by Subject Project

Aichi

Gifu

Mie

Total

Infrastructure Social welfare Medical insurance Environmental protection Industrial promotion Education and culture Others Total proiects

29 3 5 35 33 99 88 292

24 4 1 21 55 109 71 291

I 5 2 9 22 55 31 137

60 12 8 71 110 263 196 720

Percentage 8.3 1.7 1.1 9.9 15.3 36.5 21.2 100.0

projects turned out to be ecologically sound and cause little harm to the environment and ecosystem of the village, that is to say, they can co-exist with nature. The village is now planning a project under the guidance of Gifu prefecture and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. It is called the Hirugano Hilltop Firm. This is oriented to reinforce the agricultural infrastructure of the region and build up multi-purpose farms where visitors can enjoy village landscapes, learn farming, and have a nice time and tasty food. Visitors from cities will be able to observe the farming of flowers, the production of dairy goods, and the production of fruit wine in the village. The project may indeed renew the village for the twenty-first century. It is difficult to advance a sustainable economic development without causing damages to the environment and ecosystem. The development path which Takasu village has taken so far and is going to take under the project is an encouraging example of a sustainable community development that has seldom been valued in the industrial age. CULTURAL

HERITAGE

AND TRADITION

Some Japanese cultures and traditions have been well preserved in communities mainly because Japanese society is closed and almost monoracial. For instance, Noh performance, tea ceremony and flower arrangement have been popular among many people and well preserved. Noh performance has also been supported with public subsidies. On the other hand, various local festivals and traditional arts in the communities were destined to vanish simply because few people were available to inherit them under a decreasing trend of population.

TABLE 3 Classification of Projects in Kind Project

Aichi

Gifu

Mie

Total

Hardware Facilities Buildings Other hardware Software Activities and forum Human capital Organizations Institutionalization Other software Others in general Total projects

93 37 18 38 177 51 35 40 10 41 22 292

129 42 38 49 148 47 28 36 8 29 14 291

65 20 24 21 61 8 8 29 5 17 5 137

287 99 80 108 392 106 71 105 23 87 41 720

Percentage 39.8 13.7 11.1 15.0 54.5 14.7 9.9 14.6 3.2 12.1 5.7 100.0

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Gradually local culture and traditions began to revive as younger people returned to their towns and villages. Items under Education and culture in Table 2, and Activities and forum in Table 3 represent those restorations. In the Takasu village young people have revived spring and autumn festivals in which traditional theaters and lion-dancings are performed. To encourage the restoration, the village is planning to build a Furusato Center for Villagers. Another example is a taiko-drum tower, which is planned to be built in the town of Iwamura in Gifu prefecture. In addition to these traditional festivals, new cultural activities are also under way in the prefecture such as an international contest of horseshoe throwings in Hajima city, the Hida music festival in Furukawa town, and an art festival in Hachiman town, to name but a few. The revival of these traditions together with newly started cultural activities will surely promote community development and cultivate communal prides. This is indeed a new trend that has seldom been observed in the postwar period of rapid economic development . PARTICIPATORY

DEMOCRACY

Hekinan city of Aichi prefecture used to be a lovely old town with beaches full of pine trees. Its main industries had been tile, agriculture, and fishing. During the postwar period of rapid economic growth, the city had no choice but to turn its beaches into a seaside industrial complex for the development of the region. The project was planned by the commerce department of Aichi prefecture. So far 1300 square km of land was reclaimed from the sea, which amounts to a 25% increase in the area of the city. As business opportunities increased in the complex, the population of the city also increased to 69,000. Because of this industrial complex, however, the appearance of the city has become imbalanced. To restore the original balance, the city introduced a plan to reconstruct “a healthy and greenish seaside city” full of clean air and water in which people feel comfortable to live, and become warm-hearted and active in arts and cultural events. For this purpose, its population limit has been set to be 81,000 in the twenty-first century. Moreover the city established a system called “City Design Advisors” in 1989. Advisors selected by the system evaluate the functionings of the city infrastructures such as seaside lines, rivers, roads, parks, and public buildings, and examine whether environmental images, designs, and colors are harmonious as a whole or not. Their advice is taken into consideration by the city mayor. This is a kind of participatory democracy introduced to the city administration. So far, a greenish zone has been built between the seaside industrial complex and the residential area. Some 20 sculptures are decorated in the city districts, and people are very proud of them. Moreover, several proposals are under consideration. First, the seaside park is proposed to be redesigned to fit the industrial complex around it. Second, bridges are recommended to be redesigned from an artistic viewpoint rather than a solely functional viewpoint. Third, the northeast part of the city is advised to be rehabilitated as an area of tradition and creativity with greenish and quiet natural surroundings. Fourth, the whole city is proposed to be further decorated with artistic sculptures, and its individual buildings to be designed from a viewpoint of the city as a whole, so that the city itself becomes like a museum. Specifically public halls have to be considered as part of the city space and their interior design has to take this holistic harmony into consideration. The direct participation of citizens in the city administration through the city design advisors’ systems plays a very important role for the rebuilding of Hekinan city. Through such participation, citizens become aware of the importance of their own community as

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well as the value of artistic works such as sculptures. Ultimately this participation will bring an external economy to reactivate the traditional industry of porcelain-making, and help produce first-class potters and sculptors in the future. This type of citizen participation in the redesign of their own community also represents a very new style of community development. Advancing COMMUNITY

MuRatopian

Community

AS AN ECO-SHARE

Development

REGION

In the previous section, we have examined three new-thinking features that have emerged out of the renewing furusato projects, that is, ecologically sustainable development, revival of cultural heritage and tradition, and participatory democracy. These features have seldom been observed in the postwar period of economic development in Japan. In this sense they can be said to reflect a new-thinking paradigm of community development in the information age. However, this nationwide fad of furusato development was, as discussed in the second section, originally initiated by the “renewing furusato” fund of 100 million yen as seed money for furusato projects. Many local communities began to promote furusato projects that just looked like something new in appearance without being guided by the new-thinking paradigm of the information age we have presented in the first section. Accordingly, due to the lack of a new-thinking vision, most of the furusato projects seem to have been lost in the midst of the old framework of the industrial age. To further advance furusato projects and community development, therefore, it is absolutely necessary that they are guided by the new-thinking paradigm of the information age. Here we will show this by arguing how the old paradigm is impeding the further advancement of community development. The Japanese prefectural system was introduced in 1871, immediately following the Meiji restoration, by eliminating the system of samurai clan districts of the Edo period. In the creation of this prefectural system, the ecosystem was not seriously taken into consideration. As a result, traditional cultural regions along the rivers were separated into artificial prefectures across the rivers. This was unfortunate for the community development, because community life had been supported by the rivers, and community activities along the basin of the rivers had been very natural. The history of the rivers had been the history of human beings and communities since the time ancient civilizations originated along the river basins. Let us take an example of the Nagara river, which is the only major river without a dam in Japan. The upper Nagara runs through Gifa prefecture and the lower Nagara is shared by Aichi and Mie prefectures. The central government is now constructing a dam at the river-mouth for better water management in the region. The construction is, however, very controversial. If the dam is built, grassroots activists criticize, it will destroy the ecosystem of the region and endanger animal and plant species. To make matters worse, an agreement has not yet been reached among the three prefectures on the efficient use of the river because each has different economic interests in the river basin. Gifu prefecture on the upper Nagara argues that the construction of a dam will obstruct the free traffic of the Japanese sweetfish, ayu, whereas Aichi and Mie prefectures want it in order to secure their water resources. If prefectural administrations had been unified along the basins of the river, a holistic environmental assessment would have been made possible for the benefits of people and all living things along the river. This is an example of how community development is hindered by the prefectural system of the industrial age.

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There are quite a few examples of similar type. For instance, many communities have built (and are still building) gorgeous community halls without regard to the size of their population and without a plan for their efficient use. And expensive informationprocessing and network communication systems and audiovisual devices have been installed in most halls. Instead of building their own halls, many communities could have jointly built them at lower cost and shared those communication systems and devices without additional cost, Community halls are public goods and information can be more efficiently used by sharing as discussed in the first section. The present prefectural system, however, discourages a sharing of these facilities. What a waste of resources! It is now apparent that the present prefectural system, based on the nation-states framework of the industrial age, has become irrelevant for the information age. For the further advancement of community development in Japan, this hundred year’s old administrative system has to be totally redesigned to be suitable for a communal system of eco-share regions. Only within these eco-share regions, sustainable community development will be advanced and cultural activities will be reactivated. Moreover, a sense of community will be cultivated and a unity of man and nature will be promoted for the welfare of all. Therefore, we have to create new eco-share regions, out of industrial-age prefectures, based on a holistic perspective of their natural ecosystems and socio-cultural traditions. This is a first but very important step toward creating the MuRatopia which we have laid out in the first section. MURATOPIAN

COMMUNITIES

The ideas of new-thinking traits that have emerged out of the renewing furusato projects are not new. What is new is that local government and community people have seriously tried to incorporate these ideas into their community development projects; the ideas that had been neglected under the objectives of economic efficiency and profitability in the industrial age. To advance these features, however, they have to be guided by the new-thinking paradigm of the information age as already pointed out above. For an ecologically sustainable development, the utilization of public and private land has to be carefully managed. Specifically, speculation in land values should not be allowed in the area of community development as it has often caused an inefficient utilization of land and inequality of income distribution in Japan. These were most typically caused during the recent so-called bubble economy. The Community Land Trust that we have discussed in the first section should be more carefully considered as a method of avoiding the land speculation, and instead as a way of establishing community-based eco-share regions. This is a way that land owners and tenants can be reunified as community inhabitants. It is also essential for a sustainable development to handle an efficient recycling of industrial products. Product designs have to be made with their recycling uses in mind. Products without a recycling attribute should be discouraged as effete industrial-age products. When communities introduce new projects or invite new investment, they have to set up very strict recycling criteria. If all communities adopt similar criteria, business corporations have no choice but to be community corporations which support sustainable development. It will be a challenge, therefore, for the Takasu village to incorporate these two requirements, efficient use of land and recycling-oriented products, in its project discussed in the third section. Only through this challenge, reunification of man and nature will be ultimately attained and Takasu villagers will become true MuRatopian villagers. In the industrial age stages of nation-state economic development have been evaluated in terms of gross national product (GNP) per capita. Communities are similarly compared.

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This monolithic measure is no longer appropriate in the information age, mainly because it becomes meaningless to calculate a true value of information-related goods in terms of market values, and accordingly to make a comparison based on their market values. Instead of market values, intrinsic values based on cultural heritage and tradition have to be sought as more essential values for human life. Eventually diversified cultural flowers will begin to flourish, making a comparison of communities based on market values essentially as meaningless as a comparison of real flowers. Thanks to global network communications, all communities will be ultimately networked into a global community so that there will be no center of cultural activities distinguished from cultural peripherals. That is, all communities are centers of their own culture. Communities should make further efforts to revive cultural traditions so that they can be true members of the global community. In this way a linear ordering of nation-states in terms of monolithic GNP will be transformed into a nonlinear diversity of colorful MuRatopian communities. Participatory democracy as presented in the first section is one of the most essential features of the information age-a participatory democracy in business management and community administration. Information and communication networks technology make a direct participation of people possible for the first time in history. Any organization, private or public, which does not allow this information-age democracy will be driven out of market and community through competitive forces of the market. The advisors’ system in Hekinan city is on the right track of this future trend and should be further promoted into a truly self-management system of the community. That is to say, every citizen should be allowed to initiate community ordinances. Moreover, participatory democracy has to be practiced among business corporations in the MuRatopian community. In other words, if they want to operate in the community, they have to accept a system of self-management by coworkers, or at least the ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) which we have mentioned in the first section. This is a way that employers and employees can be reunified as coworkers. Eventually participatory democracy will pervade a whole MuRatopian community. We have now briefly shown how three new-thinking traits that have emerged out of the furusato projects can be further advanced so that an industrial-age community is transformed into a MuRatopian community in the information age. Through this transformation we are led to a new information age. A community that hesitates to transform itself and tries to stay in the old industrial framework will be left behind in this information revolution. COMMUNITY WITH A HUMAN MIND

The information age, built on mechatronic technology, is characterized by two fundamental features. First, it is a global networking system, enabled by satellite and computer communication as if it provides our body with a nervous system. Hence, like our body any local incident will inevitably create a global impact in the information age. This entails a holistic view of the globe. Second, endowed with complicated communication networks, the information age operates as if it has its own mind. Hence, it becomes creative like our brain. Accordingly, the globe itself will be viewed as if it has a mind and self-adjusting body. In this sense, the information age truly becomes the age of Gaia [3]. In summary, as an inseparable part of the global community, each community has its own human feelings and is able to share the feelings of joy and sorrow with other communities. In this way a MuRatopian community becomes considerate of other communities. That is, it becomes a community with a human mind. This is our MuRatopian vision of community development in the twenty-first century.

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The authors are very grateful to the comments and suggestions given in the session 2: High Technology, which is chaired by Ma Yuanliang and Zhang Wanyuan and cochaired by Hazel Henderson. Moreover, they are very obliged to the prefectural government of Aichi, Gifu, and Mie of central Japan for the materialsprovidedfor this research. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Business Week, May 15 (1989). Rosenblatt, B., and Cameron, D., Learning GNU Emacs. O’Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA, 1991. Lovelock, J. E., The Ages of Gaia-A Biography of Our Living Earth, Bantam Books, New York, 1988. Aichi Prefecture, Reports on Furusato Projects, November, 1990. Gifu Prefecture, Reports on Furusato Projects, March, 1990. Mie Prefecture, Reports on Furusato Projects, May, 1990. White, K. (Ed)., The Community Land Trust Handbook, by The Institute for Community Economics, Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA, 1982. 8. Yamaguchi, K., Beyond Walras, Keynes and Marx-Synthesis in Economic Theory Toward a New Social Design. Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 1988. 9. Yamaguchi, K., Fundamentals of a new economic paradigm in the information age, FUTURES, 22; 10231036 (1990). 10. Yamaguchi, K., New thinking on the economic development of islands in the information age. In Islands’ Culture and Development, UNESCO, Paris, 1991, 201-213. Received 6 April 1992; revised 9 April 1993