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The contents here are partially modified from a newspaper article issued in February 2002. |
People can grow their food in their vegetable gardens at least five days a week.
This is one proposal for helping to create a new sense of values for the 21st centry.
Yamada: |
I think the "Vegetable Gardening Family" plan that you propose is a very interesting idea, Mr. Onuki.
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Onuki: |
This plan refers to working for a regular company or public agency on two days of the week and growing your own crops in "vegetable gardens" on the remaining five days. Although you earn less than half the salary that you used to, you will definitely acquire food from your "vegetable garden." At the same time, you can participate in creative activities in which everyone should participate such as flexible child care and education and cultural activities rooted in the locality.
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Yamada: |
You are proposing that we work two days a week and go back to the land on the other days. I was born into a beekeeper's family and helped with the chores of beekeeping throughout my childhood. Because I take it for granted that all family members should participate in farming, your "Vegetable Gardening Family" plan really appeals to me.
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Onuki: |
I think that farming is a fundamental art. It provides us with a holistic joy. At present, most of our time in life is not at our disposal. That hurts the dignity of human beings. It seems to me that the 21st century is, in a sense, a century in which people will recover the dignity that was lost. For this purpose, we need time in which we can breathe without restraint. When I was an elementary school student, my teacher said that machines would work on behalf of people when technologies advanced and that people would be able to engage in countless cultural activities and have lots of leisure time. Unfortunately, he was. But I believe that, if we prevent technologies from becoming combined with market principles, technologies will start to work in favor of people.
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Yamada: |
According to market principles, I believe that a market is destined to develop at the sacrifice of the weak. For example, an inexpensive product can be made in a country with low labor costs. In the sense that someone is sacrificed, the difference of labor costs is similar to slavery or colonialism. As a businessman, I wonder if that is really a right thing to do.
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Onuki: |
Whenever I return from Mongolia, I am struck by the wide variety in the Japanese islands. Japan, encompassing snowy Hokkaido to tropical Okinawa, is a mosaic country with mountains, seashores, and mountain streams. If Vegetable Gardening Families get scattered nationwide, the population concentrated in cities would be dispersed and there will be elbow room in big cities. Centered on middle-sized and small cities, there will be pastoral zones of Vegetable Gardening Families and then networks connecting them will spread. This movement will change the Japanese scenery and bring about a wonderful future. I feel cheerful when I think of such a future. Although I will not live long enough to see it, at least our children and grandchildren who suffer now can live freely and naturally in this splendid new world. It seems to me that we should put up with a little pain if we can recover our innate human nature.
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