The lifestyle of people in Japan around 200 years ago, which was guided by the principle of consuming less, would help to create a sustainable society in the 21st century, an American expert on Japanese architecture said.
Just before Japan opened up to the West for modernization and industrialization, there was an "ideal recycling society" in the late Edo Period, where even night soil was traded as fertilizer, said Azby Brown, an associate professor at Kanazawa Institute of Technology and director of the Future Design Institute in Tokyo.
"We think Edo was a kind of static and nonprogressive era, but in fact it was constant innovation in almost every aspect of life, certainly material, culture and technology, and certainly design," said Brown, who published a book in Japan in October about the way of life in the late Edo Period.