I came to Japan twenty-one years ago to study at Waseda University. Since then, I’ve spent the majority of the intervening time based in Tokyo, and as of the last six years, Kamakura. My ability to work on low-paying, independent, “weird” art projects in my 20s was entirely contingent on the low cost of living in Tokyo (which, I know, sounds paradoxical, but it really is, secretly, the cheapest first-world megalopolis around) and universal healthcare. Much of my design and aesthetic sensibilities were forged in Japan simply by osmosis of living here.

Unlike, I suppose, many non-Japanese who come here, I don’t have any pressing interest in anime or manga; I have never owned a TV (and therefore know nothing about Japanese TV); stopped playing console games twenty-five years ago; don’t know anything about Japanese pop-music. It’s only after moving and living here and exploring the country that I’ve come to love the contemporary architecture and graphic and product design sensibilities of Japan. Mainly, I came twenty-one years ago because it seemed like more of a challenge to live in Japan than, say, move to Europe for a study-abroad year. (Also, it was 1/3 the cost (because of US university relationships and scholarships) to study in Japan, than Spain, for example.)

I never “decided” to stay. Like many, it was always temporary. But then years pass, relationships are forged, your own cultural sensibilities shift, and your “home” country feels more and more foreign. Now, because of recent legal changes to Japanese “exit tax” laws, it would cost too much money to leave! I joke, I joke. (Sort of.)

Like I said, I was never into anime or manga or Japanese pop culture or fashion in a way that would drive me to come to Japan. I had only the most ambient sense of “Japan” existing as a place when I was a child. I owned a Nintendo, and loved the Nintendo, and knew it came from a place far away called “Japan.”

Randomly: When I was thirteen I ended up golfing in Hawai’i with some Japanese businessmen, and they were uniquely nice and strange (“Are you married?” they asked me, a teenager), to such a degree that I thought it might be fun to see the place that “made” them.

Hopefully there’s still enough life left on my timeline that it’s too early to say that it’s my “life’s work.” Ha ha! But it has become an organizing principle for the last few years, and, I hope, for many years to come.

In 2013 I had just come back from a stint in California and was wondering “why” I was in Japan. I didn’t work for a Japanese company. I wasn’t looking to publish in Japanese. I wasn’t looking to engage with the Japanese startup or publishing world. I just liked it as a base (and had transitioned from artist visa to permanent residency).

That was around when my buddy John McBride invited me on a walk along the Kumano Kodō ― a path I had never before heard of. I went. It was fun. We did another walk, and then another. I realized that these old roads were fascinating ― not from an “Oh, think of the old samurai battles!” angle, but more a living museum angle. A human geography angle. They were, in part, like walking through the Met, outdoors. But then, also, with working towns and villages and industries (fishing, logging) along the way. And I realized my Japanese language abilities unlocked a deeper layer to the walks as well. So, I started to lean more and more into following the old routes. It wasn’t until 2019 that I did my first “real” long walk ― which was 40+ days along the Nakasendō and beyond.

I’d say the abject “boringness” of the walks, and the fact that I force myself to be “offline” means your senses are ― by dint of necessity, lest you go insane ― heightened. And so you begin to notice patterns and textures throughout the country that would otherwise go unnoticed. Like ― all the hidden Christianity signs / posters on sheds and homes in the middle of nowhere. They’re all designed the same way ― black background with yellow text ― and mysteriously rampant. To be honest, I’m far more interested in the human components ― the depopulation and remnants of past lives left in villages along the way ― than the explicit natural element of the walks. Many of my walks don’t involve the woods. In November 2020 I walked the Tōkaidō and the newsletter for that walk was called “Pachinko Road”, because so much of it was just walking past pachinko parlors and horse racing stadiums. Which I loved. And, could be considered of their own unique “nature.”

I’ve learned that a walk used well becomes a platform or tool. Asking a carpenter what they think of their hammer is sort of silly. It’s a hammer. Similarly for a walk. It’s just a walk. But a walk done well ― over days and weeks and months, offline, with a camera and pen and paper in hand, looking closely, performed with a so-called “open heart” and curiosity and kindness, a desire to connect with folks along the way and to approach each day with minimal judgement ― whatever that is, is something entirely different. So I guess I’ve learned: Most tools are boring, until they’re not, and then they become miraculous. The onus is on the craftsperson to figure out how to escape the boredom.

I think Japan has a longer history of considering micro-seasons, so there’s perhaps a greater ambient sense of change or the passing of time by folks living in Karuizawa than, say, Palo Alto. But, on a whole, I’m not sure there’s *that* much of a difference. I do think Japan, more than most of the west, has an inherently complicated relationship with nature (which has less to do with “east” or “west” and more simple geology), since the landmass of Japan is constantly trying to kill the people who live on it. The seismic activity of Japan has produced a kind of sensible, committed fatalism that I enjoy. Americans on a whole seem obsessed with prolonging life at all cost, no matter how diminished the quality of that life may be. Here, I find I have more conversations about death by flood or tsunami, and there is less of a “desire” to stop the acts from happening on a person-by-person scale, and more a gentle leaning into inevitability of death itself.

Simultaneously, on a national, macro scale, there’s an obsession in Japanese politics (?) with attempting to separate the inevitability of mega-ton natural events and daily life via “seawalls” and the concreting of everything. I think a lot of preemptive concreting *is* useful (certainly for landslides). But, I’m not convinced a seawall, no matter how high, will do much to stop a truly destructive tsunami barreling towards a small cove. So the separation of the sea from villages is extremely depressing throughout much of rural Japan ― those villages feel like prisons, and the balance between risk and nature has been tipped towards caution at the expensive of, in my opinion, quality of life. And it seems to be getting worse, sadly (see: the Tohoku coastline post 3/11). Also, the post-war mania of cedar tree planting turned large chunks of Japanese wilderness into monocultural dead zones. Thankfully, the younger generation seems to be more nature “aware” and, one hopes, looking to undo a bit of this. We see some protected zones of flora and fauna diversity, like Odaigahara in Mie Prefecture. It would be great to see more of that through the country.

Buy less crap. Think more about the crap you do buy. Ride bikes. Drive less. Walk more. Fly less. Don’t be so selfish. Wear one jacket for ten years. Eat less meat.

But all major, real, impactful change has to happen on a globally-coordinated policy level. A lot of rich countries need to step up and make it easier for less-rich countries to be less dependent on fossil fuels, more invested in renewables. We’ll probably also need to geoengineer our way to climate control.

On a whole, though, I think things are going well (all considering), which I know is against the prevailing sense of doom and destruction we see daily on Twitter. The trick is to think on a forty year timescale. Even just looking at the last decade: The cost of renewables has dropped some 70%. Tesla (basically) didn’t exist. Electric cars were barely a thing. There was almost no talk about being carbon neutral as a company. And I believe this change for the better is accelerating.

Look at how efficient we were around vaccine development in the face of the pandemic. Similarly, given even more federal / global governing incentives (tax breaks, carbon credits, etc), I’m confident (based on historical data, past patterns) we can do more, more quickly. In 1925 only half the homes in the US had electric lights. HALF! A hundred years later we are suckling the teat of millions of little lamps we carry in our hand almost every minute of every day. It’s weird how quickly technology advances and how quickly it normalizes. Our monkey brains have a hard time extrapolating exponential growth/change, which is what these last hundred years have been defined by. I suspect in a hundred years we will be dealing with issues related to global warming, but we’ll also have mitigated the worst.

What I outlined above: A technological foundation to deal with any and all inevitable climate issues that might arise. I believe that through renewables (and perhaps fusion? or some fusion derivative) energy will be close to “free” in the near future (i.e, 100 years), and that alone will dramatically change the nature of society for the better (presupposing sensible leadership and universal access to unlimited educational resources).

Personally: I’d like to leave behind archetypes for disconnecting and looking closely at the world. I think future generations will probably look back on this moment like we look back on smoking in the 50s ― Like, what? You smoked on *airplanes*? What was wrong with you people? I think our great-grandkids will be confused by how much of an abundance there was in the world at this moment (so much money, so much food), and how unevenly distributed that abundance was (no real social safety net in wealthy countries like the US; an abject lack of mental health resources in other places). And how our distraction-by-smartphones / social networks will be seen as a kind of health malfunction in the same way we view past smoking or our commitment to asbestos or leaded gasoline or Victorian child labor. So at the very least, it would be nice if a great-grandkid could pick up one of my books and go ― oh, OK, there was at least one strange dude, talking with farmers and fishermen who sometimes tried to pull his head out of that mess.