I was wondering how it might feel to live within a jikkenchi as one of these people who go against the grain and rage against the dying of the light, these lone wolves and escaped horses. Is there space for them within the Yamagishi Society, where calm discussion is the norm, where nobody should ever […]

Alright, here we go… This is going to be a tough one. If you are not a sociologist or political science wonk, it might be a good idea to avert your eyes (although by doing so you’ll miss out on cute pictures of pigs, among other sublime contributions to the Art of Photography). One of […]

It all started with a successful poultry farm. According to jikkenchi lore, Yamagishi Miyuzo (1901-1961) started to imagine what an ideal human society would look like early in his life: free, egalitarian, leaderless, at one with nature, and most importantly—full of love and compassion and free of anger. Unsurprisingly, the socio-political context of Japan in […]

Joining the Yamagishi Association formally (meaning, deciding to come and live on a Yamagishi “jikkenchi” community) is a long and multi-step process, which starts with the tokkoh; one must then attend the two-week “kensan school”, in order to further ponder the questions raised during the first step, while working together with a group of people […]

The first and last time that Mr Sakuramoto travelled abroad was in 1976, to China, right after the death of Mao Zedong. And even that trip was organized by the Yamagishi association — he was already living on a jikkenchi at the time. Mr Kaneko, who works at the noodle factory, travels occasionally to Korea […]

This morning, I was harvesting spinach. All of a sudden, an 8-bit melody started floating through my brain, come straight from a time far, far away… I started slashing at the spinach in a frenzy, but alas! No gold coins hidden in the leaves. The moral is: never underestimate the power of a Nintendo product […]

Yesterday, during our lunch break, the genial Sakuramoto-san 桜本 took me and my Korean friends for a walk outside the jikkenchi. He is a 山城ファン — a “castle enthusiast,” and likes nothing best than to explore the sites where castles used to stand in days of yore, when the likes of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi […]

Lunch time: 10.30 am – 2 pm. Dinner time: 5.15 pm – 8 pm. Every meal, a different menu. Every time, a feast — and the special pleasure of knowing exactly where this food comes from, for having helped to make it happen: yesterday, the delicious winter onions on the table were the ones we […]

My teammate in the Vegetables section (ベジタ部 — is this a pun?), Miyazaki Takaumi-san 宮崎高海 and his children, Kokoro 心 (“Heart”) and Taiyou 太陽 (“Sun”). Wholehearted kindness.

“Please do not go to have dinner in the old people’s dining room”; “You do know how to tell the men’s bathroom entrance from the women’s, don’t you?” I can’t help but wonder what silly mistakes I will make in my turn, which will give rise to more sound advice of this kind for the […]