How a recycled garment made from tattered rags symbolises the ingenuity of what could have been one of the world's first large-scale ecological civilisations. Imagine standing on the old wooden Nihonbashi bridge in the commercial heartland of Edo, the ancient Japanese city now known as Tokyo. It is some time around 1750 during the Edo period, the era from 1603 to 1868 ruled by the Tokugawa shoguns .
You are surrounded by a bustle of chattering locals twirling their umbrellas, seafood traders rushing across the bridge, balancing brimming baskets on their shoulders, and labourers carrying rice and cloth to the market stalls on either side of the riverbank. The smell from the famous Nihonbashi Uogashi – the fish market – wafts through the air. It is a huge city of nearly one million people – far bigger than London or Paris at the time.
You notice that almost everything seems to be made of wood – houses, carts, the bridge itself. But what is less obvious is that you are gazing upon what may be one of the world's first large-scale ecological civilisations. Ancient Japan, I argue in my new book History for Tomorrow , offers inspiration for creating the deeply sustainable society we so urgently need today.
Humanity's material footprint is almost double what the planet can safely sustain: we are using up the resources of nearly two planet Earths annually. Just think of the e-waste mountains, the biodiversity loss, the oceans polluted with microplastics, the deforestation to g.
