Lifestyle with Roots: 根のある暮らし編集室
There’s some exciting news around the town of Omori, my department of Nenoarukurashi or the Editor Room for Lifestyles with Roots has a new office!
People may be asking, what the heck is this Editor Room for Lifestyles with Roots, and why is Shun doing some ambiguous job there? Well to tell you the truth we’re still figuring things out, and yes I am doing ambiguous jobs. So the feeling is mutual.
My job is now a cat whisperer, jk I’m allergic to cats
The easiest way to explain my department is that we’re sort of the innovation team of the company. My company Gungendo （群言堂）is in simplest terms a clothing and apparel company that focuses on making clothing with a story, a social meaning. We make our clothing domestically, from all natural materials, and each piece’s inspiration comes from the lifestyle here in Omori. In this way, Gungendo is not simply an apparel company but a lifestyle company. We essentially sell a certain kind of lifestyle, the brand represents a choice in consumption a choice in the customer’s identity within society.
So what does my department do in a lifestyle and apparel company? Well we don’t make any clothes that’s for sure, I literally have no idea how to even make a shirt. Furthermore, my department does not technically make any profit at the moment. In the longterm we hope to make some money so we can at least be somewhat financially sustainable, but for now we’re focused on something else.
Finding new possibilities in our lifestyles in Omori.
Right now is the age where people can make new forms of work from new combinations from various components. For example, one of my co-workers, Suzuki-san, is combining instagram with organic farming in Omori. By combining instagram with farming, he is not simply a local “farmer” but together with his social influence of his instagram account (which has over 3600 followers) he is able to create an affective community of people who empathize with his lifestyle. In this way, he is not only growing vegetables, but also creating a community for alternative lifestyles.
My other co-worker, Miura-san, is the head editor of his own free paper Miura-Henshucho. His free paper has no advertisements of our merchandize, just simply his lifestyle here in Omori. Most of his articles tends to be about the people he meets, the locations the he visits, the food that he makes, his own personal history, and etc. What is important I feel about his free paper is that people again empathize with his insights, his way of life, and his values. Even if they are in Tokyo or Shimane, there is something that the readers all have in common, and they have that fulfilled by reading his articles.
The dynamic duo on the weekend
I mean think about it, in this day and age where people are getting tech jobs at startups in SF, so why is something like farming or writing a free paper so revolutionary?
This is my own personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, but I really believe we are living in a time where our values and way of life are shifting. Many of us who live in developed countries are slowly getting closer to being in a post-growth society (a society that has reached a certain limit of economic growth). Many of us are looking for something more than making money, making money is the process to something else, the means to an end. I know that this statement can be totally refuted from different points of view, like socio-economic class, race, gender and I totally get that, there are big assumptions I am making. However, from living in Japan and studying postwar Japanese society, I realize that there is a shift in what is being considered a fulfilling life. It seems to not focus on so much on the “how much more we can consume”, but “what is the story/ meaning” behind what we are consuming, or in more simpler terms the quality. What are we actually paying for, what sort of future are we making by consuming this, by choosing that?
What Suzuki-san and Miura-san are doing is paving a way, bringing together a community that is reimagining what is considered fulfilling which is alternative to perhaps some of the more mainstream values of how life should be. And you know what, people seem happy that they are able to take part in the lifestyle these two are leading. So going back to this whole finding new possibilities in the lifestyle of Omori thing, even in a town of 400 people, in one of the most depopulated and “countryside” part of Japan, people all the way in Tokyo are empathizing with their lifestyles and is choosing to follow Suzuki-san on Instagram or reading Miura-san’s free paper. In this way, there is something people are reacting to in this town that has nothing to do really with things like big data, mass-production, 24 hour customer service, 1 day free shipping, but people find it meaningful.
That’s what we hope we can continue to find out, to experiment with new possibilities of fulfilling lifestyles that is timely to this specific time in history.We are trying to find and create our own “roots"
