A "Workers’ Paradise" Found Off Japan’s Coast

[Hannah Bell]

...it is not just the cult-of-personality politics that smack of a latter-day workers’ paradise. This sleepy island, just off Japan’s main southern island, Kyushu, has recently come under unaccustomed national media attention for a very different reason: it invented its own version of work-sharing four decades before the current economic crisis popularized the term.

Under Hime’s system, village employees earn about a third less pay than public servants elsewhere in Japan, though they work the same hours. This has allowed the village to create more jobs: it now directly or indirectly employs a fifth of all working islanders. Most of the rest are engaged in fishing, also government-subsidized. In fact, village officials say, there are few fully private-sector jobs on the island.

Islanders admit to the socialist parallels, even while proclaiming themselves political conservatives...Some jokingly take the analogy a step further...“Hime Island is North Korea, just a livable version,” Naokazu Koiwa said with a laugh. Mr. Koiwa, 32, repairs fishing boats.

Unsurprisingly, the current mayor, Akio Fujimoto, flatly rejects the North Korean comparison. Rather, he and most other islanders call Hime a repository for traditional Japanese values, like economic egalitarianism and social harmony. They say the rest of the nation has lost these in an embrace of more competitive capitalism, especially under the prime ministership of Junichiro Koizumi from 2001-6...with the current crisis causing a national questioning of American-style laissez-faire economics, and business leaders and unions seeking alternatives to widespread job cuts, Hime’s work-sharing scheme is suddenly being held up as a new model...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/world/asia/22japan.html


The island has a free cable system; after an election which caused ill-will in 1955, they began choosing leadership by consensus...

"Even by clannish Japan’s standards, the island seems a friendly, close-knit place. Islanders cheerfully greet passing strangers. Roads, parks and even public toilets are immaculate. Doors are left unlocked, and the island has only one policeman."

[Forkboy]

1. Interesting story.

Their whole culture fascinates me immensely.

K&R

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[leveymg]

3. I suspect that most pre-20th Century village life was like this worldwide.

It was the spread of large corporations and state power -- the other communalisms, the authoritarian type -- that destroyed the traditional social harmony in which most human beings lived for eons.

The fact that people do not lock their doors and that there is only one policeman tells us everything we need to know.

[SoCalDem]

4. I once read an article about "island-occupation"..(It may have been Hawaii)

anyway, the "westerners" were totally flummoxed by the casual way the islanders approached "work". They preferred to play in the surf, and were quite content without many "creature comforts".. They fished when they were hungry, and shared their catch with anyone who wanted fish..They cooked the fish communally, and shared that as well.. They were not interested in chopping down the forest to build "permanent" structures, and when storms would destroy parts of their villages, they often just moved the entire village population elsewhere, instead of fortifying the damaged place. They also seemed to prefer less clothing :)

It struck me as funny, that now people pay thousands of dollars to "live like an islander" at so many beautiful places all around the world..(although modernity has somehow included high-rise buildings & shopping malls to the equation) :rofl:

[leveymg]

5. And, we called them "heathens" and "primatives."

Most of the South Seas islanders and native people of the Caribbean were (and still are, to a large degree) probably the most humane and welcoming people on the planet (the occasional cannibals, aside). And, look at what the "civilized" and "Christian" Europeans did to them . . .

If you want a prototype of what the United States does to subvert countries in the Third World, just look at the coup that overthrew the monarchy of Hawaii in the 19th Century.

[Cid_B]

6. YEAH!

*goes to google the "What did the Romans ever do for us" bit from Life of Brian*

[Blue_Tires]

7. +1