One does not need gorgeous clothing. The desire for beautiful clothing is the desire for a means to conceal one's own shortcomings. Clothes make the man, as they say; trying to increase one's own value by dressing in fine clothes is a way of advertising one's own worthlessness. A uniform is a means of boasting of the city's power; military uniforms, medals, parliamentary ID tags, and priests' splendorous robes are all means of domination devised to make people bow down before them. And decorating armor and helmets, which are supposedly meant to ward off arrows and swords, was the creation of display calculated to impress, not only one's enemies, but also allies and common people with one's majesty.
If the stable boy gets nice clothes, then why not a military uniform on a fox, and a fancy kimono on a badger? But whether or not their status rises as a result is another matter. First of all, they hate wearing such troublesome things, and will show considerable resistance if someone tries to put them on; you may not be able to get them on the animal at all. It is because they are natural. And it is here that we find the difference between the city, which is built upon human law, and wildness, which finds its foundation in the law of Nature.
The purpose of clothing is to ward off the cold and to keep from getting wet in the rain. If need be, we should be prepared to cut a hole in a gunny sack for our head and wear that. And we should wear light clothing, because it is best for our health to expose our skin to the outside air. Let us begin preparing ourselves right now.
Preparation for our Escape from the City
Concerning living quarters: Putting up grand buildings, equipping them with all sorts of conveniences, and decorating them lavishly is, just as with clothing, done to boast of one's own greatness, and in order to satisfy one's desire for convenience, extravagance, and ease. And most important, in order to build such structures, precious resources are used unsparingly, great destruction and contamination are wrought by the mining, transport, and processing of the said resources, and great amounts of pollution are generated by the use of such homes or workplaces. What is more, this increase in the number of buildings causes the further decrease in the area of the country, and the cities continue their expansion.
There is no limit to the desire for an anti-Nature, modern urban lifestyle. Small or old houses are continually being torn down (the remains are discarded in the country or in the ocean), and big, new buildings are put up. They call this the development of the cities, but just as I have demonstrated, this development is actually what is threatening the continuing existence of the cities.
It was some foreigner who made fun of Japanese houses by calling them "rabbit hutches," and a certain idiotic Japanese critic then used the same expression as an instrument of self-deprecation. However, Kamo no Chomei [40] demonstrated that a ten-foot square hut was quite big enough as a place to live. If the population continues to increase at the present rate, without war, epidemics, or famine, in 700 years we will reach a population density at which there will be one person per square foot, including the mountains. It seems to me that it would be much more important to put up with living in rabbit hutches and saving our farmland.
Living in cramped, stuffy apartment buildings and falling on your face every time there is an earthquake is naturally the price one should pay for living in the city in order to realize a life of ease. If you do not like it, then leave the city and go to live in the country. Build a log cabin in the country and live there. Even if it is destroyed by a typhoon or an earthquake, you can repair it the very next day. What is more, you can repair it by yourself, without the help of anyone else.
It would do us well to prepare ourselves by learning how to build the sunken dwellings of ancient times. We should ready ourselves by recognizing that it is best for human beings to live on a dirt floor.
Is It Possible to Produce Food without the City?