Posted by Click here to get a free newsletter Zen and a Way of sustainable prosperity: Balance, financial success, and sustainability with the secrets of the Japanese Omi-merchants.
In order to feel Ikigai in your business, it is better for your business to be Sanpo-Yoshi and that is because Sanpo-Yoshi includes the element of Seken-Yoshi, which means being socially friendly.
My definition of Seken-Yoshi in today’s world has the following 5 elements.
1, Making your business small
2, Making your business local
3, Making your business environmentally friendly
4, Making your business socially just
5, Making your business holistic
Let me explain the second element today: Making your business local.
Localizing businesses fits the Seken-Yoshi business model because, for one, it grows the local economy. This is because money circulates within the community, which helps sustain the economic activities in the area in question.
Another advantage of making it local is that it is environmentally friendly. One, it eliminates the agriculture system of monoculture where people grow only one crop year in year out so that they can export the farm products. Localization enables the agriculture system of poly-culture where people grow different crops that encourage the diversity of the ecosystem.
One of the best examples of a localized economy that used to work well in Japan was a Satoyama economy.
Satoyama Economy
In Japanese, the word Satoyama symbolizes ‘sustainability.’ Sato means livable or arable land, and the word yama means mountains or hills. In Japan, the word Satoyama usually describes an area that has mountains, forests, residence, rice, or vegetable fields. The reason why Satoyama stood for sustainability was its ability to self-sustain by circulating resources within an area.
What happens in a Satoyama is that the mountains that are sources of rivers supply water to the rice fields, and to the residence. The village then uses the trees in the mountains to build residences and furniture. The cutting down of trees also helps the forest survive because the spaces created gave way to sunlight that the young trees needed to grow.
The remaining wood from the trees is collected together with the fallen leaves where humans then use the woods as firewood and the fallen leaves as fertilizers for their rice fields. After the people harvest the rice from the rice field, they ended up with rice bran that they could use as fertilizers.
As you can see, the ecosystem was highly sustainable as each party was beneficial to the other. The Japanese people used to practice the Satoyama economy, a localized economy where everyone depended on the circulation of resources. These people farmed locally and grew different foods because that is what sustained the ecosystem.
Omi-merchant's way of Sustainable Prosperity 