“ Andy Couturier has written some very articulate pieces on the counterculture in Japan.”
-GARY SNYDER, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
TV appearance on KATU's program "Afternoon Live"
where Andy discusses how we too can make some of the changes
the people in The Abundance of Less have made. About 5 minutes long.
where Andy discusses how we too can make some of the changes
the people in The Abundance of Less have made. About 5 minutes long.
The Abundance of Less has been on the shelves since August and is going in to a third printing soon. Andy is setting up speaking appearances for the winter and spring of 2018 now. Subscribe to his newsletter to be the first to know about these and other events! Do you know of an organization or business or book club which would like to have Andy speak? Feel free to contact Andy and tell him about it.
Upcoming Book Talks...
• Book Passage, Corte Madera. Tue. May 29 at 7:00 PM
• Lecture tour in China, June 1 to June 30. Find events here.
• Many Rivers Books, Sebastopol. Thur. Sept 6 at 7:30 PM
• Lecture tour in China, June 1 to June 30. Find events here.
• Many Rivers Books, Sebastopol. Thur. Sept 6 at 7:30 PM
Andy's Past Appearances...
• Bookshop Santa Cruz. Thur. August 24
• Berkeley Book Release Party, Blue Willow Tea Spot. Sat. August 26
• Mrs. Dalloway's Books, Berkeley. Thur. September 7
• Northtown Books, Arcata CA. Sat. October 14
• Berkeley Ecology Center, Berkeley, CA. Thur. October 26
•Tsunami Books, Eugene OR, Sun. Nov 5
• Powell's Books, Portland OR (Hawthorne Store). Mon. Nov 6
• East West Books, Mountain View. Wed. Apr 11
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Book Talk at The Commonwealth Club of California, 2010It's a great talk about the first version of the book, A Different Kind of Luxury.
With everyone in a rush, what do we lose? By taking the time to live a rich interior life, we can create the calm focus needed for true creativity and leadership. |
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An Interview with Andy on Works and Conversations with Richard Whittaker.Excerpt:
“So, you work for Greenpeace?" Atsuko challenged me. "You call yourself an environmentalist and you’re working for Otsuka Pharmaceutical?” Like, “How could you possibly be doing this?” She’d found the yellowest of my yellow underbelly and just jabbed it. It was the exact opposite of my image of the demure Japanese woman, and I loved her right away! |
Q&A with Andy about The Abundance of Less in Spirituality & Health Magazine."I chose a real variety of people--to show readers that you don't have to have a certain personality in order to choose a richer life. I wanted to point out that each of us can make changes, starting now, to have more time for what we truly feel is important, and not get caught up in automatic behaviors, or consumerism." |
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Reviews
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY REVIEW:
Andy Couturier (Writing Open the Mind) offers 10 examples of simple modern lifestyles in Japan, including those of artists, farmers, and philosophers. The author, who lived in Japan for four years in his mid-20s, met everyday gurus there such as Atsuko Watanabe and her husband, potter and botanist Gufu, and visited their farmstead in the mountains of Shikoku. Based on interviews carried out on multiple stays, these profiles, which originally appeared in the Japan Times, are seamless narratives enlivened by photographs and passages from the interviewees’ writings. Some common themes that emerge are working with one’s hands, taking life more slowly, and striving for self-sufficiency. From woodblock craftsman Osamu Nakamura, Couturier learns the appeal of living outside the cash economy, while “anarchist potter” San Oizumi teaches him to “cherish the food you eat.” Every chapter ends by catching up with the figure in question, considering in particular how the Fukushima disaster affected them. The book ends with an excellent afterword telling how Couturier has applied lessons learned in Japan to daily life on 27 acres of meadow and forest in California. Without romanticizing traditional rural life, Couturier illuminates the benefits of humility.
Andy Couturier (Writing Open the Mind) offers 10 examples of simple modern lifestyles in Japan, including those of artists, farmers, and philosophers. The author, who lived in Japan for four years in his mid-20s, met everyday gurus there such as Atsuko Watanabe and her husband, potter and botanist Gufu, and visited their farmstead in the mountains of Shikoku. Based on interviews carried out on multiple stays, these profiles, which originally appeared in the Japan Times, are seamless narratives enlivened by photographs and passages from the interviewees’ writings. Some common themes that emerge are working with one’s hands, taking life more slowly, and striving for self-sufficiency. From woodblock craftsman Osamu Nakamura, Couturier learns the appeal of living outside the cash economy, while “anarchist potter” San Oizumi teaches him to “cherish the food you eat.” Every chapter ends by catching up with the figure in question, considering in particular how the Fukushima disaster affected them. The book ends with an excellent afterword telling how Couturier has applied lessons learned in Japan to daily life on 27 acres of meadow and forest in California. Without romanticizing traditional rural life, Couturier illuminates the benefits of humility.
Review in Tricycle Magazine:
If you’re a city dweller, chances are you’ve indulged in fantasies of abandoning your hectic days to cultivate a life on the land. This remains fantasy for most. But not for the ten men and women profiled in The Abundance of Less, who have actually cast aside the urban morass of materialism for lives that allow time for the things that matter. Their lives and voices exhibit a rare ethical clarity.
Couturier approaches these individuals with such respect and admiration that each relationship seems not so much that of a writer and an interviewee as that of a student and teacher. The profiles will compel readers to consider how they might live more simply and increase their civic engagement.
Review in The Japan Times:
Another chapter focuses on former experimental filmmaker, writer and philosopher Masanori Oe, whose father was a bunraku puppet-maker in Shikoku. As a child, Oe narrowly escaped death from the bombs of an American B-29. As an adult, he is the temporary custodian of a flame from the atomic blast in Hiroshima that has been passed from person to person. It burns in a lantern in his house as a reminder of “what happened that day and how it must not happen again.” He and his wife, Wakako, (also profiled in this book) now live in the mountains of central Honshu, where they grow rice and vegetables “without digging the soil or even pulling the weeds,” letting themselves be controlled by nature. ( Read more here.)
Review in "Mr. Porter" a British magazine. "Could you live on $4000 a year?"
There are many elements of contemporary existence that make it all feel, somehow, inescapable. The onslaught of information, the omnipresence of technology, the relentless pace of city living, the commute, the pay cheque, the rent. But although most of us feel more or less obliged to live this way, it’s by no means compulsory.
Such is the revelation offered by The Abundance Of Less, a book that profiles a series of men and women who are living entirely self-sufficient lives in rural Japan. “Living in this way in an industrialised country can be thought of as a kind of art form,” says Mr Couturier. “Whereas people living in small villages in Nepal – where many of my subjects learned about the way of life they wanted to live – are born into a situation of what we might call simplicity. Each of us in the West has to negotiate a way to make time for what really matters. It’s about drawing lines, and sticking to them firmly. And then seeing what kind of satisfaction that delivers to you.” (Read more here.)
Article by Andy in Progressive Magazine Alternet. "5 Things We Can Learn from People Who Turned Their Backs on Capitalism and Opted for Self Sufficiency."
1. Cut the convenience addiction. On the southern island of Shikoku, I was talking one day with Asha Amemiya, a farmer, batik artist and mother. She told me she’s not a fan of much modern machinery. “It’s too convenient,” she said. “Convenience just speeds you up.” Hearing that, I was startled into realizing how much I had been colonized by industrialized thinking. How did I get conned into thinking that all the nifty (pricey) gadgets would free up my time, and I could use that time to slow down? Or something.
When I visited her again last year, after Fukushima, she said about the nuclear disaster: “I knew it would happen. It is in the nature of machines to break.” Labor-saving devices will not deliver the richness we seek. And sometimes, they melt down.
2. Slow. The. Hell. Down. Imagine a clumsy Westerner asked to help with planting rice high in the mountains of Japan. I wanted be a useful helper to my friend, the rice farmer and bamboo flute player, Kogan Murata. I wanted to do it right, and get as much done as quickly as possible. So I was utterly surprised when he shouted across the paddy, “Be more lazy! Don’t hurry!” and then, “Rest some more! Take a break!” Somehow, without knowing it, I had internalized a maximize-the-productivity mindset. “If you have time, a lot of things are enjoyable,” woodblock carver Osamu Nakamura said to me once, over tea. “Even collecting wood or cleaning things—it’s all a pleasure and satisfying if you give yourself time.” (Read more here.)
Reader reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.
"The good life is possible" Review by Jennifer Chan in Kyoto Journal.
In the middle of my unacceptably busy teaching-supervision-administration service semester, this beautiful book by essayist, poet, and writer Andy Couturier landed on my desk. Having been warned that this was not the sort of academic tome I am usually asked to consider, I was not sure what to expect.
“This book is not a blueprint for achieving 'the good life,' nor is it a how-to book,” the author cautions. Indeed, it could not be: no two paths pursued by these visionaries are the same. Seeking to live the good life, it seems, is a very personal journey. Each of the lives examined is an experiment, ongoing and alive.
During my years in Japan, I met people living in the countryside who were engaged in non-mainstream work. Thinking about them, and thinking about the people Couturier talks with, I saw that, for all their differences, there is common ground among them. They all share an uncompromising insistence on having time in one's life, whether to make food, be with children, do art work, play, love, travel, meditate, study, see friends, be involved in community activism, or just to live at a reasonable pace. All seem dedicated to living lives not defined by getting and spending; to building deeper connections to land and nature; to taking food seriously by growing and preparing their own; to engaging in creative labor; and to being good citizens, connected with and active in their communities.
In the middle of my unacceptably busy teaching-supervision-administration service semester, this beautiful book by essayist, poet, and writer Andy Couturier landed on my desk. Having been warned that this was not the sort of academic tome I am usually asked to consider, I was not sure what to expect.
“This book is not a blueprint for achieving 'the good life,' nor is it a how-to book,” the author cautions. Indeed, it could not be: no two paths pursued by these visionaries are the same. Seeking to live the good life, it seems, is a very personal journey. Each of the lives examined is an experiment, ongoing and alive.
During my years in Japan, I met people living in the countryside who were engaged in non-mainstream work. Thinking about them, and thinking about the people Couturier talks with, I saw that, for all their differences, there is common ground among them. They all share an uncompromising insistence on having time in one's life, whether to make food, be with children, do art work, play, love, travel, meditate, study, see friends, be involved in community activism, or just to live at a reasonable pace. All seem dedicated to living lives not defined by getting and spending; to building deeper connections to land and nature; to taking food seriously by growing and preparing their own; to engaging in creative labor; and to being good citizens, connected with and active in their communities.
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The histories of these ten individuals, quite different from the traditional cram school-university-big corporation path so common in Japan, overlap in significant ways. Almost all of them, for example, have traveled extensively. In particular, the passages to India and Nepal many of them have made seem to have been significant; they met yogis there, or Buddhist teachers, shared meals with locals, ran out of money and worked odd jobs, or simply found, in their travels, the luxury of time for reflection, and such reflection is key. In most cases it seems that their decisions to change their lives were the product of long, slow thought rather than sudden enlightenment. This leisurely consideration also leads them to a concern with the present. As Atsuko Watanabe - farmer-painter-mother- cook-activist-traveler-educator - explains, “I am alive today, making an experiment, trying to find the best way to live now, in the present day.” My eleven-year old daughter asked me one evening, as she saw I was holding this book when I gave her a goodnight kiss, “Mommy, why are you taking so long to read that book?” “The author,” I replied, “took fifteen years to write the book. It would not be fair to read it quickly.” Couturier's style - he is a poet - militates toward this sort of slow reading. His prose conveys far more than what is contained in the words. So much to be savored is left unsaid. |
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“ In this world where so many of us are rushing around, stressed and pressed for time, The Abundance of Less is a welcome reminder that there are other possibilities. Andy Couturier takes us along as he visits ten people who have created lives that are rich in creativity, environmentally sustainable, and deeply meaningful.”
ELLEN BASS, chancellor, Academy of American Poets
Listen to the Audio Book on Amazon or iTunes
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The book, for me, was a pleasure, but also a confrontation. After reading it, the words of Gufu Watanabe stayed with me: "It's important to me to be someone who has time… There's a term we have in Japanese, furyu: the characters are 'wind' and 'flow.' Someone with furyu has time to write haiku, or can appreciate flowers, and they have space in their emotions to look at the moon or the stars. They're not too busy working or making money. Those people who don't have furyu are not full people. I am one of those not-full people, and as such, this book made a strong impression on me. It taught me that the good life is possible, attainable not by “opting-out,” but by “opting-in” to a growing worldwide movement founded on peace, ecology, simplicity, and non-materialism. The feelings of luxury and inner abundance contained in this book are infectious. Having read it, I feel more ready to opt in. |
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“ While many desperately search for new ‘economic models’ to deflect the coming global collapse, some people just take to the hills and start living beautiful lives. The Abundance of Less is an exquisite, soulful report on ten people in Japan who stopped worrying about changing the world with technology, innovation and economic enterprise, and chose nature, simplicity, time and cooperation as their survival tools.
This book is filled with inspiring lessons for these very difficult times.”
-JERRY MANDER, author of In the Absence of the Sacred
& Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
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Five Star Review on Amazon by Writer Suzanne Kamata
When Andy Couturier first conceived of this project, Americans were looking to Japan for ideas on how to run businesses and educate children. In light of the recent economic downturn and an increasing concern for the environment it seems that we would have been better off listening to the ten individuals profiled in this book. These Japanese men and women have learned to live lightly upon the earth, with as little money as possible, and with an abundance of time. Having time allows them to grow their own food, revel in the beauty of nature, pursue creative endeavors, and contemplate the meaning of life and death, and the mysteries of the universe. Among those introduced are the exuberant Kogan Murata, who derives great joy playing ancient melodies on his bamboo flute. Murata lives with his partner and small son on an amazing $3500/year. They grow their own food ("It is a wonder to grow rice!" Murata exclaims. "Exciting!") and live without modern appliances. While living on the fringes of Japanese society, many of these people are nevertheless engaged in community life and the world at large. Atsuko Watanabe, for instance, famously convinced her fellow villagers to separate their garbage into over 40 categories. She is also an anti-nuclear activist. At best, this book will convince readers to make changes for the better in their own lives. At the very least, anyone who dips into these pages will meet some fascinating people. |
“ I study The Abundance of Less because it’s so much the way I intend to live. It’s gratifying that Andy Couturier has drawn us such a clear picture of how to live in a spare and elegant way. He has done so through his encounters with people who know how to throw away the unnecessary, and not replace it with more junk.”
-JONATHAN RICHMAN, musician, stonemason
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Insightful Review by Anthropology Professor Barbara King
EXCERPT: My habit for years has been to sign emails to colleagues and acquaintances with the phrase “Best, Barbara.” I type fast, and usually accurately, but in the last few weeks I’ve been startled to see appearing on my screen the sign-off “Beset, Barbara.” In some ways I do feel beset: by too much work, and too much challenge in finding time for family, friends, books, films, and quiet reflection. I’m hardly alone in this sense that it takes incredible energy just to resist being engulfed by culture’s great forces. It’s become thoroughly unremarkable to feel stoop-shouldered with work, and glassy-eyed from the assault of information’s flow through electronic outlets. |
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Many of us may seek micro-escapes, fixing ourselves to a spot in our home or yard, or in a nearby park or beach, that invites us to think, read, talk with others, or do something old-fashioned and creative with our hands. In such a place, our vision may clear long enough to daydream a fuller resistance to the prevailing hamster wheel. At such times, a good book to have is Andy Couturier’s The Abundance of Less.
Couturier, when living in Japan, interviewed ten people who embrace a differently-paced life.
Couturier, when living in Japan, interviewed ten people who embrace a differently-paced life.
Koichi Yamashita was once a professor of literature and philosophy and is now a farmer in a remote area of southern Shikoku. His family embraces food self-sufficiency. “I would like to be an artist of farming,” he told Couturier, “to achieve the same level of artistry and creation of beauty as does a novelist or a painter.”
When he’s out in the rice fields, Yamashita is, he says, “simply glad. I understand that I myself am living, that I am in possession of a living spirit. In the rice paddy with the plants you just naturally develop a feeling of compassion, of sympathy…”
When he’s out in the rice fields, Yamashita is, he says, “simply glad. I understand that I myself am living, that I am in possession of a living spirit. In the rice paddy with the plants you just naturally develop a feeling of compassion, of sympathy…”
“ Employing stories rather than statistics to illuminate the rewards of a life that embraces ‘the abundance of less,’ Andy Couturier writes with empathy and insight about Japanese people who integrate traditional elements of self-reliance into their daily lives. He also tells of the effect they have had on his own way of life in the U.S., and argues that consciously choosing not to take everything we could take, best preserves our world for the next generation.
-TED ORLAND, author of Art and Fear
Review by blogger and artist, Rosemary Washington
Gufu Watanabe, potter, botanist, farmer said: “If you start to accumulate things, you can’t travel, so I lived without. I figured I could live a whole life without anything, and then I wouldn’t really have to work when I got back to Japan.”
Osamu Nakamura, woodblock printer, also figured out how to exist in Japan largely outside the cash economy: “To have more time than things to do in that time, that is a very rich kind of feeling.”
Atsuko Watanabe, mother and activist, remarked: “Most people spend their time relating entirely to things that are made solely for the purpose of keeping the economy spinning, of making money for someone . . . they don’t stop to consider, Why is it that I as a human am alive?” She observes, “If you are selling your time, no matter how much money you get, you can’t every buy back that time.” And, “Now, as long as you don’t desire too many things, you can have some time.”
I am inspired by the quality of the lives these Japanese people have made for themselves, how they found meaning in the small-scale, slow, and simple ways of being in the world.
Gufu Watanabe, potter, botanist, farmer said: “If you start to accumulate things, you can’t travel, so I lived without. I figured I could live a whole life without anything, and then I wouldn’t really have to work when I got back to Japan.”
Osamu Nakamura, woodblock printer, also figured out how to exist in Japan largely outside the cash economy: “To have more time than things to do in that time, that is a very rich kind of feeling.”
Atsuko Watanabe, mother and activist, remarked: “Most people spend their time relating entirely to things that are made solely for the purpose of keeping the economy spinning, of making money for someone . . . they don’t stop to consider, Why is it that I as a human am alive?” She observes, “If you are selling your time, no matter how much money you get, you can’t every buy back that time.” And, “Now, as long as you don’t desire too many things, you can have some time.”
I am inspired by the quality of the lives these Japanese people have made for themselves, how they found meaning in the small-scale, slow, and simple ways of being in the world.
Listen to the Audio Book on Amazon or iTunes