The JAPAN We Know with Alex Kerr: Lost Japan

00:00:06 John Daub: Alright, so we are now live. How you doing everybody? This wonderful view that you see is Kamikoya in Yusuhara in Koch Prefecture. You can see we've set this up outside. The camera is pointing at us and I'm going to interview our guest today. Sitting on my left is Alex Kerr, who is an author and a Japanologist. What is a Japanologist?

00:00:39 Alex Kerr: It's a weird word, isn't it? I think it's just someone that likes Japan.

00:00:44 John Daub: And you're seeing a Japanologist right here and next to me is Rogiru, who makes washi paper. What would your job title be? Japan lover? He's a lover.

00:01:00 John Daub: And these two guests have a wealth of knowledge in their minds and we're going to be tapping that and getting questions from people watching.

00:01:10 John Daub: Listening in on the Discord server, you'll be able to call in and ask us questions and I really think this is going to be a lot of fun over the next hour or so. We'll see how this goes. We are outside, deep in the countryside of Koch Prefecture. You might see that we're not wearing any masks at all. We've all been vaccinated. We all have had tests, so we're all okay to go. I just want you to know that this countryside here is called Kamikoya. What is this area called?

00:01:38 Alex Kerr: Kamikoya.

00:01:38 John Daub: The villages.

00:01:40 Alex Kerr: Yusuhara.

00:01:40 John Daub: Yusuhara Village.

00:01:41 John Daub: Yeah. I want to show you, I took this about 15 minutes ago. This is the area around where we stayed. That's actually a ryokan, right?

00:01:52 Alex Kerr: Yeah, a guest house.

00:01:54 John Daub: Guest house. People can stay here.

00:01:55 Alex Kerr: Stay here and do a workshop, washi workshops and experience not only techniques but the environment and the history and things like that.

00:02:04 John Daub: I woke up this morning to birds chirping. I never have that happen in Tokyo.

00:02:09 Alex Kerr: Mm-hmm.

00:02:09 John Daub: It's huge.

00:02:10 Alex Kerr: They're usually like crows.

00:02:11 John Daub: That's a Toby (crow), right?

00:02:13 Alex Kerr: Yeah. You can see, just nature surrounds us here in Koch Prefecture. And I want to show you where exactly Koch is. This is, once again, the picture of the building where we're staying in.

00:02:24 John Daub: I want to show you where Koch is here. This is on a map. Koch, of course, this is Japan. We're going to zoom right in here. I think you all know where Japan is.

00:02:35 John Daub: That island on the south there, that looks like mini Australia. That is Shikoku.

00:02:44 John Daub: There's four prefectures — Tokushima, Kochi, Ehime, and Kagawa in the north.

00:02:52 John Daub: Koch Prefecture is in the bottom part of that.

00:02:55 John Daub: You can see it's very close to Osaka and Kyoto in the Kansai region, so you don't have to travel too far to get here.

00:03:02 John Daub: And you're so deep in the countryside, which is what I love about it.

00:03:07 John Daub: I'm panning slowly down to Koch Prefecture in the south.

00:03:12 John Daub: It takes up mostly the bottom part of Shikoku.

00:03:15 John Daub: You can see that urban area in the center, that's Kochi City.

00:03:19 John Daub: And there's a lot of things to see and do here.

00:03:21 John Daub: And we're up, I guess, to the left of Kochi City, which would be what?

00:03:26 Alex Kerr: The south—

00:03:27 John Daub: West.

00:03:28 Alex Kerr: Southwest of Kochi City.

00:03:30 Alex Kerr: Northwest.

00:03:31 John Daub: Northwest of Kochi City.

00:03:32 John Daub: There's Kochi Castle.

00:03:34 John Daub: So the city of Kochi has not just an airport, but it has a lot of history, a lot of really fun stuff like Kochi Castle.

00:03:41 John Daub: It's the largest morning market in Japan, 400 meters long.

00:03:46 John Daub: It's really gorgeous.

00:03:52 John Daub: And we are here in the countryside right now.

00:03:55 John Daub: This is just awesome.

00:03:58 John Daub: Alex, I want to talk a little bit about your book, Lost Japan, as well.

00:04:04 John Daub: It was published 20 years ago.

00:04:06 Alex Kerr: Maybe more.

00:04:07 John Daub: Maybe more? Wow.

00:04:08 John Daub: It's been around for a while.

00:04:10 John Daub: I'm going to ask you to share some excerpts of the book.

00:04:14 Alex Kerr: Yeah.

00:04:15 John Daub: And then I titled this "The Japan That We Know," the Japan that we all know.

00:04:21 John Daub: I think in terms of years that we've lived here, I've been here for 23 years.

00:04:27 John Daub: We were adding it up last night.

00:04:29 John Daub: I think it's 57.

00:04:31 Alex Kerr: 57 years for Alex.

00:04:32 John Daub: Can that be right?

00:04:32 Alex Kerr: Something like that.

00:04:33 John Daub: 55?

00:04:34 Alex Kerr: It's a long time.

00:04:36 John Daub: Very long.

00:04:37 Alex Kerr: A long time.

00:04:38 John Daub: Basically like probably 100 years, thanks to Alex's 50-plus.

00:04:43 John Daub: But again, you can call in at the end of this and we're looking forward to answering some of your questions about Japan, about the history, about the culture, about how it's changing, the revitalization of Japan, countryside, places that you might want to go, places that you never heard of.

00:04:59 John Daub: You don't have to go to just Kyoto to see Japan or Tokyo or Osaka or Hiroshima — all great places. You can come to places like Kochi.

00:05:07 John Daub: This is why I'm really happy to be live streaming right here.

00:05:11 John Daub: Lost Japan was published over 20 years ago.

00:05:14 Alex Kerr: Yes.

00:05:15 John Daub: Give us a summary of what the book is about and why did you decide to write this?

00:05:22 Alex Kerr: Well, I came to Japan with my family back in — it was the last Olympics, 1964. I was just a kid. So I had this experience of Yokohama and the area around Tokyo and Kyoto and other parts of Japan that you really couldn't have now. It was a kind of a lost era.

00:05:42 Alex Kerr: And later years I bought an old house in Tokushima near here that we'll be talking about in this magical valley called Iya. And then I later lived — I still live in a town called Kamioka outside of Kyoto — another old house. And I collected art and I did calligraphy and I got involved in kabuki and all these other things. And then I thought — a lot of this is vanishing. A lot of this people will in the future they won't know what this is. And so I started to write a series of articles. I actually never thought of writing a book — it was some articles in Japanese for a Japanese journal. And then eventually they put it together into a book. And some years later I had to translate it into English, which was really tough.

00:06:32 John Daub: You originally wrote this in Japanese?

00:06:33 Alex Kerr: Yes. And translating my own writing from Japanese into English was really a bit of a challenge for me. And I think that's what I'm trying to do — I'm trying to do a lot of things that are not in Japanese. And I think that's a challenge.

00:06:48 John Daub: What was the reception of the Japanese to this book?

00:06:52 Alex Kerr: It was incredibly good and it was surprising, because one of the things about this book is — a lot of the writing about Japan is always "oh, everything is so beautiful" and you know, it's all the upside that we know about. But there's also — in those days — just depopulation, some of the misguided public works and issues such as that that people didn't want to talk about. And I did. And so it's balanced with those things. And we were all worried — how's the Japanese audience going to, you know, how's a reader is going to feel? They loved it. This is pre-internet. And all that they got bags of mail, people saying, "Yes, somebody finally said it," you know. So this was very popular with the Japanese. And the Japanese version is still in print.

00:07:27 John Daub: Definitely pick up a copy. It's available on Amazon, bookstores. I'll put a link in the description if I haven't already. Book is called Lost Japan. Why don't you share with us first — there it is.

00:07:43 John Daub: You have to sell — hold on a second. Three, two, one, boom. That's the cover of it. Why don't you share with us an excerpt to start off from the book that might — I wonder — would it be okay if I wanted to say something about Shikoku itself and Kochi where we now are, and how it relates to this? Because really my areas — Tokushima is just north of here, but it's the same mountains and we're very much — it's the same environment as this spot. And the thing about Shikoku and the reason I fell in love with it as a student — because at that point I was attending a university in Tokyo but hitchhiking all around Japan — and I went everywhere from Hokkaido down to Kyushu and Japan, and many of these places were still pristine. But the one that really got me was Shikoku. And it's because it has a different geology — it's older, the mountains are rougher. It actually reminds me of places like Hawaii, in Hawaii, because these are ravines, very dense compressed. So when you're in the deep mountains of Shikoku, you're really in deep mountains much more — you wouldn't see that in Nagano, for example. They're higher but they're grander and broader — the Japanese Alps, yeah, or up in Hokkaido or even Tohoku, which is a wonderful thing — up there are these wide open landscapes with paddy stretching off to the horizon. Here, it's not that. Here you're into these dents. And it's very rainy — this is one of the rainiest places in Japan. And so it's jungly and Jurassic, you know. And that is Shikoku. And that's really where we are. So you're just in a sense a few miles down the road from my place.

00:09:24 John Daub: So that's the background. Yeah, Shikoku is a place that a lot of travelers miss. And I don't know if it's because of the nature, but — I'm kind of — there's no Shinkansen line. They have to fly in or take a train or a bus. But this, according to Lonely Planet, was rated as one of the top six most beautiful regions in the world, which is a pretty bold statement. And I would agree with that, I would completely. And it's because of this rugged but intense dense — so I call it Jurassic — landscape with the rich rains and the fast-flowing streams and the green rocks and all that. It's — it's a bird, it's fantastical. The mornings here, the mist between the hills — this is something that I, you know, I've been all over Japan — when it comes to mist morning mist and that magical feeling — it's like Shikoku is something from Lord of the Rings or something. And especially — yeah, because there, it's really the Grand Canyon of Japan. So you're in this deep gorges and you're above the mists — they boil up from below you and you feel you're floating up in the sky.

00:10:33 John Daub: So it's in that context that we hear the excerpt of Lost Japan. So why could I first show some photos, let's go.

00:10:43 Alex Kerr: Right. So I've got some photos. If you're a photo of what those mists look like — so that's near where I live in Ia. And it's — there are no rice paddies here, it's too steep. And so people basically a millet — things like that. And in later years potatoes which came with the Jesuits. And they grew tobacco that also came from the New World. But they've been doing that for 400 years. So that is the lifestyle of Ia. And the houses are scattered on these hillsides, one over here, went over here. They were — they were thatched, most of them when I first showed up there. And it was an air pocket of an old Japan that modernity had not reached. When I first went into Ia, there was one road along the river, and to get into those hamlets you had to walk — which might be an hour or even two hours to get up into the hamlet. And there were ladies up there that had never been down the hill. This was completely isolated. They had their own dialect, you know. Japan was already pretty modernized at that point, but up in Ia they were wearing bamboo raincoats and sedge hats. And it's — it's not like that now, right?

00:12:03 Alex Kerr: No, no, no. I mean, I'm the only one that still lives like that. No, it's changed, but although the houses are still there, the hills still look like — that's a recent photo. It still looks like that. Is this Chiuri? Chiuri's not quite, it's a little off. But we're in that neighborhood.

00:12:19 Alex Kerr: Okay, so next up we're going to take a look at some video recently. Just — this is the Ia that I fell in love with. When I first — I thought I kind of for no good reason — I took this video. So this year actually premiering. No one has seen this until today. Me talking about this. Oh, wow, you can see it in the background here. So you can hear — because you can just watch these mists for hours. They move and rather quickly, and they boil up out of the valley and then disappear and then something else floats in. It's completely — a magical landscape. And this is the beginning, this is the heart of it. It's really — this is really the kind of the mystery and the secret of the — wow.

00:13:05 John Daub: So let's look at this drone shot.

00:13:14 Alex Kerr: Wow. So this is Chiuri. This is Chiuri. Taking a little bit — it's winter, so — this is your house? That's the house. And you're seeing it's a thatched house, 300 years old. And as you'll see in the next video, it's — we — there's a floor hearth in the middle of the house which has darkened everything pitch black. I've been coming to Chiuri for many years — fireplace. Every time I do, the first thing I do, of course, is to light the — already — uh, the floor hearth and to get the fire burning. In the old days we did logs. It is dark. And now we do charcoal. But it's because of those logs and that fire that was burning for hundreds of years — the house turned black. So we get these black floors. You're not Japanese, even the underside. Well, first of all — yeah, it was one of these Shangri-la places where nobody from outside ever went in. And in fact, they still even now — in the villagers of Ia, if you're an outsider, they call you Shimonoshto, which means someone from down below. And there — because they live above it all. And they were so — in a sense they had no preconceptions about outsiders. And so when a foreigner came in or a Tokyoite came in, they were all equally aliens, right? And it was okay. They were friendly, welcome, because they didn't see outsiders much.

00:14:43 Alex Kerr: So they were — Ia was very friendly from the beginning. There were some weird situations. Once I was climbing into one of these hamlets and I stopped by the little shrine and this old lady came along and she took one look at me and ran screaming away, you know. And later that night I met her and — you know that we had a party in the village — and she had to — she was trembling. And they dragged her over to me. And it turned out she thought I was the god of the shrine that had come out for air. Well, because Shinto divinities have red hair, right. So — you know, I mean — so they were that unused to seeing anybody from outside.

00:15:22 John Daub: Yeah, interesting. Okay, there's some things that people can't hear you.

00:15:24 Alex Kerr: Ah yes. So maybe there's a — there we go. Let's clip it up. Okay. Okay. Excellent.

00:15:37 John Daub: So I had fallen in love with the valley and it was really the nature, the mists, the houses. And I was like, "Oh my god, I want to go to the valley. I want to go to the valley." And then I realized that there were — it was greatly depopulated already, people had been leaving the valley. There were houses thrown away, discarded houses everywhere. And I was a poor student, but I thought — you know, hey, I could buy one of these — wow — because they have no value. And so I started looking at houses and walked through, I don't know, easily a hundred. And I would push open the door, you know, look inside. And eventually I found this one and bought it. Bought it.

00:16:14 John Daub: I bought the house. It's called Chiuri. So I bought Chiuri in 1973.

00:16:20 Alex Kerr: 1973. Wow. Okay, so that's quite — 40 years ago. And that we — or 250 years.

00:16:25 John Daub: I was gonna be a hermit. People who thought you were the devil — that would run away from you — you won them over.

00:16:32 Alex Kerr: Yeah. That's 40 years ago, wait — if I look at my own age, since I was born 1974 — okay, you weren't around yet. But before me.

00:16:44 John Daub: Whoa.

00:16:46 Alex Kerr: And I — I mean, that you wanted to give up the city life? You were okay, I was gonna be a hermit.

00:16:52 John Daub: People who thought you were the devil that would run away from you — you won them over.

00:16:55 Alex Kerr: Yeah.

00:16:57 Alex Kerr: I won him over and I was going to be this sort of poet living above the clouds, you know.

00:17:01 John Daub: Right.

00:17:03 Alex Kerr: And it was. And the Chiuri adventure goes on. I mean, I later came down from the hills, so to speak, and have spent a lot of time in Tokyo. And I have a house in Kyoto and so on. But I always go back to Ia. And my activities to this day are very much centered on Ia. So the train that we take to get down to your place, Rogiru, is the train that I always take. And it's this kind of — I think of it as a pilgrimage into Shikoku as you go deeper and deeper into the heart of it.

00:17:36 John Daub: And we're really in the heart of it today. This is the center of Shikoku, right?

00:17:39 Alex Kerr: This is as deep as it gets.

00:17:44 John Daub: Yeah, it doesn't get much deeper than Yusuhara.

00:17:47 Alex Kerr: Yusuhara, which is a beautiful city in its own right. And I was remarking yesterday, walking around the city. This is an old town and Japan's old towns, especially here in Shikoku — it's not limited to any one place — Japanese towns with the declining population are deteriorating. But Yusuhara is special because you walk down the street and you see, you know, new buildings. Kind of a vibe, more youthful. Coolness that you don't get in the retro towns. They've been able to change.

00:18:17 John Daub: I'm kind of a fan. So it's kind of neat to hear the words from the author himself.

00:18:28 John Daub: I'm going to hold the mic up to you so you get — we get a little bit better audio here.

00:18:31 Alex Kerr: Okay, well, there's a page or two. My hand is a mic stand. Okay, EO's [Ia's] house was desperately poor. And its houses are small in comparison to those of most rural areas in Japan. The houses of Hida and Takayama are many times larger, rising five stories or more. But since each story has a ceiling, one feels little sense of spaciousness upon entering. Ia's houses, on the other hand, feel extremely roomy inside due to the darkness and the lack of ceilings. Inside the house is cave-like. Outside is a world above the clouds. Even now, when I travel back to Ia, I feel as though I've left the world behind and entered a magical realm. This feeling is stronger now than ever, because whilst the towns and plains below have been completely modernized, Ia remains little changed.

00:19:23 Alex Kerr: Near the entrance to the valley, there stands an Edo period stone monument inscribed at the command of the Lord of Awa, which reads: "Ia, peach spring of our land of Awa." The peach spring is the subject of an old Chinese poem about an otherworldly paradise. The monument is evidence that even hundreds of years ago, when all of Japan was beautiful, Ia was seen as something unique, as a Shangri-La.

00:19:50 Alex Kerr: So far, I have only written of Ia's beautiful side, but in truth there was already a snake in the Garden of Eden — Kasa, depopulation. It began in 1964, when my family arrived in Japan. I was born and raised in Yokohama. In that year, the imbalance between city and rural incomes passed a critical point, and farmers from all over Japan fled the countryside. Much poorer and with a more loosely organized society than the rice-growing communities of the plains, Ia was especially hard hit as villagers moved down to Tokushima and Osaka.

00:20:22 John Daub: And then I start talking about how I went looking for a house.

00:20:29 John Daub: Wow. I could listen to this all day. It's so surreal. It's so soothing. I think Chi Channel writes in here, "Alex's voice is so soothing."

00:20:42 Alex Kerr: Feels like I'm listening to some audiobook, like live right now.

00:20:45 John Daub: I know. This is why I'm so excited about this.

00:20:47 Alex Kerr: So now how I found a house. So starting in the fall of 1972, I spent about six months house hunting. I traveled around looking at dozens of houses, not only in Ia but throughout Kagawa, Kochi, and Tokushima prefectures, which are the other prefectures of Shikoku. I wound up visiting over 100 houses in the end. I toured the countryside with friends in search of interesting abandoned houses. And when we found one, we would brazenly explore inside. It was just a matter of loosening the wooden shutters, which were usually not even locked. There were some unbelievably magnificent houses that had been left to rot. One indigo-dyeing mansion near Tokushima had a two-meter-wide veranda surrounding the entire house of the sort you would only see today in Nijo Castle in Kyoto. The floorboards were over 10 centimeters thick, all cut from precious keiaki wood. Breaking into these abandoned houses, I experienced many things that I could never have learned from books. I was able to see with my own eyes the reality of Japan's traditional ways of life. When a family decided to leave their house for the big city, they would take practically nothing away with them. What good were straw raincoats, bamboo baskets, and utensils for handling firewood? I thought — when you're going to be moving to Osaka — everything that had been a feature of life in Ia for a thousand years had become irrelevant overnight. On entering one of these houses, it looked as though the residents had simply disappeared. The detritus of their daily life lay undisturbed like a snapshot frozen in time. Everything was in place — the open newspaper, the remains of fried eggs in the pan, discarded clothing and bedding, even the toothbrushes in the sink. The influences of modernization were already visible here and there — the ceilings had been tacked up against the rafters to protect against winter cold, and when aluminum door and window frames had been installed — but one could still see much of the original condition of the houses.

00:22:47 John Daub: Well, you know what? If I — gosh, this is so relevant. This was written so — 20 years ago. It's so relevant today.

00:22:55 John Daub: This was written so — 20 years ago. It's so relevant today.

00:22:55 Alex Kerr: Oh, yeah.

00:22:57 John Daub: And I've been here for 23 years. I see how Japan has changed just in the two decades. I see how Japan has changed just in the two decades.

00:23:01 Alex Kerr: I don't like it.

00:23:04 John Daub: Well, it's sad.

00:23:05 Alex Kerr: And in fact, that's one of — it's really been my life work, I think, as it turned out. I thought I was going to be this happy hermit in the hills, and it turned out I had this burden, which has to do with: how can you save a few precious places? And they can be saved, as we can see in Yusuhara, which is one of the success stories. And Ia has been a bit of a success story, and Kamiyama. In fact, Shikoku, interestingly, has some of the famous success stories within the overall problem of depopulation, aging, and a kind of a lack of concern on the part of the bureaucracy and all that to save old places. There's been this idea that we tear it all down and old things are embarrassing. But there are a few places that didn't take that path. And we're in one of them right now.

00:24:01 John Daub: Let me cook this up. That was wonderful. You know, I'm making an episode on this exact topic. Kochi has been a really shining place, I think, for regrowth, regeneration. I guess it is quite important because there's so many thousands of small towns around this country that I've gone through them as part of this show that are declining because of the pandemic. And so, I'm wondering — if you have a vision for a place that's not just depopulated, people are getting older, not enough babies are being born, there's lots of little issues that are leading to this — how important, I guess, can Japan survive if they don't fix these, revitalize these places?

00:24:49 Alex Kerr: There's a big divide that's happening. And if your village or your town has vision and puts in certain kinds of infrastructure, which could be as simple as fixing up old houses to be in some guest houses. Or providing — because there are a lot of abandoned houses — providing the abandoned houses to young people that want to come in and do a bakery or something. And don't tear down your beautiful old street and build a widened highway for no purpose. And don't concrete the mountain and build a dam that you don't need. So they can make those decisions because the money is there to do it. If they go that way, it's amazing how young people move in. They revive. Yusuhara is really visible when you arrive in Yusuhara. It's like, "Wow, this is really beautiful. This is really living." And in Kamiyama, too. And in our parts of Ia. But the villages that don't do that are the sad ones. Because in the name of development and economic growth, they did destroy it all or build the dam or whatever it was. And they will just die. Because outsiders will not move in. And so those places that have made that decision — and there are more now, by the way. The good news for Japan is that more and more places are understanding this. And so there is kind of a bright light. And I think a lot of people nowadays in the rest of Japan come to places like Yusuhara to learn how it's done. So you get normal tourists. But you also get the study groups that are coming here from other towns and are saying, "Oh, this is what we could do."

00:26:18 John Daub: Yeah. You know, I don't want to — there's a part of me that doesn't want to promote Yusuhara, a selfish part of me. Because it's one of those hidden jewels, gems. That you want to know about. I'm talking about you, like you watching on the other side. You want to know about Yusuhara. This is what you're looking for. A chill place in the middle of a magical area, the mountains of Shikoku, a town with cafes. There's a place for pizza, Indian food. You don't get this in the normal Japanese towns where young people come in and started businesses. There's a convenience store, a gas station, everything you need. But it's cool. Like the coffee place. We have a part of the team that came down here. Kiara won't drink coffee from certain places. But this place was really good.

00:27:21 Alex Kerr: Yeah, she's Italian. If she likes it, it's the mark of quality.

00:27:24 John Daub: She's over there watching at me. You can't see her. She's off camera. Yeah, you can't. We're not going to see her. If the Italians like the village, you know it's good.

00:27:37 John Daub: Nobody knows among the two of us Yusuhara more than Rogiru right here. Here, take the microphone. Why don't you talk a little bit about Yusuhara and this place. Why did you decide to live here? And what is special about this area? But I feel so chilled out now and relaxed.

00:27:53 Rogiru: I'm glad you're here. And Kochi — not only this place, but first when I came here 41 years ago, exactly the 11th of November, I entered Japan. So it's really this period. When I came here across the Shikoku Mountains hitchhiking, I felt the magic.

00:28:16 John Daub: You said magic.

00:28:17 Rogiru: Oh, wow. This is different. I visited many places in Japan. It's deeply different, isn't it?

00:28:24 John Daub: It really is. I feel that for decades.

00:28:27 Rogiru: So the magic. And one more thing is — like the jungle, you said. For me, in the 70s, people went to India. So a little bit, I felt a little scared about that. So, "Oh, wow, this Japan is Kochi — is a safe jungle." And it's really a jungle.

00:28:45 John Daub: It is.

00:28:46 Rogiru: For the paper making, traditional paper making culture — it's because it's a kind of jungle. There are so many varieties you cannot see in other places in Japan.

00:28:57 John Daub: So yeah, well, not your question, but the —

00:29:00 Rogiru: No, please keep going on. I love jungle talk.

00:29:04 John Daub: This is awesome. That's Shikoku.

00:29:10 Rogiru: So we first stayed at the paper center. It's the second biggest of Japan here in Kochi prefecture. And so we learned for 12 years and then moved a little bit higher up, because paper making is about connection with nature. It's one of the craft that connects — during the process, the 30 or more steps — it's all the time you have to, if you do it traditionally, with nature. And we needed a little bit more like strong nature to inspire us. So we came here. And it's at the source of the Shimanto River. It's one of the most beautiful rivers in Japan. We have the karst, the third biggest karst in Japan. I really feel it's the Shimanto River. We — we need the best paper water for paper making. But it's — I felt like it's the source from there. The Shimanto River goes downstream. And — but it — I feel it holds — it's wishful thinking — it holds our back. It keeps us so safe. This wonderful, beautiful mountain behind us. And so all — and the history in this village. I mean — they — it was one of those big — big production areas. For one household, they had 3,000 kilos of dried fiber a year. That — no — a three-wheel car was transporting it through the very narrow road path up to the places. And they produced such a — so the history is there. The natural environment is amazing. And the people are just wonderful. Everyone's so friendly.

00:30:48 John Daub: So wonderful. You can't walk around Yusuhara — you can't walk around Yusuhara without somebody saying — smiling, saying hi, saying, "Where are you from? You enjoying the town? Kind of chilly today." Trying to start a conversation.

00:31:03 John Daub: Especially outsiders who have never — they don't see a lot of international people. When they look at you, though — because you've been here for 40-some years — do they see Japanese?

00:31:16 Rogiru: He's very famous here in Yusuhara. You can't go around here and not see his paper in a store or a building. I mean, he's a very famous person. So it's pretty incredible. Including old photos from 40 years ago.

00:31:29 John Daub: Are you Japanese? Are you Yusuhara-in?

00:31:33 Rogiru: Yeah. They call it recently Yusuhara-jin. Yusuhara people. And there are some things you have to — not rules, but I'm not sure. I don't read very well characters. So I don't — I could leave out the writer. But yeah.

00:31:48 John Daub: I feel like because you connect with your characters — you connect with them — with the neighbors, and that's one very important thing. It's not that they are friendly — it's your community. Community here, and you rely on each other. And they don't care — I'm from Holland and my wife is from Osaka. You — you decided to live here, okay, let's do it together, because there's no other way to survive here. Even in this modern age — I mean the typhoons, the landslides, the water doesn't come — you have to do it together. And that — that I mean — we didn't only learn paper making. We learned to be a little bit — I hope so — a little bit more human, connect with people. I didn't learn that in the city in Amsterdam or the — or where I work, not so much. So we learned to connect with nature through the paper making. We learned to connect and be a little bit better with communication — with our — the people around us through the paper making. So for us — paper — paper is — you need paper for calligraphy for art for the housing traditional way, but there's much more. I just want to put this in context. So Rogiru makes paper. So he's — I don't know — do we introduce this yet? He was in an episode of Only in Japan — making washi paper. One of the way — you use no chemicals in your washi paper. It's used by no machines for the traditional kind, right?

00:33:21 Rogiru: No machines. Handmade paper. It's used in — you'll see it in wallpaper. You see it in lamps, lights, interior design. It's just so many uses for different kinds of washi paper within this one genre. It's not just washi paper — there's like so much complexity in there. And the more you talk to Rogira, you get more interested in this. And Kochi is the center of the paper industry.

00:33:51 John Daub: I get and Fukui, but yeah — all purposes today, it's Kochi. And total.

00:33:58 Rogiru: Yeah, yeah, yeah, total. And when you look here at the nature that is surrounding you, get your — the ingredients for the paper right here in Kochi, right here in Yusuhara, outside of here, right?

00:34:10 Rogiru: Yeah. We grow all ourselves. What's this in the water — here in front of us, in the water? We are — washing boiled fiber. That's the mulberry tree fiber. This one. And with the sun on it, it's a little bit more of a water-based fiber. And it's now natural bleaching. So if you leave it for two three days, it becomes — it's now green, it becomes white. So we don't use chemicals. I mean one thing — most important for paper making is water. So are we going to pollute our water? I mean you cannot — if you start doing this, you can or you cannot — I mean that — that doesn't make sense.

00:35:05 Rogiru: We start doing more and more during the years a really traditional way — not of tradition, because — not tradition — environmental thing. We want to pass this to the next generation. Um, you can say, "Yeah, I can do it," but you don't do it. I mean, you have to do it to teach it, yeah, right. So — we — it becomes white. So it's — it's a natural bleach. And when using it, for example, in the sunshine, it will become whiter. It will become more beautiful. And that's something — like the houses you are talking about — it's — it's good like that. Good materials that become better and nicer over the years. So it's with papers. I could talk with Rogidu for hours about paper, seriously. It's that in depth.

00:35:58 John Daub: And when you understand paper and the making of it, you really get deep into the core of where we are right now, because it's the naturalness of of Yusuhara, the hills here, that is in the paper that you hold. So to me, when I was making paper with you and I took that home, it's like — that's a piece of where we are, the environment that we have. All natural. Could last for a thousand years.

00:36:10 Rogiru: You said at least?

00:36:11 John Daub: At least a thousand years.

00:36:14 Rogiru: Will they do?

00:36:15 John Daub: Yeah, yeah, you see scrolls and screens and so on, and they're a thousand years old and they're fine.

00:36:20 Alex Kerr: But I wonder if I could say a few words, please. I think for me anyway puts what Rogito does in a kind of world context. And that is — when you look at really the cutting edge of Japanese modern craftsmanship, whether it's the paper or the bamboo or the people making Bizen pottery and rock who wear bowls — the ceramics — there are many fields. And there's this huge turn towards focusing on material, natural materials, stripping away a lot of the modern techniques that were so damaging, or that removed the spirit of the materials. So it's a focus on materials which is unique. I don't know of any other country where that's so strong. And so I actually think of what you're doing is the cutting edge of something that the world is very interested in. But there's another twist to this — if you let me go on a little bit — which is it's actually Japan's sort of gift to the world. This is the thing that's been different all along — was that Japan was always interested in the material. You know, so in China everything is painted and lacquered and carved with dragons and so on. Here they took unpainted wood, you know. It's the difference between French cuisine and sushi — cooked or raw. Um, all that — stones that are not polished as we would have in the West, but rough hewn. You think of Japanese stone that rough hewn. Love of materials in themselves is one of those things that is kind of Japan's great insight.

00:38:00 Alex Kerr: And that, by the way, one last thing — sorry, I'm carrying on a bit — but I think you can see it in Yusuhara with Kengo Kuma's the recent work. This architect who's been involved in the revitalization of Yusuhara has been building buildings out of wood. But he actually — one of his — he actually put thatch on the surface of it in 21st century building. Brand new modern building with thatch — not on the roof as you would have seen it traditionally, but on the side of it. So it's got a modern — it's a modern intervention, but he's gone back to the material. He's focused on the actual material of thatch. And so that's, I think, related to what you're doing here.

00:38:43 John Daub: Kengo Kuma is the architect, the designer who created the Olympic stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The design in wood — it's a brilliant stadium. I'm just a little sad we didn't focus more on that during the games. But as a designer, you come and walk around Yusuhara, it is like a museum of his work, pretty much. You see so many beautiful wooden-based buildings that inspire you but you feel the nature in those designs. So it's certainly special. And I have a feeling Yusuhara — not all of them are designed by Kengo Kuma, but they are incorporating more of that wood into the design which gives Yusuhara that theme of like a naturalness. And that's what makes it cool — naturalness plus modernity. That's their twist that makes it really special. And it makes you feel alive because these are brand new buildings but they're wood and that or thatch and — and that's pretty unusual.

00:39:38 John Daub: Yeah, I wanted to ask you — like, here there's this — the city life versus — now the episode I'm making right now is this — "Why would people ever leave Tokyo to come to a place like this, to be a hermit in the countryside"? But I see in the city so many people have like they feel lost in their lives, disconnected, even more despite the fact that the internet speed is way faster in Tokyo. Put that all aside, they feel more disconnected with their own lives because they are not doing the same indirect interactions with people in a normal way. Maybe or they have too much stress, they're trying to do too many things. That's me and I — they're living here in the city and they're not doing the same interactions with people in a normal way. Maybe or they have too much stress, they're trying to do too many things. That's me and I — they're living here in the city. And in the countryside — in Chiuri and Ia or in Yusuhara — can change that, almost bring you back to who you are. Just — I met a nice guy named Adam who hiked around Shikoku, the entire island, in six weeks, visiting 88 temples. You do something like that, you reconnect with who you are. Maybe.

00:40:43 Alex Kerr: Well, there are a couple things. One is houses. But Japan has this incredibly rich tradition of wooden architecture, of domestic houses. And some of these people think of Japan as the land of tiny little apartments and all that — that is not true. Traditionally, these farmhouses are really substantial, with enormous beams and columns and pillars and big rooms and views, you know. And that was the real lifestyle. So Japan is — it's really a modern problem condition that people live in little places like that. You come into the countryside and those houses are available, just like I was able to buy an old minka. They're called, you know, when I was a student. They're even more around now. And you can live that way. And so I think a lot of people who are tired of that cramped lifestyle — but where also the materials are are plastic and chrome and whatever — can live in a house that's made of, you know, bamboo and wood and thatch and paper and all of these natural materials and the size of it and outside is the hills.

00:41:52 John Daub: Yeah, I could see why one might want to move to that. I'm thinking about that seriously. I'm very much thinking about moving out here to the countryside. You can't even get daycare, you can't find a — we have a son — it's very hard to get into Yochien or like here, they welcome him, you know.

00:42:16 Rogiru: Yeah, they would. You don't see enough young kids around here, so there might be a very welcoming place to come — like a Yusuhara.

00:42:25 John Daub: Um, whatnot. Speaking of welcoming — another thing you just talked about how Adam did his pilgrimage — you know, did the pilgrimage of the 88 temples. I have this theory that that's one reason why Shikoku is so friendly, because there is this tradition with the 88 temple pilgrimage that people — as you go along, people will give you things, they'll give you free lodging, and they really do, actually. Adam was telling me that he got — he got weighted down. People would give him so many meikans (mandarin oranges) or something, which you couldn't refuse, hospitality. Yeah, but people are dying to give you things because you're a pilgrim. And then I think that extends even into the villages. We're far — I think here from any pilgrimage temple, but the mood of that carries through.

00:43:09 Alex Kerr: Have you done the pilgrimage?

00:43:11 John Daub: No, neither have I. I can go south to the nearest — about and I go west and north. We are in the middle surrounded. But one day.

00:43:18 Alex Kerr: Yeah, yeah. One day we'll do it together.

00:43:21 John Daub: We'll do it, 88 temples. It usually takes three months if you go slow. But I'm impressed with Adam — six weeks.

00:43:27 Alex Kerr: Oh, no, that's tough.

00:43:29 John Daub: Yeah, but you know, there's the old tradition of a mandala which is a symbolic painting — which where you see the sign of the protectors and the minor Buddhas and everything around the area. And then you go to the next layer and you're approaching kind of the inner secret of the mandala. That's how you're supposed to look at a mandala. And the Japanese saw their mountains as mandalas. So for example in Nara, between Nara and Wakayama prefecture, two mandalas merge. And you stand at the ridge and you're looking one way down — it's in one mystic world and another way into another. But here in Shikoku, the mandala is more or less circular going around, you know, this kind of Australia-shaped island. And so what's the heart of the mandala? Well, it's us. It's Ia. And because we're in the center — we're in the center — far from where the temples are, but it's the real heart.

00:44:33 John Daub: Ah, deep jungle, jungle. I love your expression of safe jungle.

00:44:36 Rogiru: Did you say safe jungle?

00:44:37 John Daub: No, tigers.

00:44:39 Rogiru: Just some I-shorts. But if you start competing — if you start to refuse to recognize the cycles of your surrounding, then it becomes quite dangerous, yes. You — it — there are no tigers or cyber tigers. But you will get hurt, you will die maybe and you'll suffer. I mean, the water runs out, all kinds of things happen. Don't you have a cat named Tiger? I'm just saying there are tigers here. There's a cat. We need our Tiger. I mean, we don't have tigers on our fusuma, but we want our tigers. As a dog person, that cat is ferocious towards me.

00:45:15 John Daub: I don't know. Sorry. Uh, switching it — uh, you know, uh, Kochi is a really magical place. I want to open this up to you. If you have any questions for Alex or Rogira or even me — if you want, you can put this in — in here. You'll be able to hear um — hello, hi. Hi 821 and UFO Bob are our moderators. We have an audience on our Discord server. First of all, do you guys have any questions for Alex?

00:45:55 John Daub: So I think we can invite members of the audience in. Wonderful. If anybody would like to ask us some questions, we are here for you. Raise your hand in our Alex Career conversation live on the Discord server — the link is in the chat. So you just click that and join us.

00:46:21 John Daub: Hey, John here. Yes, UFO Bob.

00:46:34 UFO Bob: Okay, uh, actually go ahead. So — uh, why — I was listening to the conversation. There were several questions in the chat that people wanted to ask, but they didn't want to come into the live chat. So they asked me to ask them in my in that place. So I'm going to give you four of them. Is that all right?

00:46:56 UFO Bob: Sure, please do. Thank you. Okay, the first one — first one's from ans DPS. And this person would like to know: what is the most common way to use washi paper for origami? Can washi paper be used for origami?

00:47:10 Rogiru: Yes, actually. In the past — before the ordinary — the paper — we — the modern paper — of course they used origami and maybe origami is quite new. Before, you had origata. And that's origami — came from that. So origata — it is, of course, always paper. And until the Edo period, after that the machine paper making was introduced. After that so it changed, of course. Yes, it's wonderful. You can make very complicated things with real washi.

00:47:47 John Daub: Thank you. And I think even the Kit Kats — if you ever seen — they started using paper for their packaging instead of plastic, which I thought was interesting. You could turn that into. I don't think that's washi paper.

00:47:57 UFO Bob: Alright, next question. Next one is from Ronald Minch. And he wants to know: does mineral water versus distilled water make a difference or affect the paper fiber? Distilled wash water versus mineral water — does it change?

00:48:11 Rogiru: That's a very, very good question. We have more or less because it's a karst here and a kind of mineral strong water here. And if you go to other places like near Kyoto, Fukui prefecture, they have very soft water. So they are very, very good and they are very, very good because they have soft paper. We have the best paper, we make the nicest paper. And it seems that the fiber suspension is a little bit better with softer, softer sweet water as we say here. But I — we — we don't care, and it's because we are decided to live here and we will make the best paper with the resources we have here. So yeah, it's — it differs maybe a little bit, but it's difficult to see, probably.

00:49:02 John Daub: Wait for the water to come out at least 30 minutes all right. I'm serious — if I don't start going like this, Rogira will keep on and this is fascinating but we have a lot of questions here. Look, the water in Kochi prefecture is the cleanest in Japan — this is maybe my opinion if not a fact. Yeah, yeah. It's near the river Shimanto River, there's several different. You could almost drink this in the stream and we just drink it like this.

00:49:49 Rogiru: With the community here. And we have some well water too. You just drink it straight.

00:49:54 John Daub: See, that's what I love about this place. So with the good water, you get good beer, good sake, good shochu, everything — good paper, water. Good coffee, good tea, good swimming, good fish. You get the point.

00:50:01 UFO Bob: Okay, this person just — their name is A — and they said, did the older mangakas — I think he means in the past — use washi paper?

00:50:13 John Daub: They're all washi paper questions. Is the next one washi paper?

00:50:15 UFO Bob: It's the last one. And I wasn't even gonna add it because it's basically the same question about origami. That is: can letters be written using washi paper?

00:50:35 John Daub: Can letters — yeah, yes, they can. I can answer that one. You can use washi paper to write letters. There's different kinds. There's not just one kind of washi paper. That's the thing. There's thicknesses and thin ones. There's different materials. There's different ways to preserve it. I was using coasters to put my drink on yesterday that had used the acid in the kaki (persimmon), something like this, a process that made it impermeant to water, which is — which is really fascinating. So there's lots of different ways. Washi paper is more than just paper. I don't know if it's fair to even call it paper.

00:51:04 Rogiru: Can I add a little bit? Because it connects so much with the old houses, the restoration things. Because why — I probably, one of the reasons I stayed and got so, my journey started with the way of washi making is because it has been used not for art and writing — in daily life, in houses. And that's amazing. For the doors, sliding door — different sliding doors. We have futons here, washi futons they had. Clothes. Clothes, umbrella, blah, blah, blah. So — but in the houses, that was most. So when I came to Japan, I saw some Japanese movies — Kurosawa Akira's movies — and they were using sliding doors with paper. It's impossible. It was so crazy, I thought. When I came here, they were really using it.

00:51:58 John Daub: So there's so many ways to use it. There's so many ways to use paper. And I'll probably be back to make more. Seeing all these questions, it seems like there's a huge interest in the washi paper. I see we have Life and Peaches here with us, joining us. Do you have a question for Alex Kerr?

00:52:27 Amanda: Hey, John, it's Amanda. I haven't talked to you in forever.

00:52:29 John Daub: Hey, Amanda, how are you?

00:52:31 Amanda: I'm good, how are you?

00:52:33 John Daub: Pretty good.

00:52:35 Amanda: Actually, yeah, I have a question for both of them. So in 2018, I did a six-week tour of Japan's countryside. And I did meet somebody that lives in Kamaishi. And he is totally off the grid. He has solar panels, wind turbines. And he's pretty much self-sufficient. So I was just wondering — are more people in the countryside, you know, in Japan, more people in Japan? Yeah. And he's probably living toward more alternative power sources? Or are they kind of shying away back from that since it's not really natural?

00:53:10 John Daub: I'm so glad you asked this question because it's so relevant to what I was filming yesterday. I did. So Kamaishi is in Iwate Prefecture. I'll be going there in February, actually, to make an episode. And Alex, why don't you go ahead? I flew the drone yesterday. And from the sky, I could see, I'd say half of Yusuhara had solar panels. And there are solar panels on the roof. What do you say? How do you respond to that?

00:53:37 Alex Kerr: Well, I think there are two approaches. So there are some people that simply want to live in the countryside and do their agriculture or have their artist studio or whatever it is, and don't concern themselves so much with ecological issues. But there is a very strong group that are very concerned with it. And there are communities such as Kamiyama in the eastern part of Tokushima, which is very ecological and energy saving and does all of that on a pretty high level. And Yusuhara — you see these panels on the top of the kabuki theater everywhere. So it's really something they're putting a lot of emphasis into.

00:54:27 John Daub: Yeah, I saw a windmill in Yusuhara as well, out in the countryside, population like 3,000 or something like this, right? It's not so big, but renewable energy is on the rise, especially in the countryside. There's an island, Awaji Shima, in between Shikoku and Honshu. You drive through there, and you see thousands of solar panels. I think they're even harnessing the power and selling it back to Kobe or something. There's probably something going on there, because there was a massive amount of solar panels. I've never seen anything like that. Japan is moving definitely more and more towards that.

00:55:03 John Daub: And for older towns, I think having people move back from the cities into maybe the places where they grew up — and they went to university in Tokyo and decided to stay there — my hope is over the next 20 years, those people take those ideas they learned in the cities and bring it back to the countryside, including renewable energy and some of those things that they might not have forward thinking in some of the smaller towns, but bring that with them. And that would be the way that they could revitalize themselves too.

00:55:29 Alex Kerr: Actually, that's kind of key to my philosophy — for example, with the houses or the villages. People sometimes think we're like the cultural agency and we're restoring old houses to be museum pieces. And that is so not what I'm into. I'm talking about pulling them into the modern age. And so, yes, you want to preserve what's traditional and what's wonderful about the materials and the structures of these places, but there's also — we do live in the 21st century, and we have these opportunities to do brand new things in the countryside that were never done before, even though it might be in an older context. And that's where the excitement is.

00:56:10 John Daub: For someone who's been here for 23 years, I'm excited when I see that happen. I know that about two months ago, somebody asked me to fax something to them and I couldn't find a fax machine. Apparently you can do it at the convenience store. It's a convenience store — they got everything there. Fax machines, newspapers. There's still a traditional way of life, which I kind of like, but that pivot towards modernizing is needed for the next 20, 30, for the next generation. And slowly we're getting there. And certain places like Yusuhara have really made, starting to make, that leap faster than others.

00:56:49 John Daub: Great question, Amanda. I really appreciate it. I believe down in Georgia, if I remember correctly. I should have wondered. So thank you. Let's take another question from the audience here. Anybody inside?

00:57:06 John Daub: Jim, we have nobody here. Really? You guys are that quiet? Come on. I got a lot of questions here.

00:57:18 UFO Bob: Well, OK, well, we do have questions in the fireside chat. OK, let me slide over to it. There we go. Okay. The first question is from Callie for Ray. Actually, I think it's from Icon. He says: is there a program in Japan for people to move to Japan and help continue traditional artisans, artisan trades?

00:57:46 Alex Kerr: Yes, I did. Yeah. So there is no general program for that, although I wish there were. But Japan does have a thing they call a cultural visa. And so you can come to Japan and if you want to study paper or pretty much anything, you can get that visa if you're bona fide and you have a proper teacher and they know you're doing it for real. Then you can stay on for years. And I have people who — I have friends who have studied tea ceremony, mounting, scroll mounting, ceramics, calligraphy, martial arts — all sorts of things, not only crafts, but traditional arts. You can come to Japan and you can get the visa. To the world, so you can come to Japan and you can do it. So Japan is pretty welcoming to that. Now, the bad news is I don't think there are any funds for it. They're not going to pay you to do that. And there's no particular program that sponsors it. So it's just people that make up their minds — they want to come to Japan, they want to learn something. And then you can do it.

00:58:43 John Daub: I think for the stay for a long period of time, you definitely need a visa. A tourist visa is about three months for some, depends on your nationality. But Rogiru right here also teaches washi paper making. And you have seminars and you can actually stay here and study with you.

00:59:05 John Daub: By the way, you do wake up quite early, right? To make paper. It's like five, 6 a.m.

00:59:11 Rogiru: Well, it depends. It completely depends. Every day is different. Every day is different. The weather is everything. I'm not about the weather again, but I mean, if it rains, you cannot dry paper. So you do something else. So, yeah, every day is different — sometimes early, sometimes not so. But yeah, six, seven, five seven.

00:59:28 John Daub: Okay, good. That's — we woke up quite early, so be warned. Yeah, you have been warned. But yeah, if you want to have a Zen experience or a little bit holiday experience, that's different. So we need to know that before. So yeah, one thing you do have to know about Kochi prefecture — they do drink a lot of sake here because it's so good.

00:59:51 John Daub: All right, that's one reason, maybe — it's because it is a form of entertainment and it is — maybe something we did a little bit too much last night. So — I got a ton of questions here. We're right here in Kochi and you can see how beautiful it is — this is the view up in the mountains of Kamikoya where Rogiru has his — and paper making studio. You make a lot of the paper here but you also have another place for bigger orders, yeah.

01:00:24 Rogiru: Yeah, we — we — hire — rent — a — a — abundant — construction shed or something — big one. We made our biggest sheets were six meter by six meter. Wow. So things like that. And that's really — that's also a collaboration with a corporation, if I can say that, with Kengo Kuma, architect. And so that lifts you up. So we have — we are doing so many exciting different things. But in the winter time — now in autumn, then we go back to basics for three months. And after that, we go completely crazy and we — we really love to do — as with the houses, I mean — uh, how to rebuild, how to fix them — it has to be useful in this area. I mean tradition — you have to keep that for reverence. But so that is very exciting and challenging — thing to make some new thing that nobody has made before that resonates with the needs of the people of nowadays. So so it's so exciting. And we need help from many people.

01:01:26 John Daub: Now, Alex, we're going to be talking about Rogiru right now — how important is it for people and he's not Japanese — he's also right there. We're talking about you. He's not Japanese, but it's so important that we keep some of these crafts from the past — from the Edo period — alive in its original way. People who care about the purity of protection — protecting that. What do you think?

01:02:04 Alex Kerr: Well, actually — one of the — it's almost like a historical turn for modern Japan, which is the role of foreigners in the society has really changed. And it's happened in the last few decades. And foreigners were pretty irrelevant really to Japan for most of its history — not so much now. And then there's certain crafts such as the paper making where Rogidu might be the last person around that has certain skills and knowledge. And that's true. I see it — I go to pottery towns, sake making — a field after field — there's some pivotal — oddly enough — it's some foreigner who may have devoted decades, you know, to learning it, while the Japanese were sadly forgetting about it, had lost interest. This kind of weird foreigner came in and devoted themselves to it, and they're now an important part of the process. So traditional — so-called traditional Japanese craftsmen — much I indeed and see a lot of other foreigners doing archery, all the different kinds of traditional crafts and sports, a deep interest in that. And I think it will be — because Japan has a decreasing popularity — younger Japanese don't want to continue the businesses of their parents. They want to continue the business of the Japanese, so they're not going to be the same people to do something else — that's cool. It's the foreigners or internationals that are coming here that are learning the language and picking up where they left off.

01:03:49 Alex Kerr: I think I was talking to somebody in Kochi who said that there was a turkey farmer here — and we're almost at Thanksgiving — a turkey farmer here in Kochi. He'd been making turkeys for a long time, but it wasn't a very big business because Japanese don't eat a lot of turkey. An American came in and he took over the business for him, and now is producing more turkey because he has enthusiasm for it. That's the kind of thing that I'm talking about.

01:04:09 Alex Kerr: And there's another thing — it often happens in traditional arts and even in certain crafts — they get totally stuck in the tradition, it's kind of hidebound, unwilling to make the change, or they're scared of doing the modern thing. Whereas the foreigner that comes in doesn't have those preconceptions, and they're fascinated by the tradition and the materials, and they want to learn those techniques, but they're also free to play with it and do something that's new. And so that sometimes kind of re-energizes the field.

01:05:01 John Daub: Absolutely. Marple Juan writes in here: any part of Japan you have not been to?

01:05:07 Alex Kerr: Oh, lots. Uh, actually my weak point has been Tohoku, northern Japan. And it's really the last — I don't know — six, seven years I've really started traveling up there. And Tohoku is huge and there's so much more that I haven't got to. You can spend a lifetime.

01:05:26 Alex Kerr: Time — Japan is — the Japanese like to talk about Japan — is, you know, we live on this tiny island — it's actually huge. It's I think twice the size of England. And because of the crinkliness of the mountains and all of that, it's actually bigger — if you flattened it out, it might be as big as Australia. You know, Japan is a surprisingly big place. And so I've got a lot to see yet.

01:05:40 John Daub: Wow. So actually what I do as a YouTuber — I've been to all the prefectures like three, four times. It's odd. Even the Japanese say you're oddly well-traveled. So it's not just part of the job.

01:05:52 Alex Kerr: It's different, though, when you're living there and traveling to do it as a film.

01:05:56 John Daub: Actually, speaking of this travel to different places, one thing I started doing recently is I've just done a book — but it's only in Japanese — on so-called hidden hamlets, kakurezato. Oh, yeah. Which are places like exactly where we are this minute, actually. I mean, if you look out over this valley, it's the ultimate kakurezato. And so I went and visited different ones in Kyushu and all over Japan, places that people don't know about, but there are these Shangri-Las, and they do exist.

01:06:15 John Daub: I'll take one more question. Two more. We just came in here. Pokemon Japan and Latzmen. Let's hear. Let's hear your question for Alex or Rogira.

01:06:39 John Daub: We're having some trouble hearing you, Mr. Pokemon. Let's go to Latzmen.

01:06:51 John Daub: Alex, Rogira, I have to wrap this up. All right. We can't hear you, Latzmen. So I'm going to move over. The questions that I have. The audience is like listening to us.

01:07:10 John Daub: How dare you? You know, Japan is — I titled this "The Japan That We Know." And when we compare the Japan — I don't know, from when we first came to Japan and the Japan we have here today — how do you feel about that? What has changed? How do you see Japan going forward from the past throughout your life and your experience here in Japan?

01:07:40 Alex Kerr: It's a deep question.

01:07:42 John Daub: It's supposed to be.

01:07:43 Alex Kerr: You know, this might be a problem that traditional societies face everywhere. And I also spent a certain part of the year in Thailand. And so I see similar things happening in Southeast Asia. And what happens is people have grown up in a traditional society and then suddenly along comes modernity. And suddenly you have all these opportunities to make money but also to live more comfortably. And so the old stuff looks irrelevant. It's like — why do we have to live in these? You know, we have to live in these junky old wooden houses. That's — you know, they want to escape. They want to get away from it. They want to be modern people. And so there's that — so it can be very destructive. So old city, old towns are lost. Old crafts are lost. And that continues up to a point. And then comes this really interesting turning point. Which is when — I call it graduation. So now people are reasonably rich. They have their car, their toaster and refrigerator. And their house is okay. They go to school, they go to college. They reach this level. And then they can look back. And for the first time they look at maybe old houses. Or they look at real washi rather than, you know, chemically made paper. And they rediscover it. So there's this turning point where they start to rediscover what was of value. And Japan actually was kind of late to graduate. I feel. But it has started to happen. And so that's, you know, say, 50 years ago. 15 years ago, Yusuhara, the move had started. But the popularity wasn't there. It can only succeed now because Japan as a whole is reaching that kind of postmodern understanding. And that's what's exciting. That's what's very interesting for me in all these fields. So it's not just houses. It is crafts. And traditional arts. Whether it's kabuki, no drama, or the rest. They're now going, I call it, back to the origin. Back to that. It's kind of a deep well of wonderful, pure water. And they're pulling that bucket up. And then they're doing something new with it. Maybe they made tea before. Now they're going to make coffee.

01:09:56 John Daub: I absolutely think that this is going to be — this is one of the things that attracts people to come to Japan. The deep culture and the history. And that element. I think when I first started YouTube, when the tourism boom was starting, that's when they saw the value of it. And when people come to visit Japan, we need to be able to show these arts to them. At least in my experience. The archery from horses and showing how the samurai did it hundreds of years ago. Now young people are getting involved. Maybe because of social media. Maybe because it's a business opportunity. But relearning some of the things that their grandfathers and great fathers did. And for me that's super exciting to see. Especially up in Tohoku. I've seen so many old values and cultures coming back. I've seen here in Kochi traveling around the last eight, nine days — younger people coming in to places like Yusuhara. Revitalizing it. Saying, "This town needs a cafe. So I've been living here in Yusuhara. It's a cool place. I'm going to get interested in coffee. And start to make the best coffee in Japan here in Yusuhara." Like this kind of thing makes me excited. It's not the same Japan that I came to 23 years ago. And it's just as you said. We've crossed that line. And so this new — these new experiments are starting to happen.

01:11:50 John Daub: Yeah. And it's pretty darn exciting. And although you cannot come to Japan right now as a tourist to enjoy it, we are here for you. That's what we're doing. At least on this channel, Only in Japan Go. Rogiru, I want to talk before we end a little bit about your Japan. I'm sorry — how Japan has changed for you since when you first came here. All three of us by the way are hitchhikers. I hitchhike quite a bit. And we were exchanging a little about this. Hitchhiking is a great way to see the country, although maybe it's risky a little bit for everybody. Something you might want to think about. Tell me a little bit about your Japan — how it's changed over the 41 years.

01:12:06 Rogiru: Oh, okay. Yeah. Through the washi lens. 40 years ago I was surprised about the interior feeling. The bright lights. And the kind of shoji. Still a little bit shoji. So then I realized — I found out talking with a lot of people — that washi was almost disappearing. But I thought — the shoji will never disappear. And it's disappearing. It disappeared from the new houses — built houses. And but — maybe 10 years ago — when we started this — we feel that there is an increase. As Alex said. Of young people. When we have a very short — two hour — workshop here — not a long in-depth one. That can take many days. The short one. And I'm talking about the history and the connection. And then I see — when they are not interesting — I back up a little bit. But if they are interested — here they ask questions about the history, about nature, about the connection. So I think it's changing. And they will use their paper — made paper in their house. Maybe not all the walls — the sliding doors anymore. But we think — if you have one sheet — that's enough maybe to start. And people are very interested. Got interested. Maybe 10 years or so.

01:15:17 John Daub: I wanted to ask you — how much — I get so many questions for you — how much of this — now that things are disappearing and we notice it — you notice it because you are in the field — do you feel a responsibility to keep it going? Maybe go into realms that maybe you are not sure you want to, but you do it because you want to keep it going? Do you feel a responsibility to preserve and protect the cultural part?

01:15:46 Rogiru: We cannot — as a purpose. But we learn so much. So if we don't give it — talk to our neighbors, the people who came here — that's why we are doing the workshops. And the two hour tourist kind of workshop. Because you have to pass it through — to other people. And then probably — it will be okay. And then you will be able to. So in that — there is a responsibility for us to pass it through — to the other generations. Not to save the washi world. I would like to do that. But that's not possible, probably. It's more than just a business decision. There is something more behind it. And the business side is first.

01:16:21 Alex Kerr: Rogiru really put his finger on it. What you said — really struck me. I'm not trying to save Japan or save washi. I'm just wanting to pass on what I've learned. That's what the Zen masters did. That's what masters do — that precious thing they know. And that's what Rogita was doing. So I'm just happy to be in a master's studio.

01:16:41 John Daub: Such a treat for all of us. And last night coming together and talking from three different worlds. You guys are actually neighbors — just over the hill, right? Over down that direction.

01:16:50 John Daub: It was been a treat for us to get a chance to talk, and I hope this was a treat for you. You can leave comments in the questions below in the bottom of this video. If you have anything that you'd like to add — we will — if you have questions, I will ask Alex and Rogira and get back to you in the comments in the next couple of days if you do leave a question below. But we hope that you — something from this and have a deeper appreciation for this area of Japan, for Shikoku, for Koch Prefecture. And you do — when you come to Japan — want to discover something that's deeper than just — how do I see deeper than Kyoto? But I can't — very — just like jumped in. I just jumped in it right there. But Kyoto is not Japan, really. It's a huge country, a lot of places to experience. And again, Lonely Planet said this is the sixth most beautiful region that you have not visited. Why not? So if you do come — to this concept region — I hope you do make that trip to this magical area. Thank you very much, Rogira.

01:18:04 John Daub: Thank you, Alex, for your time today and to share with us. And thank you for watching. I'll see you in another livestream. Maybe later.