{"id":4324,"date":"2019-03-29T15:37:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T06:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnic.jp\/english\/?p=4324"},"modified":"2019-06-10T16:06:45","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T07:06:45","slug":"whos-who-sumitomo-tatsuya-bringing-fresh-food-and-fresh-ideas-to-the-tokushima-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/?p=4324","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Who: Sumitomo Tatsuya-Bringing fresh food and fresh ideas to the Tokushima community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Miyazaki Shinya, Buddhist temple master, Hannyain Tokushima City<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eleventh of March came around again. On this day eight years ago, we experienced a nuclear disaster of an unprecedented scale here in Japan. The disaster generated great “cracks” in the traditional thinking of the Japanese, who once worshiped nature as divine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Tantric Buddhism, a\nBuddhist school that originates from the ancient philosophy of India, the world\nis understood as consisting of five elements, earth, water, fire, wind, and emptiness:\nas rain falls, the sun shines and the wind rolls around the earth, life emerges\nout of wonder (emptiness). We humans are allowed to live as part of this great circulation.\nThe harmony of these elements has allowed the existence of the aesthetics of wabi-sabi<\/em> and the serene attitude toward\nuniversal impermanence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nuclear disaster shook\nthis philosophy of harmony and circulation to its foundations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When he was a little over\n20 years old, Sumitomo Tatsuya returned from the U.S., where he had been studying,\nto his hometown, Tokushima, located in the western part of Japan. He then started\nto issue a town magazine, Awawa,<\/em> while\nworking part-time. The magazine was the first of its kind in the city, where a rural\nnewspaper that enjoyed a market share of more than 90% and private radio and TV\nstations were funded by the same corporation. This was a very problematic\nsituation from the viewpoint of information distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His magazine Awawa<\/em> allowed some fresh air into the situation, and created a new circulation of information between the media and the people in the town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made good use of his\ngift of keenness in organizing a civic movement to realize a referendum on the Yoshino\nRiver. The national government had planned to build a dam on the Yoshino River,\nwhich runs through Tokushima, and opposing citizens proposed a referendum to\nsettle the issue. It was the first time in this country that a referendum forced\nthe nation to give up a gigantic public works project. To bring the referendum\nto reality, he helped circulate information between the citizens and the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the information society\nemerged, he discontinued publication of the town magazine and decided to establish\na new business\u2014a mobile supermarket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With fewer children and more elderly adults, the rural areas were in decline, and groups of “people with shopping difficulties” emerged (his parents included).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Sumitomo decided to\ntackle this problem. He launched a mobile supermarket business, using a small\ntruck. A challenge with such a mobile sales business was how to deal with the\nproducts that remain unsold. Collaboration with local supermarkets enabled him\nto overcome this problem. He performed a thorough market survey by visiting local\nareas himself, and succeeded in establishing a business that sends out small trucks\nfull of products to those with shopping difficulties in rural areas, as well as\nto those with similar problems newly emerging in city centers. The important\npoint about this business is that it is different from mail order, which is a\n“one-way” business. In his business style, information\ncirculates\u2014customers have the joy of directly selecting what to purchase, and exchange\nsmiles and conversation with the salespeople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Named Tokushimaru, more\nthan 380 supermarket trucks are now traveling around not only in rural areas in\nTokushima but nationwide, including in Fukushima and Tokyo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is firmly against\nnuclear power plants, which may destroy the loving harmony and circulation\nbetween nature and humans.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Eager shoppers at one of the Tokushimaru mobile supermarket trucks <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Miyazaki Shinya, Buddhist temple master, Hannyain Tokushima City The eleventh of March came around again. On this day eight years ago, we experienced a nuclear disaster of an unprecedented scale here in Japan....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-who"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4324"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4351,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4324\/revisions\/4351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}