MAKE A PLACE – DWELL IN TIME
who is translating, find my question about “how he came to know about yin and yang” strange. So after some doubt in the translation process Tatsyan answeres: “Well, I feel it. Also I learned from books and people. But sensually (kankaku-teki ni ⌃⌥
) I know it by my intuition (chokkan ⌦
⌃ ).” He further states that this is; “Not a special thing – the drawing - that’s the image inside of
me”, and; “the story comes out of the big stream/flow.” Tatsuya's explanation and drawing reflects a perception of the world that is both typical and untypical in the Japanese context. It is typical in the sense of a dualistic universe where opposing forces simultaneously present in a universe where the negative elements are as integral as the positive elements (Eisenstadt 1995). It is untypical because most Asian societies especially those influenced by Confucianism, tend to be guided by particularistic rather than universalistic norms (Callicott and Ames 1989:15). Latter means that few environmental groups in Asia reach beyond the concerns of a specific locale. What is seen in the example of Konohana Family is an Ecovillage that did not start out with some sort of idealism linked to global environmentalism but a spiritual community that has been linked to the Global Ecovillage Network due to their spiritual universalistic approach and way of living in “harmony with nature” - including humans. This is an example of how the local context affects the local particularity in the global phenomena. A tendency has been to follow the perception of people in Asia as living in harmony with nature (Callicott and Ames 1989). Although nature and the moral order has been entwined in the Confucian worldview the man-made appearance and over-exploitation of the environment has occurred in Asia since pre-colonial times (Kalland and Persoon 1998). Tales told in KF might be seen as part of the 'religious environmentalist paradigm' (Pedersen 1995) where Shinto, Buddhism, Japanese mythology etc. are used to make environmentalism “traditional” and opposed to “modern city life”. In the last decades there has been an increasing focus on environmentalism worldwide and the “green” has become one of the most powerful movements. Environmentalism has also become fashion in the East (Lohmann and Rigg 1995). This fashion allows “city intellectuals” to take part in a powerful discourse to gain them international support and prestige (Kalland and Persoon 1998b:19-21). Konohana Family is not particular in framing the environmental issues in religious terms rather it is common among Asian movements. The religious framing makes the environmental discourse localized. That might explain why KF are using quite different discourses in their representation dependent on their audience. At their web-page and other materials that reach a larger international audience their discourse is very similar to any other Ecovillage in the world. Listening to the oral narratives in KF a much more particular and spiritual discourse is being 75