“I believe the root cause of many of our problems today is the loss of interconnectedness.” – why it is time for rediscovery and what we need a “Fountain of Hope” for.

Junko Edahiro, Co-Chief Executive, Japan for Sustainabi-lity, Kanagawa, Japan

Sometimes you meet someone and you feel that this per-son has really found her role in life. For some reason it is a special pleasure to be around this kind of people. Maybe it’s the sense of unstressed urgency and goal-oriented openness that create a kind of comfort and security.
When you hear Junko Eda-hiro talk calmly but pas-sionately about her work and the initiatives and enter-prises she founded within the last few years, you know that all this creativity and energy is only possible if one knows what all this work is for.
Mrs. Edahiro told us that her role in this world is to work as interface, linking people and information in the area of sus-tainability. Probably that’s what you need to be, if you have the ability to gather 350 volunteers to share your goals. With their support, the information hub “Japan for Sustainability” helps to communicate to the world the Japanese development in the area of sustainability, pub-lishing around 30 articles per month.
Before establishing this platform, Junko Edahiro translated 20 environmental and sustainability books into Japanese and wrote a couple of her own. She organises with her colleagues “Candle nights” for more than 5 million Japanese to celebrate “slow live” and looks for always new ways to leverage her work in the best possible way. In spring 2004, she founded “e’s” and in spring 2005 “Change Agent” to educate more “change agents” like herself, who can help change the world in a positive way. And there are more initiatives to come on Mrs. Edahiro’s way to becoming a “Fountain of Hope”.

Enjoy reading selected thoughts and statements of our discussion with Junko Edahiro in the quotations below. You may be able to read more about her diverse and yet focused initiatives in our book “MyImpact”.

Junko Edahiro’s selected quotations:
“The basis of my work is that I am not against something but for something. I want constructive dialogue. That’s why my relationship with partners from the corporate world or government area is successful.”

“People are willing to invest time and money to pursue happiness, but not necessarily to live a sustainable life-style. So, that’s how I communicate.”

“When it comes to information, the more you give, the more you get. I send out the newsletter containing any information in the area of sustainability that I can under-stand. And I get extreme amounts of information in return; people giving feedback, updates or news from their field.”

“There was no single life-changing experience that led to my engagement. It was a slow development that got stronger when I saw so many people becoming pessimistic when it comes to the future of our planet. I am not sure we still can make it, because the time is running out. But as long as I am here, I want to continue doing what I believe is right.”

“People understand and know but they lack actions to make and promote changes. And understanding and knowing does not reduce our impact on the earth. Actual behaviours should change and given the remaining time changes should be multiplied to create big waves for a sustainable future.”

„Apart from driving the sustainability topic in Japanese consciousness and sharing it with the world, I would also like to be a role model for Japanese women hesitating to be active in the areas of their choice. My message to them is: You can be yourself, even if this means being different.”

“How I define success? I would only call myself successful if I am able to push the world towards more sustainability, towards a footprint that is viable for our longterm survival. Fame based on my books or seminars is meaningless if they have no real effect.”

“The human footprint on the Earth is growing. I want to be able to say that I contributed to reversing this trend. I want to say at some point that my life was valuable.”

“I believe the root cause of many of our problems today is the loss of interconnectedness. We are less connected to ourselves, to each other, to the nature; our actions seem not to be connected, money became disconnected from real things it represents. Now comes the era of recovering, of rediscovering. The point is to recover the important links and environment is the starting point.”

“Maybe we have to slow down growth to become happier again. In Japan there is a first example of a company that set negative revenue growth targets but positive “Gross Company Happiness” targets. Believe it or not, this com-pany was very successful the last few years.”

"Humans live about 700,800 hours (assuming an average life expectancy of 80 years), of which we spend about 70,000 hours working (assuming we work for 40 years). The remaining 630,000 hours are spent on other activities, such as eating, studying, and leisure, including 230,000 hours sleeping. Until now, people often focused their lives on these 70,000 hours of labour, devoting their lives to their companies. However, with the "slow life" principles, we would now like to pay more attention to the 630,000 hours outside of work to achieve true happiness and peace of mind."

“Slow movement is not a new initiative but an awareness of people to take time and revisit, rediscover, reevaluate what they really value.”

“We will see many devastating events in the world in the years to come. People will be despaired. However, I believe in the power of positive information and I want to be a constant fountain of hope.”

Some background on Junko Edahiro:
Mrs. Edahiro was born and grew up in Japan. In 1991-93 she spent two years in the USA where her husband stu-died at Princeton University. She used this time to teach herself English up to a level where she could work as a simultaneous interpreter. Working on different kind of material, Mrs. Edahiro got especially interested in the envi-ronmental topics and later trans-lated many books from this field into Japanese.
Back in Japan, she first worked as an interpreter, after meeting Lester Brown, President of the Worldwatch Institute, especially in the field of global environmental issues. Based on the accumulated knowledge, an own sustainability newsletter followed in 1999, starting with 18 subscribers and now reaching 7.300 people.
In August 2002 Mrs. Edahiro founded “Japan for Sustain-ability” with her colleagues, an information platform on sustainability initiatives in Japan and in 2003 she initiated the “Candle Night” events. In April 2004 followed her se-cond company “e’s Inc.”, standing for English, ecology, empowerment, energy, enthusiasm … and Edahiro. e’s offers training courses for individuals, mostly females, to make personal changes, such as lifestyle, career and to reignite their passion. The hope is that participants get skills and courage to make not only their personal changes, but also necessary changes in a society or their community in the future.
In April 2005 Junko Edahiro founded her third enterprise called “Change Agent” with her business partner, with the mission of “mass production” of change agents by using systems thinking and modelling insights to create change in Japan. “Change Agent” is a specialized company to foster and support change agents by offering theories, frame-works, and methodologies for changes, as well as providing change agents or would-be change agents with courage, learning and networking to move forward. One of her last initiatives was to launch the web-platform “Kids for Future” at Japan for Sustainability, where she tries to educate the coming generation on environmental topics and thereby guarantee a lasting impact of her work.
Junko Edahiro has so far pub-lished 8 of her own books and speaks 50 to 70 times a year at various meetings and conferences. Recognised as a valuable information source for journalists, she also serves as commentator for an environ-mental TV program broadcasted by NHK, Japanese national TV station.

Some background on Japan for Sustainability:
With “Japan for Sustainability” Junko Edahiro aims to create an information platform to inform not only Japan, but the whole world, about the ongoing development in Japan in the field of sustainability, often presenting best practices from the corporate sector, from governments and individuals.
To keep the internet based information hub constantly up-to-date, Junko Edahiro developed a system where more than 350 volunteers organized in different functional groups like screening, writing, translating, proof reading, publishing etc., help her to guarantee the provision of high quality new content, on average 30 articles a month.
Their professionalism and positive way of presenting things helped them to gain support of more than 60 large Japa-nese corporations and more than 250 supporters.

If you would like to engage with the work of Junko Edahiro or get to know more about Japan for Sustainability please visit www.japanfs.org,
or if you want to know more about “Kids for Future” visit www.kidsforfuture.net,
or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.