Life without Electricity

Rising fuel prices, climate change, global deforestation and the Japanese nuclear accident earlier this year in Fukushima are some of the factors pushing some pioneering individuals to re-think their use of energy. One such pioneer can be found in Japan..

Many of our grandparents were born into a world without cars or everyday electrical appliances. In Japan, even the first prototype washing machines didn't reach the market until 1953, the same year that Japanese TV also started. Soon after, ordinary homes also took onboard domestic refrigerators. Known as the "three sacred treasures" (referring to the Imperial regalia of Japan, the sword, mirror and jewel), washing machines, TVs and refrigerators found their way into almost every Japanese, US and European households within 20 years.

In the following 35 years, electicity use in the home more than doubled, despite increasing electrical efficiencies of each device, partly due to changes in social structure, like the increasing number of households, buy also because of changes in individual lifestyles demanding more convenience and greater comfort. Particularly in the last 20 years, this has been a time when each individual, rather than each household, wanted its own set of electrical appliances.

Despite these social trends, Yasuyuki Fujimura, a Japanese doctor of engineering and an inventor, has been advocating a "Non-electric" lifestyle that intentionally avoids the use of electricity. The phrase "Non-electric" is chosen to communicate the idea that it is possible to live happily and richly without depending on electricity.

With a PhD in physics Fujimura was an elite engineer involved in the development of advanced technologies, but, when his newborn son was diagnosed with allergic asthma, he began to study environmental problems related to asthma and soon realized that the environment created by our modern electrified lifetsyle was harming children's health. Over the last 10 years, he has established the Atelier Non-Electric centre where he lives with and develops the non-electric products (www.hidenka.net/etop.htm )

 Atelier Non-Electric's two acre site demonstrates what a modern but non-electric lifestyle is like. Even the building's thermal insulation is made from waste rice chaff and the toilet produces excellent compost. A non-electric bath house uses passive solar power as well as burning firewood and even clean waste. In terms of applnces, the star is arguably the non-electric refrigerator which uses radiational cooling and water's natural convection.

 Source: www.japanfs.org  (Kazuko Kojima)

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