From reading movement to community building (regional promotion)7-6-1 Akasaka Minato_ku Tokyo 107 Japan
tel:+81-3-3585-1141 Fax:+81-3-3585-6466
The modernization has brought us high productivity and a convenient life, but it has changed our relationship with nature into hostile one.
Rural Culture Association is a cultural organization doing activities on education, health, food, and
agriculture.
Our goal is to bring about a "flow of life" on the axis of health, food, cultivation, and
education, all of which agriculture incorporates by its nature.
We are trying to change the relationship between cities and the countryside to an equal and mutual relationship and thus the hostile relationship between mankind and nature into good one.
From reading movement to community building (regional promotion)In the middle of 1940's people were saying , "farmers don't read and they are no good." But we, Rural Culture Association took a stance that it was books that were no good, and tried to publish books which would appeal to farmers. We published books and magazines for farmers by gathering wisdom and ideas of farmers and succeeded to sell surprising numbers of those books and magazines, contributing to the increase of nation's food production as the result.
Agriculture has functions not only to supply food but also to provide information about medicine, educate people about nature and preserve natural environment. Today, Rural Culture Association is trying to utilize those functions of agriculture for building a good community to live in.
There is the countryside before cities. There is labor before science and technology. There is human living before industry and economy. There are people before politics." is our slogan, and we are trying to bring about "revolutions" in agriculture, relationship between people living in city and countryside, and contemporary lifestyle.
In 55 years of our history we have published a million pages of magazines and books. Those publications were made on information gathered steadily on our foot. To contribute these information to protecting the health of people we started to build a database on these publications and publish in electronic media.
Spreading the movement through visual media
Ideas can be understood more easily through visual media than books. Rural Culture Association has been producing and promoting slides and films since its early days. Today we make videos and CD-ROMs by using our experience in film and slide production.
Expanding consulting service on community building
To cut open the era of local community
To realize a new sustainable society which values reproduction of life, we believe that relationship between the countryside and cities and that between farmers and consumers have to change from hostile ones to mutual ones.
We are doing various surveys and researches on how we can build such relationships in community on our own initiative and at requests of administrative organs.
Communicating thought of organizations and business corporations accurately
The activities of organizations and business corporations can contribute to community only when these fit into community's culture. We are contributing to the prosperity of local communities through helping organizations and business corporations to promote its campaign and products with our thorough knowledge of the scene of agriculture.
We want to promote good things actively
To fully earn a living on agriculture one has to fully know how to use machinery and materials. Information about machinery and materials which business corporations provide should be conveyed to the scene of agriculture accurately.
With 280000 readers and 80% of them being farmers, our monthly magazine,"Gendai Nougyou(contemporary agriculture)", is a strong medium to convey such information to farmers. With through knowledge of production site we plan an advertisement editorial from a unique angle. Notable machinery and materials which has a potential to bring about a revolution in agricultural technology is fully examined and introduced in an article on our initiative.
Spreading ideas from Asia to the world
We want to spread our movement to "make 21st century the era of harmonization between
people and nature" to entire Asia.
As a start we have been promoting a good relationship with China
since 1980's. To the Showroom of Sino-Japan literature exchange on agricultural techlology
established in the library of Beijing Agricultural Univesity, all of our publications and many volumes
of books on agriculture have been donated by us and other agricultural publishers of Japan, and those
books are read by technical experts on agriculture in entire China.
Why China? The reason is that for
one thing we want to make up for long period of suffering we caused upon Chinese people in the
WWII and that for another we believe that how the issues on food supply and environment develop is
depending on which course China takes.