I want to tell you a story about something fascinating that has happened in Japan.
An academic named Kohei Saito wrote a book about democratic "degrowth communism".
Everyone said it would be a flop, because degrowth "is a terrible word", and communism "is a terrible word too."
An academic named Kohei Saito wrote a book about democratic "degrowth communism".
Everyone said it would be a flop, because degrowth "is a terrible word", and communism "is a terrible word too."
But it wasn't a flop.
It was a runaway bestseller.
The publisher has sold half a million copies. Bookshops kept running out of stock.
Something about this idea lit a flame among Japanese readers - young people in particular. People are hungry for post-capitalist ideas.
It was a runaway bestseller.
The publisher has sold half a million copies. Bookshops kept running out of stock.
Something about this idea lit a flame among Japanese readers - young people in particular. People are hungry for post-capitalist ideas.
It contrasts starkly with the West, where many socialists still cannot bring themselves to say degrowth, and many environmentalists still cannot bring themselves to say socialism.
People once thought the same was true in Japan. But someone had the courage to break the taboos.
People once thought the same was true in Japan. But someone had the courage to break the taboos.
Saito is an expert on Marx. He developed his ideas while reading Marx's unpublished notebooks from the last several years of his life. He draws on this work to articulate a vision for a just and ecological post-capitalist transition, rooted also in anti-imperialist principles.
The conventional wisdom was that the left in Japan was in decline. But with Saito's book, that seems to have changed. The media cannot get enough of him and his ideas. Not just in Japan, now in Europe too.
Saito has two books coming out in English soon. One is an academic text about Marx, ecology and degrowth. The other is a translation of his Japanese bestseller. Stay tuned - and in the meantime follow him at @koheisaito0131.
For more on this story, see nippon.com/en/news/yjj202…(this image was posted alongside an interview with Saito in NHK World News): 
Here is a link to the academic text, coming out with Cambridge University Press. It is academic but also very accessible. I understand the English translation of Saito’s bestseller will be announced in the coming months. cambridge.org/us/academic/su…
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