Kyoto: The City With No Garbage

A frontier psychiatrists Japan dispatch.

I'm joining you today, in writing, from Kyoto. This is an ancient city. It was the capital of imperial Japan. This capital predates the most urban place I've ever been, Tokyo, which became the capital after these Tokugawa Shogunate moved it westward, at the start of the Edo period.

Trains are the best way to get around Japan. There are also many of them. This makes some sense. The country is essentially a long series of vertically oriented islands, so there's not a lot of going east to west, it's mostly north to south. This also creates a natural, ordered vector of movement. You're either going up, or you're going down.

They are building that long city in right now- The Line. This is not a great way to organize a city —if you have a choice. A giant circle wouldn't be more efficient.

That being said, when you're not in urban planning, you don't have much of a choice.

There are no trash cans here in Kyoto. To an outsider, this is perplexing. It's not because there's no trash. If you buy something there's a wrapper—you will need to throw it out at some point. The city has a culture that solves this problem. Nobody throws trash in the trash can. There aren't many trash cans. There's an expectation that keeps this city beautiful.

Japan has a different cultural than my home, in “The West.” Much been written—by westerners and for westerners—about collective culture versus individualistic culture. This always struck me as a racist conceptual framework, no matter how “true.” It seems, to me, like the not so subtle white man snobbery we find (circa 1900) describing noble savages in the Americas. Native Americans had their own cultures, nations, languages, and whole lives. Their lives existed long before we came along and described them in ways that suited conquistadors. Be carful when approaching cultures that are not one’s own!

I have a way to sum up what is different about Kyoto, compared to New York.

There is no trash on the street. There are no trash cans. The magic?

Expectation!

Now, I could just tell you what that different behavior is, and this would be a very short article. However, I'm going to make you work for it. Because that's a cultural expectation when it comes to newsletter articles. You expect a hook. And that is when I realized, there was a secret! If only you, dear readers, followed me to the end of the sales funnel that is everything, blah blah. Explosive Growth!

Usually, this would be a paywall.

Moving on, what do you see here?

Stairs out of a subway. Thousands of tiny tiles. Drab, worn by the weather, perhaps? What else do you notice? I will help:

That is a Kyoto subway station. Notice anything? Perhaps something is missing?

It’s not a vending machine. Those are everywhere. See the blue beneath some drinks and the red beneath others? Some are hot and some are cold. That is right—warm bottled beverages. Everywhere. There are recycling bins. Not next to trash cans. There are different rules for recycling. That activity is virtuous and socially sanctioned. Expected. There is tea, coffee, hot or cold, and recycling bins. But did you notice the complete absence of street art? I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. People will “tag” anything and everything. Not here.

Graffiti simply isn’t.

It’s not a value to express one’s self that way. An unexpected emergent quality is a cultural ability to tolerate a very large unadorned wall. There are very large, and frankly somewhat drab expanses of tile, marble, wood, brick. My eyes expect something to interrupt such an expanse. That is a culturally bounded expectation.

It’s like the expectation of how high a mountain might be. This is based on the mountains you have in your immediate vicinity. Or how fast trains should be. Here, they are very fast. They are clean. Pristine, even. No one is obnoxiously on their phone talking about a deal. The man next to me isn’t wearing AirPods. Nor is he reading. He is sitting, looking out a window and that is it. In America, we write articles about modern dare devil men who “raw dog” flights, just watching the map. That wouldn't count as bravery on this bullet train, it would be a standard.

There is, I am told, a sense, in Japan that makes these clean streets possible.

It is shame, or pride, or perhaps both, admixed just right. People carry their trash home. There are no trash cans because you are expected to deal with your trash. It's your problem. Not someone else's.

You can have beautiful, trash and can free cities, as long as you choose, through as shared cultural understanding, to quite literally own your trash. It comes home with you.

You can have less expensive apartments—as long as they're tiny. You can have rapid bullet trains, as long as everyone votes for their construction and pays their taxes.

You can have a complete lack of urban clutter, as long as you have a pervasive sense of shame and pride side by side, that makes the different people motivated to act for themselves in a way that is also for each other.

You can have it all, as long as you are willing to own what it will cost.

This is the same culture that, hundreds of years ago, has warriors who wore two swords. One was the Katana—to cut the heads off your adversaries. The other was the Wakisashi.

This blade was always present, carried next to the Katana, for Samurai. It had one use—to end one’s life painfully and publicly should you bring dishonor on one’s self.

Death before dishonor, and carrying your trash home before littering.

Some places make sense in their own context. Not ours. It is for us to simple understand that different contexts can exist.