In an Japanese article the guy says that he was kicked out of Sotobanari island after becoming famous for showing up in a Japanese TV show; many tourists came to the island, the relatives of the owner of the property wanted to do some farming in the property, and some people were concerned that some other street people will do the same thing like him.
For these reasons he was asked to leave the island. If you want to read in more detail below is the article in Japanese.
In the Japanese article it just says something like "the owner of the property" and it isn't written in detail.
After reading an another Japanese article, it is written that a Taiwanese bought the whole Sotobanari island around 1985 to pray for the many Taiwanese coal miners who died in the island, but the owner was unfortunately killed in Taiwan in 2013.
I think that the relatives of this owner now own the island and wanted to do some farming on the island.
The island (or the part he’s occupying) would seem to be the property, as that would be the common understanding in English. Is there another interpretation that would make sense to you?
That's what I was guessing. But since I don't understand Japanese, I can't read the article to check.
But looking at photos of the island, it doesn't look like a good place to farm. So that's what led me to believe the island and the property might not be the same thing.
* Does my comment seem flippant or 100% unhelpful or something? I’m super confused why it’s getting downvoted to death. I understand the parent might have been asking for nuance of translation, but I meant this to be helpful; you can in fact get a pretty good sense for what an article says by reading via a translation, this resource does allow you to check yourself rather than say I don’t speak X. Now I’m sorry for offering a suggestion, even if it’s obvious.
I am certain you meant the 'sure you can!' as a positive.
To explain the downvotes, consider that ~99% of the time when someone laments a lack of something, and someone else replies with what is essentially a LMGTFY link, it is taken as snark.
If you had instead started with "the automated translation of this particular page is better than you might think, and you can actually get meaning out of it", you'd probably have positive votes. Most people who use automated translation services have noticed how awful they are with Japanese<>English conversion compared to many other language pairs, so pointing out that in this case it's not so bad is a useful thing. :)
I find this really depressing, that he is forced to abandon a lifestyle that he himself choose. I can't help but think of Ted Kaczynski who wrote along the lines that we are cogs in the social machine deprived of dignity and autonomy.
Yea, I don't understand that either. They forced him to hospital supposedly for his own good, but it's obvious that it will do him more harm than good. Depression would probably sink in, he might even get sick faster due to exposure to humans after all these years. He just wanted to die there, why not just let him be...
I second this. What Kaczynski did was terrible, but he was obviously very intelligent and highly observant. Upon reading Industrial Society and its Future, it was hard for me to deny the validity(note the difference between validity and soundness) of many of his arguments. I would say it's worth reading if the reader can mentally-divorce ideas from their thinkers, and it's a fascinating read at that.
Kaczynski's lack a sense of history or worse a romanticized version of it. People were less free in pre-industrial society and more controlled not less. Despite the depictions it is important to remember that nature does not give a damn about you and life is accordingly harsh because of it.
Depends on what you mean by pre-industrial. I think that what you say is true for most of recorded history, but perhaps not for the paleolithic era. That was probably peak human freedom, at least in my opinion
> the paleolithic era. That was probably peak human freedom, at least in my opinion
A bit much no?
The paleolithic era was when you'd get killed by some beast while walking through a field, killed by an arrow from some tribe nearby, or die by the age of 30 from the simple common cold.
By "free" you mean less responsibility? You didn't have to work and worry about a roof over your head?
There's a lot that's wrong with this post, which is at odds with all the available anthropology on hunter-gatherer tribes. For instance, the death by age 30 idea is completely misleading. While it's true that infant-mortality was very high, the life expectancy after childhood was very similar to modern man's. And you can't have it both ways: high infant mortality is just one of the mechanisms by which the biosphere maintains ecological equilibrium. Without it you end up with gross overpopulation, resource depletion, global environmental collapse etc. etc.
Your understanding of freedom is also problematic. Hunter-gatherers had enormous self-responsibility if the wanted to stay alive. They had to work HARD just to survive. Freedom in wilderness circumstances does not mean what it has come to mean in modern society. It implied enormous responsibility. Nowadays, modern man has lost all conception of freedom beyond days off from work so as to fritter away his time in hedonistic pursuits.
That isn't freedom - it isn't even self determination as they are still bound to the local environment and to have any chance of surviving in the wilderness individually without later innovations basically requires technology from the scope.
Even if Ted's mad dream was somehow achieved through mail-bombing (talk about insanity - at least Charles Manson's plan had the remote potential to start a race war if the frame up kept on succeeding and a cycle of violence was kicked off.) we'd be right back to where we started in rebuilding technology from scratch or worse yet scavenging it to survive better.
Anyone in an actual survival situation knows that such concepts are claptrap as they'd take any unsporting advantage to survive and use up irreplaceable resources to do so. Because your life is not a sport. If you need to make multiple life or death decisions as part of your lifestyle you are clearly doing something very wrong.
This is totally false. In modern techno-industrial society you have abundant freedom to do meaningless things--you have a ton of choices in how you fritter away your time in hedonistic pursuits--but in all practical, life-and-death choices, man is completely powerless and freedom-less at the hands of powerful organizations. But it is the freedom to exercise practical, life-and-death choices that is real freedom, which people need to experience to live happy and dignified lives. Purely for the sake of technical necessity, industrial society must have these practical freedoms wrested away from individuals and placed in the hands of powerful organizations. This has been a gradual process, beginning with civilization, but it has become especially acute and accelerated after the industrial revolution.
Kaczynski's knowledge of history is deep and extensive on this point.
I recommend you read his first book, "Technological Slavery" on this topic. You can check out his second book "Anti-Tech Revolution" as well, though this deals more with ecological issues in my opinion and less with human freedom.
Why??? Why on earth would you want to bias a reader and make him/her prejudicial to ideas. The whole point of rational inquiry is to dispassionately asses ideas on their own merits. This is why we have double-blind review. And at any rate, the truth or validity of ideas is in no way related to the personalities behind them. That's logic 101. So why would you want to encourage prejudice and bias?
The attack on individual freedom knows no limits unfortunately. The authorities should have nothing to do with this, unless you actually ask for their help.
I liked it, too. I didn't expect to feel anything for Ted's side of the story, but I felt the series did a good job of making him come across as a human being (who just happens to blow people up by sending them bombs in the mail).
I agree. I recommend that you read Kaczynski's two books:
"Technological Slavery" (2010) and "Anti-Tech Revolution"(2016).
The second book is truly extraordinary and insightful. Here's a review by MIT:
"Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How is Kaczynski’s well-reasoned, cohesive composition about how revolutionary groups should approach our mercurial future….. I recommend that you read this compelling perspective on how we can frame our struggles in a technological society."
-- The Tech, MIT's oldest and largest newspaper
Imagine feeling completely one with nature, making your position clear that this is where and how you would like to die. The time comes for you to wrestle with your mortality, you've worked for 30 years to do it with dignity. You've rejected man's system, because you know it's not right for you, and in your final moments it comes for you, steals you away, and forces you back into the machine. This isn't a morally imperative prevention of suicide. Mr. Nagasaki should be left alone.
Imagine some mentally ill person decides he wants to be at one with nature on your property...
There's two (or more) sides to everything. The people who own the island have the legal right to kick him out. I get your perspective but if he really wants to get back to nature he should find a place where he is welcome to do so.
EDIT: For all the people asking about the details of the property owners asking him to leave, read the article linked in the next top level comment by doall.
From reading this article I didn't get the impression the owners of the property were at issue with him. I assume that wasn't the case, this narrative certainly was not "30 year pest finally eradicated from beach front."
I made brief comment on what I believe the other side of the story would be; he was sick (suspected flue) and modern medicine could heal him. In most cases I would consider that a moral imperative, as in "it is wrong if you don't do it." But according to the information presented in this article, healing an 82 year old man of the flu is not assuring him any quality of life. Consider it a "Do Not Resuscitate" order. Plenty of elderly have DNRs and have made their wishes clear; they want to die at home.
Adverse possession must be adverse to the original owner's title. If the owners knew he lived there and tolerated him and otherwise made use of the land, then his presence wasn't adverse. See, e.g.,
I wouldn’t jump the gun on that. OP was clearly trying to create a worse case scernaio so that a reader may see the story from the perspective of a land owner vs the first comment which while a beautiful sentiment doesn’t really take practicalities like liability into consideration.
Still doesn't explain how we, or ebbv at least-knows the gentleman has a mental condition. That seems-in the absence of anything confirming so in the article-to be an incredibly uncharitable assumption because the man has chosen a lifestyle us in the 21st century would be inclined to "other"-ize for no good and justifiable reason.
That's not what the term "strawman" means. What you mean is it's an excuse used to oppress people, and that may be true but you'd have to give supporting cases. (Certainly it has been the case for LGBTQ people being oppressed in the past, even currently in some countries.)
Mental illness is also a real thing and a real problem, and people with serious problems who need medication often live outside the bounds of normal society. But that issue is not going to be solved here, and I think it's a distraction from the actual topic because the reality is he was on other people's property where he wasn't welcome.
I think they're describing your applying a mental disorder to someone when there's no evidence of that anywhere in the article-to justify your position against the comment you responded to-as being a strawman.
Yeah no the problem with that is that it's adding a variable to this discussion that does not apply, is not relevant and begs an arbitrary emotional response based on a hypothetical mental health problem-when mental health has been used for quite a long time as an excuse to deny people their rights to life and land.
I'm not going to play 'let's pretend' and step around how ugly your hypothetical is, "my dude".
These places are disappearing rapidly from the map. There's very little wild country left, and at the rate economic growth is going, there probably wont be any left in several decades.
Ah, and what is health? We use this term to talk about physical health (infections, disease, cancer), mental health and also habits (eating healthy, or playing video games all day isn't healthy).
This starts to get really ambiguous. You're now applying societal standards, maybe throwing a little happiness index in there ...
We don't see living alone in solitude as healthy. Yet this man claims to be find after decades, with pretty minimal human interaction. What is health? What even is his identity?
If everyone made his decisions, humanity would cease to reproduce and exist? Is that were our baseline is? Homosexuality was in the DSM as a mental health condition. We treat anorexia as a mental disorder to be treated, as we do body integrity disorder, but we support gender reassignment surgery, even though they are all forms of body dymorphism.
So health and rightness and validity are a popularity contest? On average, a lot of people do a lot of things that I am happy to be deviant from. A lot of people eat at McDonalds and bury themselves in credit and loan debt. That overwhelming popularity does not all by itself constitute validity.
But "mental health" also implies specific value judgements which are relative to the dominant ideology of a society or civilization. It's these value judgements that determine how the "averages" or the data in general, is interpreted.
For example, if you lived in the middle ages and you were a radical atheist, no doubt that under that system of education and propaganda, you would have been deemed by that society to be "mentally ill" (or similar contemporary equivalent).
The charge of "mental illness" or psychological pathology in general, has throughout history been weaponized to isolate and/or suppress politically incorrect or heretical ideas that run totally counter to the prevailing world-views.
>> making your position clear that this is where and how you would like to die.
Have a good think about how that death will actually go down. This isn't falling asleep in a field of flowers. Say you have a stroke. Then follows days, weeks, of confusion and fear as you rot away on the ground. Or say you fall and break a bone. That's weeks of pain as you wait for the infection to kill you. On anywhere other than an island a predator would eventually come along to quicken the inevitable.
This seems to be a controversial post (getting upvotes and downvotes). But for the downvoters, also consider that his decision to remain isolated is a current one, but not necessarily an indefinite one.
He may come down with any illness or condition that causes him to change his mind at any point, but no longer in a condition to do anything about it. There are certain conditions that modern civilization makes coping with considerably easier, and it’s plausible that he would chose that over his current surroundings, but no longer able to change his surroundings.
Maybe not, but a "random person" may well one day have to make that decision. Should this guy be injured, and that injury be made known to others, those others will have to decide how to handle the situation. When any of us become ill, ill to the point of not being able to sustain our own lives, outsiders take control. We wouldn't let a dog die in the woods with a broken hip. If this man broke his hip, rescue services would go in and remove him. We don't let people die horrible deaths no matter how much they may want to.
So the alternative is you have a stroke and get rushed to a hospital. Get pumped with meds and IV lines. Then follows days, weeks or years of suffering in silence in a place you didn't want to be in the first place.
> Sotobanari had one human inhabitant, a eighty-two-year-old man named Masafumi Nagasaki, who had lived there in semi-isolation for three decades (1989 - 2018), nude, and bought food and water from a settlement an hour away by boat weekly with ¥10,000 sent by family, fully clothed.
Well, that does make this less romantic, but personally that was a romanticism that I put over the situation from my own bias rather than anything in the article. That is, there are many stories with idealists that use no modern tools, but I don't see that Nagasaki made any such claims to be fully self sufficient, only that he enjoyed where he lived.
Yes. Probably he could have been left alone if he didn't get that much publicity though. There are tons of communities "standing out" in Japan, but they just go by themselves into exile, staying under the radar to survive.
People cite Law of Jante to be anti exceptionalism when in reality it is meant and generally used as a means of reminding high and low alike that we are in this together.
We are different, but do not think that your view point on our difference makes you inherently better than me.
We are both human, we both share this place called Earth, could we be productive and not turn life into a weirdly specific genitalia measurement contest.. por favor?
You are allowed and encouraged to be exceptional, just like everybody else. You should just recognize how you got there and how other people got where they are. In essence, Jante, is a teaching tool regarding inequality.
Denmark is a lovely place, in part, because of a general adherence to following those guidelines. Therefore as a Dane it pains me to see it cited as a bad thing and as justification for actions and behaviors Law of Jante which are in direct opposition to how it is de facto taught and applied in Danish society.
No offense but how unified is that interpretation and teaching? Just liks how foe instance many say Christianity is about love, nonjudgement and charity but many practice or teach radically different forms which are all about hatred, judgement and prosperity gospels. Likewise some may really be more "tyrannies of mediocrity" where doing anything positive draws harsh responses for making them self reflect and feeling envy in response.
It is also used to keep the peasant in their place be good behave and pay your rent to the bourgeois land lord a common result after the many European revolutions.
There was a very Funny BBC comedy "Brass" satirising the gritty northern melodramas one episode had the Forman being seen as trying to be upwardly mobile as he had brought some bicycle clips - not that he would dare to think (or be able to afford) of buying a bicycle.
It maybe a crime in highly religious counties but it's actually perfectly legal in many countries (as well as some states in the US).
In the UK you can get arrested for "indecent exposure", which I believe basically means someone has to be offered by your nakedness. Which means nude beaches, organised naked cycle events and such like are all perfectly legal.
I wouldn't class myself as a naturist but I am often surprised at just how offended some people get by nakedness. I mean sure, nudity of a sexual nature in public places I can understand, but that's completely different to a woman sunbathing topless or a guy hiking. People should just live and let live. But that's just my opinion.
> I believe basically means someone has to be offended by your nakedness. Which means nude beaches, organised naked cycle events and such like are all perfectly legal.
Fortunately we're all incredibly good at being offended by anything and everything - so I'd argue you've got sod all chance of avoiding it at this point unless in an area explicitly defined as "nudist"
It can be, but in the US it somewhat depends on intent. And, of course, nudity is usually a misdemeanor or less, in contrast to Chris Knight’s ~1000 felony burglaries — burglary is a felony in Massachusetts.
Trying to be provocative or shocking is mainly what’s illegal, but breastfeeding, for example, isn’t illegal. The wikipedia page on indecent exposure laws has this hilarious sentence: “The Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled that the law could refer to sudden, unexpected exposure of the buttocks” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indecent_exposure_in_the_Uni...
The person who found the tree got their value from making the tree famous for being famous. They created a beautiful thing by Instagraming it. It was never unique other than the fame....which leads to the part of being cut down which is also part of it's story. And it's journey is not over. https://kottke.org/17/09/rip-the-broccoli-tree
I'd stick with respect peoples privacy as you say. And don't ruin exploration for others, not everything has to be slashdotted.
"They're about to start piss testing for adrenaline in the workplace, that's how sad this country's gotten...
'Is that yours Donnie? It looks a little cloudy, have you been having fun on the weekend? Are we not enough fun for you here at the Verizon Wireless family that you need to seek it elsewhere? I don't think you're a team player.'"
This dude again? This story is totally false. This old man sometimes visit civilized town, got money from his sister, to purchase modern civilized items. It's not so isolated at all. It's just a weird old man.
All sources just say "removed by authorities and not allowed to return" with no other information. Are there court papers or something that reveals the reason behind this statement?
People always talk about Orwell and 1984, but it was Huxley who really nailed it imo. I think he appreciated the degree to which a stable dystopia required the consent and participation- even enthusiasm- of the general populace.
Regardless of the fact that his family sent him money or that he bought food and water for the money from local villagers, he was maybe our last true old style hermit.
There used to be a time when hermits were more common and people largely tolerated that. So I still think it's sad he was removed from the island and not allowed to live out his life the way he wanted.
I can see how someone might believe he can/should be forcibly removed in order to address his apparent health issues, but why not allow him to return afterwards? Seems a gap in the story.
Isn’t it curious that HN throws its arms wide in support for those with mental illness, but as soon as a situation doesn’t fit that mold the compassion completely disappears?
Suddenly HN calls the entire life of an unknown man into question, denying any benefit of the doubt.
Until the post that provides the real context, of course, which is something completely unanticipated.
Indeed, based on the article posted elsewhere in the thread, it sounds like the publicity this company generated for this guy is what brought him attention and got the property owner concerned that it would turn into a camp.
So, people complaining about the authorities, but the “entrepreneur” in this case should also bear some of the blame.
Eh, it has higher information entropy than many other articles, on an interesting subject. I don't see anything wrong with this type of content being linked - it's not like the ad part is obnoxious, and the author's agenda is no more obtrusive than any news piece.
It's interesting that multiple people are reading my post as criticism, when it contains none. HN has regular discussions about content marketing for startups, I just pointed out that this is an effective example.
I read the whole article without following any further links, or clicking on the videos. No-one is making you click on them either.
On topic though: It's 100% wrong that a person who is zero threat to anyone, is not allowed to live out their life how they see fit regardless of whether it is considered 'normal' or not.
I'm sure Cerezo will fully incorporate his "friend's" story into the marketing package when he begins renting out the island.
Welcome to the NHI! Live naked in nature with seventeen of your closest hermies! Dine on exotic turtle eggs and local sashimi with our Nowhere/Outtatime champagne service, available anywhere on the island at the press of a networked coconut.
Remember: please litter! We don't spoil the natural surroundings with trash recepticals, so leave all refuse on the beach for our "permaHermies" to happily pick up.
For these reasons he was asked to leave the island. If you want to read in more detail below is the article in Japanese.
https://www.dailyshincho.jp/article/2015/12090710/?all=1