This project is conceived as an intermediate stage, focused on Japan, of an international research program now under way (2001-2010), unsustainability in human settlements involving presently about forty researchers form the following countries: France, Netherlands, Japan, China, Canada, the USA, and Australia, centering on the EHESS (School of advanced studies in the social sciences, Paris). A symposium (20-27 sept. 04) has been held at Cerisy-la-Salle (www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr) for assessing one important aspect of the program : namely, under the title ?The three sources of the country-cityÓ, the origin and history of the myths which, idealizing an individual habitation in the countryside or in nature, has led in affluent societies to the present trend toward a pattern of settlement which disrupt the city both as a material form and as a social structure. It is deemed that this pattern of settlement is not sustainable, because it entails on the one hand a considerable waste of ecological resources and, on the other hand ,because it tends to replace all kind of social overhead capital (including symbolic systems) with an individual consumption of merchant goods, thus leading to the disruption of social links and their replacement by mechanical systems (first and foremost that of the automobile). In such perspective, Japan has been chosen in this program for a double reason. On the one hand, because its traditional mediance (fuudosei) offers many hints for an alternative to the above trend. On the other hand, because in the last century and especially after 1945, Japan has dilapidated this heritage more decisively than any other affluent society, and thus faces the necessity of changing this trend more evidently than anywhere else. A conspicuous example is the way inconsistant agricultural and city planning policies have jeopardized the country?s capacity for food self-sufficiency, which is one of the most basic conditions of sustainability. This evolution is basically due to the fact that Japan has introduced after 1945 a set of models which were developed in the USA, a country whose mediance has nothing to in common with the traditional Japanese on, especially in what concerns landuse. Introducing the standard American ideals of suburban development, for example, was a nonsense in a country with so scarce land availability as Japan. But this is only an external and measurable aspect of the question; the loss of mediance which Japan suffered in the second half of the XXth century reaches to the deepest layers of culture, since what is at stake here is ?the structural moment of human existenceÓ (as Watusji Tetsuro defined fuudosei). This time has come for starting clearly such an evolution is unsustainable, and for defining possible ways for retrieving a more sustainable type of habitation in Japan, both from a physical an from a moral point of view; that is, in a medial (fuudosei) perspective. This is the aim of the present project. It is hoped that, by reassessing the potential of the traditional Japanese mediance, and by combining it authentically human (as opposed to mechanical) relationship between culture and nature. Bunka wo futatubi sizen ni, shizen wo futatabi bunka ni !

代表者	オギュスタン・ベルク	フランス国立社会科学高等研究院国際日本文化研究センター研究部・教授客員外国人研究員
Organizer	鈴木　貞美	国際日本文化研究センター研究部・教授
Team Researcher	樋口　忠彦	京都大学大学院工学研究科
〃	桑子　敏雄	東京工業大学大学院社会理工学研究科・教授
〃	木岡　伸夫	関西大学文学部・教授
〃	横張　　真	筑波大学大学院システム情報工学研究科・教授
〃	千葉　政継	宮城大学事業構想学部・教授
〃	土屋　和男	常葉学園大学造形学部・講師
〃	鳥海　基樹	東京都立大学大学院工学研究科・講師
〃	三浦　　展	カルチャースタディズ研究所・主宰
〃	白幡　洋三郎	国際日本文化研究センター研究部・教授
〃	千田　稔	国際日本文化研究センター研究部・教授