My Teacher’s House (6), May 26th 2019
My Teacher’s House
Shinyu Miyaura and the History of Antaiji in Hyogo According to Muho Noelke
(by Edward Moore)
III – The Money Problem (2)
Edward: At this point, were you having one-to-one discussions with Watanabe?
Muho: Yeah that started at that time. That thing about the fishes in the pond is something he told me directly. But I don’t know if he triggered this whole thing, the “no more takuhatsu” policy.
I could imagine him saying such a thing but, at his time, Antaiji was never really self-sufficient. They lived off the resources they had when they sold Antaiji in Kyoto. They tried selling vegetables in the beginning but never really succeeded at it. They never made a profit but they still had the idea the were living self-sufficiently and said it was successful. I’ve never seen any proof though. If you look at the books keeping of the time, there was no substantial profits made. They actually lost money through farming.
Edward: Were you the most senior person at this time?
Muho: For the first year of this no-takuhatsu thing, I had a senpai. He was the one who had the idea with the cows – which met resistance with the person that was actually responsible – then he came up with the charcoal idea. In the end, he never even built a firepit for the charcoal.
The first guy who was a student of Miyaura donated $2000 towards this charcoal thing. But nothing came of it. In Kutoyama, people were also making charcoal and selling it in Hamasaka or maybe even in Tottori. There was a small boom to burn your own charcoal. After the charcoal thing failed, the first monk left, and then I […]