Hime Island, Japan

"If Marxism had ever produced a functional, prosperous society, it might have looked something like this tiny southern Japanese island," begins Martin Fackler — A Workers’ Paradise Found Off Japan’s Coast. What makes the island unique, says the author, is that "it invented its own version of work-sharing four decades before the current economic crisis popularized the term."

Despite the "socialist parallels" the islanders "proclaim themselves political conservatives." They also call their home "a repository for traditional Japanese values, like economic egalitarianism and social harmony," and suggest that "the current crisis has made traditional values appear progressive, even utopian." The authorities above have criticized the island for being "the least transparent local government in the prefecture" and "refusing to make information like detailed budget records available to non-islanders."

"Hime Island is North Korea, just a livable version," joked one islander. Mayor Akio Fujimoto and the father who preceded him in that post "have won every mayoral election in Himeshima, the island’s village, for 49 years — without once being challenged by a rival candidate." Mayor Fujimoto, noting that "traditional attitudes prevent him from extending family control of the mayor’s office for another generation, because he has only a daughter," said, "Hime Island can’t be run by a woman. This place is too medieval for that."

Hime Island may not be for evreyone, but it is not trying to impose its system on others. It seems to work well for the Hime Islanders, and those who don't like it can leave. I see it as an example of one of the many forms that localism can respond to particular circumstances.

[link via Energy Bulletin]