The German economist arrived at Tokyo on Sunday, December 07th 2003. He started his conferences on Tuesday at Meiji Gakuin University by the invitation of Dr. Keibo Oiwa, professor who is famous in Japan by his bestseller “Slow is Beautiful.” Dr. Brunnhuber started his lecture by stating that the sustainability “is a development, which fulfills the present needs without risking that future generations cannot fulfill their own needs”(source: Brundlandt-Report, UN, 1986), showed some structural faults of the conventional monetary system such as “instability” (lack of international value standard and pro-cyclical financial system), “short-time”(short-time investments are preferred from the financial viewpoint making eco-friendly sustainable developments economically unprofitable), “concentration” (51 of 100 biggest economic entities are multinationals, i.e. they are even bigger than some national economies), “income”(income disparities are growing worldwide).

After describing the current global economy in this way he suggested the use of complementary currencies in parallel with the conventional Japanese yen economy which has so far tried to solve socioeconomic problems (such as aging, unemployment and economic slump) based on an unsustainable system. He also pointed out that the complementary currencies have a good feedback to the conventional structure as well, such as anti-deflationary, anti-cyclical, reduction of social costs and economic regionalization. He finished his presentation by showing a Taoist graphic by Dr. Bernard Lietaer, saying that conventional economy is operated under the Yang (male)-coherence principles such as competition and hierarchy while the complementary currencies are run by Yin (female)-coherence ones such as cooperation and egalitarian works. His lecture was so impressive that students did not stop raising questions, which is not so common in Japan where people are quite shy.

He visited other universities such as Chuo Univ.(Tokyo), Seinan-Gakuin Univ.(Fukuoka), Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific Univ.(Beppu) and Shiga Univ.(Hikone) beyond other institutions and left Japan on Saturday, December 20th after establishing contacts with a variety of academicians and other social workers. It is our hope that his vision on the complementary currency should be understood even better in this East-Asian country and that complementary currencies’ performance should be improved by this new theoretical perspective.

Yasuyuki Hirota
mig@lime.plala.or.jp

Links :
- Dr. Brunnhuber’s personal website: http://www.stefan-brunnhuber.de
- Information about Yin-Yang principles by B. Lietaer (in French): http://www.passerelleco.info/article.php3?id_article=19