Culture: Cohousing in Japan

Diana Leafe Christian

This slide show explores how cohousing projects in Tokyo are similar to yet different from cohousing communities in North America. After presenting at the Ecovillage Conference in Japan in 2007, Diana visited three cohousing projects with poetic names that show the Japanese love of forests and trees: Kankanmori no Kaze (“The Winds of Kankanmori Forest”), a 28-unit project located on two floors of a 12-story community center for elders; the 12-unit Kyodo no Mori (“Forest of Kyodo”) (featured in Graham Meltzer’s book, Sustainable Communities), and Keyaki House, a 15-unit project centered around a beloved 80-foot Keyaki (Japanese Zelkova) tree

Diana Leafe Christian is author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities and Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community (New Society Publishers, 2003 and 2007). Former editor of Communities magazine, she now publishes “Ecovillages,” a free online publication (EcovillageNewsletter.org/subscribe). Diana speaks at conferences, and leads workshops for and does consultations for cohousing communities in the U.S. and Canada. She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina. www.DianaLeafeChristian.org.