Synopses & Reviews
Intimate and evocative, this book profiles ten men and women who have left mainstream life in urban Japan to live their lives simply and sustainably, in harmony with their environment, surrounded by the luxuries of nature, art, friends, delicious food, and an abundance of time.
Review
"I study The Abundance of Less because it’s so much the way I intend to live. It’s gratifying that Andy Couturier has drawn us such a clear picture of how to live in a spare and elegant way. He has done so through his encounters with people who know how to throw away the unnecessary, and not replace it with more junk." Jonathan Richman, musician, Stonemason
Review
"Couturier catches everything that is essential and beautiful in Japan with a clarity, sincerity, and openness that move me to the core. It’s been years since such a fresh and liberating voice has emerged to remind us of the true heart of a country that so many of us fail to see." Pico Iyer, author of The Lady and the Monk
Review
"Andy Couturier has written some very articulate pieces on the counterculture in Japan." Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet
Review
"Reading this magic book is like drinking from a fresh wellspring deep in the mountains: it slowly returns one to sanity. In an era when the allure of ten thousand digital screens eclipses the inner radiance of a stone lying among the reeds, how clarifying to encounter the eloquence and humility of these well-lived lives." David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous
Review
"We are in an overheated world — physically and spiritually. It is extremely powerful to read of people who have managed to escape that world, not by traveling to outer space but by heading toward reality. This is subversive in the best possible way." Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy
About the Author
Andy Couturier spent four years studying sustainable living in rural Japan. There, he worked with local environmentalists, wrote for The Japan Times, and studied how Japanese aesthetics can help us develop new forms of writing. Couturier has also hitchhiked across the Sahara desert, been a researcher for Greenpeace, built his own house with hand tools, and taught intuitive writing for more than two decades. He is a student of many different Asian philosophical systems and is fluent in Japanese.