When a reporter asked Keibo Oiwa of Japan, “Why do you travel around the world like this?”, he replied, “Society should give seeds in the hands of children, not nuclear bombs. One seed can feed a thousand people. One nuclear bomb can destroy the lives of 100,000 people. The pain of the atomic bomb is still there in us, Japanese. That’s why I’m going around the world campaigning against nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors and pleading for the survival of the environment.”
Keibo Oiwa is a cultural anthropologist, writer, and environmentalist. He is the founder of the Sloth club, a leading organisation in Japan known as “Slow Life”. He works in the fields of ecology and alternative economics. He lived in North America for fifteen years and holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University. The founder of the Sloth Club, Japan’s leading “Slow Life” environmental group, is a group of people who follow the ‘Lifestyle in harmony with nature’. Oiwa hosts a monthly interview series for Sotokoto (Japan’s leading ecology and lifestyle magazine), and has written or co-written four books in English, ten in Japanese and translated three books from English to Japanese. His professional interests are broad: the environment, food culture, socially responsible business, grassroots activism, Harlem and African American culture (the subject of two Japanese books), and Jews, Japanese and Native Canadians. He has translated some books of Vinoba Bhave into Japanese.