Anime in real life
Aug. 9th, 2026 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThis past week I've been reading a collection of Japanese articles about rural depopulation and the intentional communities that have been forming in ghost towns not too far outside of Tokyo. "Intentional community" is usually a euphemism for "cult," but not in these cases, I don't think. (Though lord knows they have plenty of batshit cults in rural Japan.) What these people are doing is essentially buying land for dirt cheap and starting agricultural co-ops that are partially funded by tech firms and university research labs that want them to try out various hardware prototypes, from solar-powered vehicles to non-humanoid ambulant robots.
What's super-interesting to me aren't so much these DIY green utopias, but rather the way these communities handle the pre-existing structures in the towns they've moved to. Specifically, when it comes to empty Buddhist temples, everyone is like, "How beautiful that this stately old building should decay, let us allow it to become a home for wild animals." But, when it comes to empty Shinto shrines, people are like, "Yeah that was creepy as fuck, we hired a special company to take that shit down and purify the grounds."
This was not the point of any of these articles, but now I have two questions:
1. There are companies that specialize in deconstructing Shinto shrines?
2. What do people think happened / was going to happen at these shrines?
What's super-interesting to me aren't so much these DIY green utopias, but rather the way these communities handle the pre-existing structures in the towns they've moved to. Specifically, when it comes to empty Buddhist temples, everyone is like, "How beautiful that this stately old building should decay, let us allow it to become a home for wild animals." But, when it comes to empty Shinto shrines, people are like, "Yeah that was creepy as fuck, we hired a special company to take that shit down and purify the grounds."
This was not the point of any of these articles, but now I have two questions:
1. There are companies that specialize in deconstructing Shinto shrines?
2. What do people think happened / was going to happen at these shrines?
