Leon Cloder

Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1939, he began his career at an American think tank in his late 20s, where he served for about 20 years as a vice president in charge of the global issues of the 20th century, such as sustainable energy supply and demand, environmental pollution, growing poverty and inequality, and the uneven gap between food supply and demand. After returning to Japan, he established Eco World Inc. in Kamakura, proposing a slow and natural lifestyle. In April 1997, in order to experiment with a new lifestyle for himself and his family, he left his familiar home in Kamakura with his family and moved to Tsukude, a village in the highlands of Aichi Prefecture, where he had no friends or acquaintances. He wanted to become a ‘farmer,’ living a self-reliant, autonomous, and self-sufficient lifestyle. He believed that this could be a social model for how Japanese people should live in the 21st century.