Natural Calendar as the Vernacular Calendar

Abstract

In Japan, the solar calendar was adopted as a modern calendar in 1873 when the calendar was reformed and the solar calendar along with a fixed time method has been used even today. But this kind of homogeneous time poses the issues of dehumanization caused by industrial society. And it makes humanity interchangeable as a lobor power commodity. Meanwhile, natural calendar is regarded as the most primitive calendar for humanity. Natural calendar is the climatic calendar based on regional nature and human communities. In other words, it can be seen as the vernacular calendar with the concept that Bernard Rudofsky and Ivan Illich had advocated. The vernacular which is translated as “climatic” “indigenous” is used as the opposite concept of the product. Therefore, the time of natural calendar as the vernacular calendar means the time which isn’t commercialized. That is inhomogeneous and uninterchangeable time. The natural calendar as the vernacular calendar rooted in regional climates seems to connote the possibilities of recovering the humanity dehumanized by a market economy. In this article, the concept of the vernacular is invoked as terms of the criticism of social industry. And the auther wants to ask the meaning of natural calendar again in this modern age by rereading natural calendar as the vernacular calendar.