I was born in a communal village

Kaya Takada had an unusual adventure in Japan: she spent her entire childhood and adolescence in a community village. Inspired by the libertarian ideas that circulated widely in the 1970s, the atypical village in which she grew up was an alternative rural community, with mores both innovative and severe: no private property, dwellings without keys , material goods shared with all, etc. Along with these generous practices, the way of life was marked by a monastic rigor and a terrorizing climate: only two meals a day, separate residences for parents and children, corporal punishment to enforce iron discipline, etc In the eyes of the rest of the world, the community was regarded as a strange place that "ordinary" people called "the Village", as they would have said "the sect."... It was in this disconcerting environment that Kaya Takada lived until the age of 19, with its activities and its simple pleasures, but also, like an endless litany, its constraints and its bullying... The shock of the book is born of the confrontation between the freshness of Kaya's story, conducted "at the height of a child" with frankness, humor and enthusiasm, and the radicalism of the mores of this singular community, extraordinarily rigid and dogmatic. Translated from Japanese by Jean-Louis de la Couronne Book published with the support of the Île-de-France region An extraordinary dive into an experience of community life in 1970s Japan, which questions our relationship to authority, family and freedom.