A Morning with a Farmer’s Wife

Matsumoto-san gestured to the lush rice paddies with a pond nearby and stands of forest in the background. “It’s the Satoyama,” Matsumoto-san said laughingly, using the English word “the” in her string of Japanese to emphasize how this area epitomized the concept. “At night there are many fireflies here too.”

 Satoyama（里山）, the traditional rural landscape of Japan, is often thought of as a patchwork landscape of forests, rice paddies, ponds and villages where people live in harmony with nature. Gazing at the verdant paddies and dark forest in the background that morning, I had to agree. Matsumoto Farm looked like the textbook definition of idyllic Japanese rural life.

 Matsumoto-san is actually a newcomer to this way of life. When she got married 12 years ago, she moved from the suburbs of the prefectural capital to Suzu, a remote city a several hour drive away at the tip of the Noto peninsula. Before her marriage she’d never worked in a rice field before.

 When she first arrived, several rice paddies in the area had already been abandoned, but she and her husband have continued to grow rice faithfully year after year. In a time when more and more farmers are retiring every year and landscapes like those at Matsumoto Farm are becoming rarer, Matsumoto-san sees the work of continuing to farm the land—land which has been passed down for generations in her husband’s family—as part of efforts to preserve this foundational aspect of Japanese rural life.

When I asked Matsumoto-san for pictures of her and husband at work, she asked if I would share pictures of her husband. Here is one of those photos, an imagine of Mr. Matsumoto planting the rice paddies for the 2021 growing season.

 “Farming is such hard work. You have to love it to do,” she told me. Matsumoto-san and her husband split the work, with him operating much of the machinery, like the planter, combine, and drone—the newest gadget the family has adopted to spray pesticides and herbicides. Despite this general division of labor, one of Matsumoto-san’s favorite tasks is riding the tractor. She chuckled, explaining how her husband often reprimands her for having too much fun when she’s in the driver’s seat.

 During our morning together, it became clear that she was deeply committed to her family’s paddies and the regional satoyama landscape. She showed me how she’d spent hours cutting the grass around the fields. Some farmers resort to spraying but she doesn’t like the aesthetics of the browned ridges, so she mows the weeds herself. Recently, Matsumoto-san has also joined a surveying team, helping ecologists from the regional university survey the biodiversity in the farm ponds or reservoirs（溜池）in the surrounding area. While Matsumoto-san’s farm still uses the local reservoir to flood the rice paddies each year, as more paddies are abandoned and the ponds go out of use, the species that once made their home in these managed aquatic areas are beginning to disappear.

The reservoir that the Matsumotos use to irrigate their rice paddies.

 After the tour of her rice fields, Matsumoto-san brought me to her family’s garden near their house and shared her dreams for expanding Matsumoto Farm. Already, her family has several fruit trees---plum, yuzu (a citrus fruit), persimmon—which produce more than they need. In the future, perhaps she could host food preservation workshops, having visitors pick their own fruits and make pickled plums or dried persimmons. Perhaps, they could build a small gondola, for visitors to rest as they worked. Wouldn’t it go nicely here, by the trees? Maybe someday she could also invite guests into her home for a farmstay bread and breakfast (農家民宿).

Life as a farmer’s wife is hard work. But it’s also deeply satisfying and the possibilities are vast.

Every plant has a role. Every person has a role.

In Japan, a movement to link farming with social services, specifically services for people with disabilities, has been growing. In farm-welfare collaborations (農福連携), group homes and other services that support people with disabilities are starting their own farming businesses, and/or contracting to work on area farms. This gives individuals who may not otherwise be able to find employment in Japan a job and sense of purpose. It also helps farmers fill staffing shortages, often at lower rates. Tsubasa, a group home and support service in the town of Noto-cho, a rural town in in the Noto Peninsula of Ishikawa, engages in farm-welfare collaborations. Below, I share part of the conversation I had with Hiroaki Imai-san, the coordinator for the Musubia, the division of Tsubasa that focuses primarily on growing and processing food grown through natural cultivation.

Around 10 years ago, Imai-san was carrying serious doubts about the work that he was doing as a care worker, managing people with mental and physical disabilities who did farming and food processing at Tsubasa. The farming he did with the members was organic; they didn’t spray for weeds or pests. However, what he was finding was that the weeds never went away. They’d cut them only to have them grow back again.

 This isn’t interesting. What is the meaning of this work? he wondered.

Just as he was harboring these doubts The Miracle Apple, a book by Akinori Kimura, father of natural cultivation, fell into his hands, and shortly thereafter, he learned that Kimura himself would be hosting a course on natural cultivation in the neighboring city. Imai-san had missed the deadline to register but somehow managed to join late, becoming part of the first cohort to graduate from Hakui’s natural cultivation academy.  Soon after, he became a member of the organization Shizen Saibai Party (or Natural Cultivation Party), a national network of people and organizations who support people with disabilities who grow food using Kimura’s growing methods.

As Imai-san learned, one of the tenants of natural cultivation is that excess doesn’t exist. All parts of farming system, including, weeds are necessary and have a role in the natural system. In a fact, in natural cultivation, soil fertility is said to come from weeds. The greater diversity of weeds the better.

This concept resonated with Imai-san. As he explained, “We can learn something from this growing method that applies to the human world. In some way or another, everyone has a role. I’m certain of it.”

 For Imai-san, the parallels extend even deeper. Often Japanese society doesn’t accept the members his group home. Schools don’t cater to the needs of people with disabilities, and families often try to hide members who are disabled, not wanting to trouble their neighbors. In the name of not bothering others, this culture of suppressing people with disabilities is perpetuated by Japanese culture and even by areas of social welfare.  

Today, in the gardens and farm plots of Musubia, Imai-san practices radical companion planting. He’s just as apt to break the rules as he is to follow tried and true pairings, planting all sorts of plants together.

 “I want my gardens to represent a society where everyone can coexist,” he explains.

 Moreover, because his plots are spread out across town, neighbors around the city are able to interact with his members. Through the gardens, people of all abilities become part of everyday life and society. The neighbors, many elderly, share their knowledge about the wind, water and soil, supporting Musubia members with farming. In return the members will share some of their harvest. Through such exchanges, Musubia gardens become a place connection.

 “The thing we value most is for our members to live. For our members to live in their community along others. We want to make this vision a reality. That’s why we bring our members to the field.”

A Turning Point: the 3.11 Triple Disasters and a Return to the Land

 The March 11, 2011 triple disasters of tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown have been etched into the Japanese conscious. Many remember the exact moment they heard the news, and for some, these disasters lead to a grappling with values and revisioning of one’s life. For several of the beginning farmers I’ve spoken with, 3.11 was the impetus for them to leave the city and go back to the land. Here, I’ll share a few of their stories.

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Kengo Shimizu

Hakui, Ishikawa

Shimizu-san used to live in Tokyo. He was a salaryman, working for a company and bringing home a good income. He had a wife and two kids.

However, when disaster struck in 2011, things he’d never thought about began to surface, and things he’d take for granted suddenly disappeared.

 As Tokyo experienced rolling blackouts, Shimizu-san learned for the first time that the energy that fueled his home and his city came from nuclear power plants several prefectures away. And that was just the beginning. He needed diapers for his infant but the store was empty.  He couldn’t even buy water. Suddenly, the money that he was earning had no meaning.

 Living through this crisis lead Shimizu-san to start to rethink his life, and eventually, with the encouragement of his wife, he and his family left Tokyo for the small city of Hakui to peruse no input farming or natural cultivation.

Securing a position as a member of the national rural development squad program (地域おこし協力隊) brought Shimizu-san to Hakui. This program offers individuals a salary for up to three years. During this period Shimizu-san could work to get his own business off the ground.  He found a position working for a conventional rice farmer who allowed him to use his unused plots of land for his own devices.  Shimizu-san used this fields to try growing soybeans and a vegetables without the use of agrichemicals or animal byproducts. Meanwhile, his wife started working at a café.

 Now in their fourth year in the city, the couple have opened up a takeout restaurant that transforms the farm products Shimizu-san grows into ready-to-go meals. In the addition, the couple sell their food at outdoor events, like the one picture above.

 Currently Shimizu-san still spend most of his time working for as a farmhand for the conventional rice farmer, growing rice with pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers on a farm around 10 times the size of the 7000m2 of land he cultivates. Despite the size of his own farm, Shimizu-san still has big dreams for his business and for natural cultivation. As he explains, he hopes that in the near future, he and his wife’s business will become an example of how to use natural cultivation to make a living and raise a family.

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Satoshi Nitta

Hakui, Ishikawa

 As college student, Nitta-san majored in agricultural economics. However, when it became time to choose a career, he chose a more stable option, becoming an employee at a plate manufacturing company in Tokyo.

 He was 42 years old when the triple disasters hit the city. As radiation levels increased, he began to reflect on life choices. Is it really okay for me to continue working at this company? he wondered.  At 42, he realized he was about half-way through his life.

 Even though it had been 20 years since he’d graduated college, farming was still at the back of his mind. Over the years he’d remained connected to a dairy farmer in Okinawa, visiting and helping out at the farm.

 There had been a change in management in his company as well, and the transition had been rough, further making him unsatisfied with his work. Around this time, he heard about a venture that was investing in community farming and beginning farmers. Nitta-san joined the first cohort in the organization’s new organic farming class. Over the next 10 months,  Nitta-san spent his weekends emersed in the basics of growing crops, managing pests, and cultivating the soil. Even on his days off he went the library, ravenous to learn anything he could about farming.

 At graduation, one of the instructors, told him, “If you are really serious about farming, I will introduce you to someone.” That someone ended up be Johnsen Takano, the city employee at the city of Hakui who was responsible for welcoming natural cultivation into the city.

 After several visits to Hakui, Nitta-san made the leap, bringing his wife and two children to the rural city where he’d been promised by a community leader that he could take over the shiitake mushroom farm that some local elders had started in the mountains.

 However, things weren’t quite as perfect as they’d seemed before he’d arrived. There was a rift in the group of elders who’d been farming the mushrooms. Ultimately only half the business was passed on to Nitta-san, so he was left scrambling to make ends meet. Moreover, many of those who were against the transition were Nitta-san’s neighbors; he struggled against the ill will that surrounded him in his new home. As he explained, “I can’t bear to look at photos of taken during that time…my family looks so anxious, my kids so pitiful.”

 Nonetheless, Nitta-san and his family persevered. Thanks to introductions to other retiring farmers, Nitta-san was able to expand his business. And slowly, his neighbors warmed up to the newcomers. Now, 7 years later, Nitta-san makes a relatively stable income growing  rice, lotus roots and mushrooms and has become accepted as a member of the local community.

 However, his early troubles have stuck with him and he remains concerned about the future. Nitta-san knows how hard it is for beginning farmers. For him, major expenses are on the horizon with his children entering high school and college. When we spoke, however, Nitta-san was optimistic about the future.  He shared his plans and vision of forming a workers cooperative for other sustainable famers like himself: an organization and new brand to help lessen the barriers for entering farming.

 He envisions a group that will make it possible for those like himself to live their values and farm without the use of any chemicals. Ultimately, he sees his farm and the organization he’s building as a bridge to a healthier and safer and more people focus era, that will hopefully have learned from the disasters of 3.11.

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Yoshide Imamura

Kahokugata Land Reclamation, Ishikawa

 “The dots turned into a line. The line into a plane. And the plane into a sphere… and that is how I became a farmer.”

 Beginning when he was a teenager around 30 years ago, issues of environment, health, and the global food supply concerned Imamura-san. How it could be that people were getting sick from the material their homes were made from? Was the world going to run out of food?

 Sometime after these began to ideas preoccupy him, Imamura-san heard Akinori Kimura, the father of natural cultivation, on the radio. Kimura spoke about the health benefit of eating foods grown without any agrichemicals. This message resonated with Imamura-san, and he began to connect the dots between health, the food supply and the environment.

 For a number of years, Imamura-san gardened as a hobby and attend related events, but those lines and planes s didn’t fully transform into a sphere until 3.11. Until the triple disasters, Imamura-san had been working as a salaryman. However, the disaster made him reflect, “I really need to change my life.” Imamura-san left his job and made the commitment to farm full time.

 While Imamura-san currently farms in the Kahokugata Land Reclamation, a few miles from where he grew up, his path to his current position was circuitous. His first stint at farming was at a several hours away in the Noto Peninsula, helping take care for the grounds at an old Japanese farmhouse. Then he moved to opposite end of the prefecture, where he borrowed land from a friend.

 Around 5 years ago, Imamura-san got a lucky break. He met the head of a company that wanted to give back to the community through farming. First as a contractor than, then as a full-time employee, Imamura-san was hired to explore the potential for natural farming for the company.

 Currently Imamura-san grows an array of different vegetables as well as blueberries. As he explains, during the first few years of farming, farmers using natural cultivation don’t know what crops suit the soil so must grow a wide variety to learn what works best. He is still in this exploratory phase.

Looking forward, Imamura-san hopes that his farm can make a bigger impact. He told me about how he and the company have plans to build a food processing facility neighboring his farm. Because vegetables spoil quickly, he hopes that through food processing he can help extend the life of not only the produce that he grows, but those of neighboring farms. He sees this addition as a critical step in preventing food from being waste. Through this project, Imamura-san will be fully addressing the intersecting issues of health, environment and food supply that first caught his attention 30 years ago.

A symbol and soul for Sado: the Iwakubi rice terraces

Beauty doesn’t pay the bills.

The rice terraces of Iwakubi, Sado exemplify this challenge. In 2011, Sado Island became the first region in Japan to be designated by the FAO as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS). The rice terraces of Iwakubi soon came to symbolize Sado’s breathtakingly beautiful agricultural system on the international stage. Since this designation, more visitors have been making the trip up the narrow winding mountain road to admire the terraces and ocean beyond. However, mere admiration doesn’t pay; the number of paddies under cultivation continues to decrease as more farmers retire and those that remain struggle to make ends meet.

At 69, farmer and rice terrace organizer, Oishi-san is all too familiar with this challenge. As he explains, terraced rice paddies take 1.5 times more work to cultivate than rice paddies on plains and average only sixty percent the yields. Moreover, as you go higher up the mountain, yields further decrease. With current rice prices, terraced rice farmers like himself can’t break even. Oishi-san often draws from his pension payments to support the upkeep of the landscape.

To help combat these challenges, Oishi-san has taken the lead both in Iwakubi and the rice terrace community of Sado Island. He works to increase farmer revenue by selling the rice produced on terraces directly to consumers and companies instead of going through the Japanese Agriculture Cooperative where most rice farmers sell their rice. In addition, he’s also involved in youth development and education around rice terraces. His office (岩首談儀所 ) at the base of the rice terraces is housed in an elementary school which was abandoned nearly 15 years ago when the local youth population became too small to support the school. While it no longer serves as a space for educating young children, college students come to stay in the school and learn about rice-growing and local ecology.

Grassroots initiatives like these student visits, as well as government funds, help offset material costs and supplies for Oishi-san’s work, and the national rural development squad program (地域おこし協力隊) even funds a temporary staff person. However, none of this support goes directly to Oishi-san, who volunteers his time to support the terraces.

So, where does Oishi-san find motivation to do this work and continue to grow rice? His “soul” (ソール). He can’t give up on his and his communities’ ancestors who have grown rice in mountainous Iwakubi for 400 years.

heartland of natural cultivation: JA Hakui

Today I visited JA Hakui, the branch of the national agricultural cooperative in the city of Hakui, which is located at the base of the Noto peninsula. JA Hakui has a project to make its city the heartland (聖地) of natural cultivation (自然栽培), through supporting farmers and aspiring farmers who want to grow food more sustainably. Natural cultivation is a growing method that avoids the use of all artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and the version of this method that is promoted by JA Hakui was developed by the apple farmer, Akinori Kimura. The cornerstone of Kimura’s farming method is building rich, nutrient-dense soil, which will in turn lead to nutrient rich foods.

Nationally, JA is known as an organization that promotes the use of agrichemicals, which may at first seem at odds with the Hakui branch’s promotion of natural cultivation. However, as the average age of farmers hovers around 68 years-old, JA will be facing severe challenges as their members age and retire, and thus they have a great stake in helping cultivate the next generation of farmers. As JA Hakui’s section manager of finances, Masaaki Awaki-san explained, farmers using natural cultivation are part of this next generation. Since 2011, when the city hosted Akinori Kimura for a lecture series, JA Hakui has annually been offering a training course to teach the basics of natural farming cultivation. Participants in the course are often in their 20s and 30s and some even move to the city to start their own farming enterprises.

Not only does JA Hakui support natural cultivation through education, the cooperative also provide the infrastructure to process and sell the farm products graduates from their course produce. One of the main roles of JA nationally is to buy, process, and sell rice that rice farmers grow. To accommodate the chemical free rice grown in their city, JA Hakui had an additional rice drying facility built specifically for naturally cultivated rice. This rice is served in school lunches and is offered as a gift through Furusato nouzei (ふるさと納税), a tax break system where people can donate to rural communities and receive local specialty products in return.

Awaki-san outside the “Hakui-style Natural farming Rice Center,” which houses the rice processing machinery.

Nonetheless, as Awaki-san admitted, there are still challenges in getting natural cultivation off the ground. This year’s iteration of their natural cultivation class focuses on growing vegetables. While farmers are able learn the cultivation skills from JA, the investment and support vegetable farmers receive is limited compared to that of rice growers. As Awaki-san says, it’s a matter market value. For a while, the organization tried buying vegetables from natural farmers at a price set by the farmers, but wasn’t able to make a profit. While these farmers are still working on their own, selling directly to consumers, thus far, it’s difficult for individuals practicing natural vegetable farming in Hakui, and beyond, to make a living solely from their farm.

Back in the rice paddies

One of my first activities after my 14-day quarantine was a visit to the rice paddies where I’d worked when I’d lived in Japan. The Shichihomai rice paddies, run by the Kahokugata Lake Institute offer the community an opportunity to grow rice the old-fashioned way—without the use of motorized tools, artificial fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. The transplanting of seedlings into the paddy—a major event in the rice growing season and the institute’s community programs—had been completed several weeks before, so this weekend’s activity was a low key weeding session.

I was one of a handful of volunteers who participated in this work day. With the assistance of hoes and rachiuchi tool (らちうち機), a hand pushed tiller like tool, we gently turned the soil to loosen the weeds that were growing between the rice seedlings. Later on in the season, when weeds are poking their tips out above the water, weeding requires stooping down and pulling out or burying the weeds, a much more arduous task.

While weeding, my mind reflected on the nature of the group that had come out to help with the day’s task. Including myself, there were eight volunteers: about half were middle aged and elder Japanese men with farming backgrounds, and half were young adults with international roots. In addition to myself, a mixed race Japanese American, there was another Japanese mixed race college student, an international student from Mongolia, and English teacher from the United States.

Where were the local Japanese young people? What made this menial task appealing to those coming from afar, or who were intimately aware of different cultures and different landscapes? While the answers to these questions no doubt vary from individual to individual, I think this workday in the paddies speaks to the challenges Japan has with continuing to sustain its agricultural heritage.

Daily rhythms on the 23rd floor of “specific facilities designated by the chief of the quarantine station (1)”

Every morning at 6:30, an announcement comes on, explaining that COVID testing kits are being distributed to those who will “undergo inspection,” and that breakfast may be delayed because of this process.

Three announcements later, usually significantly past the 7:30 scheduled breakfast time, we are instructed to open our doors and get our breakfasts, which are waiting for us on our doorknobs.

Each announcement is repeated three times: twice in Japanese and once in English. The English appears to be a translation, written and read by google translate or something of the like.

Every time I poke my head out of the door to gather a meal, I am greeted by a guard standing across the landing. He wears a facemask and faceshield and always seems to be looking my direction. Even when my door closed, an occasional cough gives his presence away.

At 8am, temperatures are taken and recorded online. If I forget, by 9:15, the “call center” staff call me through a phone which sits on my desk; this and the guard are the only forms of human interaction I have with the 31 floors of the “specific facilities.”

Between 11:03 and 11:08, an email from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare arrives, asking me again about my temperature and the appearance of any key symptoms. Apparently, the “specific facilities” and the ministry don’t share information.

Around 11:30, the intercom blares the lunch distribution announcement, telling us that lunch will be arriving, but that our doors are not to be opened until further instruction.

 All meals (except when my request for vegan lunches is honored), follow the same format:  a dessert and salad in a small white bottomed plastic tray, followed by larger black tray with 4 separate partitions, portioning out a carbohydrate (usually rice), a protein and a few sides. Dinner comes with bottled green tea and breakfast and lunch come with bottled water.

 Early on, I learn that alcohol, like smoking, is strictly prohibited. On day two, I order snacks from a supermarket. A few minutes before my purchases are brought to my door, the call center calls me; they’d rummaged through my purchase and returned my single can of beer.

 Around 5:15 an announcement pronounces that dinner distribution has begun. Early on during my stay, this triggers anticipation, but gradually this feeling dampens as I begin to lose my appetite from lack of movement.

 Around 6pm the last announcement of the day takes place; telling us to open our doors to get our dinner from our doorknobs. The phone, intercom and email go quiet for around 12 hours, until 6:30 the following morning when I learn that my breakfast may be delayed because COVID kits will be distributed to those “undergoing inspection.”

(1) Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. “Border Enforcement Measures to Prevent the Spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).” Accessed June 10, 2021. https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html.

Entering Japan during a pandemic

While I’ve flown to Japan every year for the past 5 years, this trip marked itself as unique before I had even left the US.  Fifteen minutes before takeoff, a handful of people, mostly youngish Japanese folks, trickled through boarding. Instead of peering through rows filled with passengers to find our seats, we navigated sea of empty seats to find our spot. There must have been as many crew members as there were passengers.

While the emptiness created an aura of safeness against COVID and made for comfortable flight, I kept thinking that that this trip shouldn’t be happening. Flying is one of the most carbon intensive activities a person can do; while this flight likely used less fuel due to the lighter than normal load, the fifteen or so of us passengers were responsible for taking this massive vehicle for 13-hour voyage across the world. This was likely the most carbon intensive trip I’ve ever taken.

While the flight was remarkable for its lack of people, entering Japan was notable for its numerous moments of close contact, albeit masked. Health check forms, pledges to avoid close contact, application downloads, and COVID tests all had to be closely overseen. We passed through one check point station after another, sliding an ever-changing pile of papers under a slit in a plastic sheet for inspection. To have access to health support and monitoring for our upcoming required 14-day-quarantine, we spend at least 10 minutes with a staff member standing over us and peering over our shoulders to guide us through the setup and use of three separate phone applications.

Those coming from designated COVID hotspots, received extra special (and close attention). To get to the government sponsored quarantine facility (a hotel) where we were to spend our first three days in the country, a group of around fifteen of us international travelers had four personal guides to direct us through baggage claim and immigration to the government sponsored shuttle service. Instead of announcements to the group at large, these guides came to check-in and direct us one-on-one, each time breeching social distance guidelines. While many flying were vaccinated and everyone had to have tested negative just a few hours before, it was nonetheless striking that these particularly “dangerous” passengers were receiving so much personal attention.  Those three hours of COVID procedures were probably the most speaking with strangers within six feet that I’d experienced since the pandemic began.

Are these protocols actually keeping Japan safe?

One the forms we were given as we passed through quarantine procedures. We had to wave this paper to guards as we walked from one part of the airport to another.