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.