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.