!!!I Am a Hyakusho: The Values and Ethics of

Alternative Agriculture in Japan !!:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ABE, Shantonu

141001 !!!March, 2014 !!

!1

!!I Am a Hyakusho: The Values and Ethics of

Alternative Agriculture in Japan !!:

!!! !! !!

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of The International Christian University

For the Baccalaureate Degree !! !! !

by ! !!ABE, Shantonu

141001 !!March, 2014 !!!!

Approved by __________________________ !MALARNEY, Shaun K.

Thesis Advisor

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!!!!Acknowledgements !

Reveal in Thine Farm the Glory of the Creator

-Ainou Gakuen Founding Principle ! !Crouched over a row of carrots in the humid heat of the Japanese summer, I was

weeding along with two others. The heat was almost unbearable, and the row seemed to stretch on. I stood up to provide relief to my limbs and my back. Suddenly, a fresh breeze sprung up from nowhere. It rustled past the trees and whispered across the stream; it brought relief from the intense heat. And in that moment, I recognized my, our, smallness in the face of nature. Here I was, struggling with some weeds in a small field. I felt humbled. Strangely enough, in that moment I felt at peace with the universe. Farming does that to you.

My first experiences with agriculture came through my parents, whose work meant that my sister and I would more often than not be spending our vacations in small agricultural communities in West Bengal of India. I believe that farming still provides me with a way of connecting back to my family, to those times and experiences. I would like to thank my parents and my sister for their love and support, and for encouraging me to pursue my dreams.

One of my hopes is that I can make the reader interested enough in the question of food sovereignty to do something about it. This thesis is incomplete; it is not possible to understand and convey the farmers in their entirety: their warmth, their dedication and passion, and their sincere wish to make the world a better place for all of us. I sincerely wish that the reader visit a farm nearby, or a farm mentioned in this thesis (I have used real names within this work) in order to find out for herself what I have been so lucky to experience.

For my research, I am indebted to the farmers in the Yasato region for allowing me a glimpse into their lives and for welcoming me into their community. Particular thanks must go to Shunsuke Iwasaki and Misako Iwasaki for kindly allowing me to stay with them and set up base. The various conversations that we had were enriched by their profound knowledge and enthusiasm. I would also like to thank Takao Furuno of Fukuoka, Koutaro Sakamoto of Hiroshima, and Yuuki Uehara of Ehime along with their families. This work would have been impossible without their valuable insights and interesting work. I am also a graduate of Ainou Gakuen Agricultural High School, which has allowed me to access information about organic agriculture as a way of life.

Much of the heavy lifting was done at International Christian University. I would like to thank Professor Malarney for his guidance and sound advice in writing this thesis. More than that, I would like to thank him for the sense of purpose that he has given to all academic pursuits. ICU truly is a place to foster responsible global citizens. I would like to offer my special thanks to the staff at ICU Religious Center, Naomi Kazama and Emiko

!3

Yamamoto, and Reverend Shoko Kitanaka, for their unfailing kindness and support, and for seeing me through one of the most challenging periods of my life.

My life at ICU has been made possible through the donation of many generous people, and to them I extend my sincerest thanks. I would also like to mention the generous scholarships of The Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Scholarship and the Ningenjuku Foundation. The Ningenjuku Foundation in particular has allowed to be where I am today.

And finally, to my friends and special people, who were patient and kind even as I grew testier as deadlines approached. Thank you for making my years at ICU a rich learning experience to treasure forever. !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS !

!Chapter 1: Introduction

Introducing The Study 1

The Literature Review ! 3 Field-work ! ! 8 Anthropology ! ! 10

Chapter 2: Resources

Precious Soil! ! 14 Soil as Dirt!! 16 Waste As a Resource! ! 17 The Machine.!! 20 Labor! ! 22

Chapter 3: Community

The Village and The City! ! 25 Local/Transnational! ! 27 Community and the Farmer! ! 29 The State and the Farmer! ! 31 Knowledge 33

Chapter 4: Visibility

Food and Images! 37 Food and Safety!! 40 Transparent Energy 43

!Chapter 5: Complexity

Simplified Agriculture 45

Antifragility!47 Multifunctionality! 49 The JAS Mark ! 51

Chapter 6: Why Farm?

!5

Motivation! 53 Children and Farming ! 56 Modernity! 60 Who is the Peasant? ! 61 Conclusions 63

Appendix 64

Bibliography! 68 Japanese Abstract !! 74 !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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!!Chapter 1: Introduction

!Introducing the Study

How should we be farming? This is a question that is increasingly gaining

relevance in todays world, as food and its production is being recognized as one of the key

areas where pressing questions about the environment, what we eat, what our societies

look like and most importantly, how we should live, are converging. Agriculture is

considered by many to be a vestigial profession; a relic of a past age when food had to be

produced by so many hands working the soil. In an increasingly urbanized world, this

image is only reinforced, with many seeing agriculture as necessary only in the sense that

it is an unavoidable step in the steady march towards industrialization. At the same time,

we cannot survive without it. Agriculture is the way in which we produce the food that we

eat. Outside the city, it determines, and has determined, the landscape of human

settlements. And having been the main form of livelihood up until a few generations ago, it

has provided the foundation of many of the cultural practices and identities we assume in

the present day.

This ethnographic study seeks to shed light on alternative farming in

contemporary Japan. The attempt to locate and identify the Japanese alternative farmer in

today's world is an interesting quest, one which blurs all preconceived boundaries and

finds new connections in unexpected places.

In the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata, Krishna the charioteer is asked for advice

by Arjuna, the archer, who is in his time of greatest doubt. The ensuing monologue

between charioteer and archer, God and mortal, is about duty and is known as the

Bhagavad Gita. While advising Arjuna, Krishna assumes vishvarupa, the universal form.

The whole universe is contained within this form, and this form is the universe. In a similar

manner, the implications of agriculture are far reaching and cannot be confined within one

body. There are many aspects worthy of our attention in this unpretentious vocation that is

agriculture. And as the Bhagavad Gita revolves around the idea of the duty, so too does the

discourse around agriculture.

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The first part of this thesis deals with the fundamental question of How should

we farm? Being a human activity that arguably lies at the core and basis of all human

activity, the implications and ramifications of the way we farm are felt across all spheres of

life. With various terms being appropriated and philosophies hijacked, the organic form of

agriculture has slowly merged with its industrial counterpart in the common imagination.

The ethnographic research recorded in this thesis seeks to clearly demarcate the lines

between the two approaches to agriculture (the agrarian and the industrial)by drawing on

the observations of organic farmers on themes like the use of resources, the visibility of

processes, their sources of knowledge, the complexities they deal with, and their

motivation for working. The second part of this thesis deals with a more urgent issue:

Why we need to farm. Farming in Japan, as well as the rural farming communities that

are supported by this occupation are on the wane, making this question more pertinent. In

drawing a clearer picture of the hyakusho, the Japanese smallholder farmer, and the ideal

society they envision, this thesis explores their notions and ideas such as non-exploitation,

sustainability and responsible stewardship. The anti-thesis of the modern consumer, they

also provide a powerful counter-narrative to the dominant market-based paradigm of our

times, embodying instead an exceedingly self-sufficient lifestyle that echoes Japanese

ideals of thrift and contentedness.

I also locate the organic farmers in Japan within a larger framework, drawing

relations to farmers in other nations and seeking commonalities between these groups. The

local provides a glimpse into the global, and global movements play out in the local

context.

!The Literature Review

!8

!

!The graph above locates the predominant forms of agriculture along axes of scale

and ethic. The third axis, between consumer and producer, shows the role of the people

within the different forms of agriculture. Based on the research of many of the books I

have consulted, the growth of the consumerist culture is synonymous with the shift of

agriculture into the third quadrant, which thus calls for a predominant consumer class,

whilst the first quadrant calls for more producers and involved 'citizens'. Through the

literature review, I will try to explore the various forms of agriculture presented in this

graph. My thesis is that it is not possible to reconcile the agrarian ethic with large-scale

operations, and that more producers are required in order to achieve food sovereignty.

The questions of how, and why, we should farm are pertinent in the case of Japan,

which is increasingly on the brink of an agricultural crisis. The numbers paint a grim

picture. As of 2010, 400,000 hectares of farmland were left fallow, accounting for nearly

10 percent of Japans 4.55 million hectares of farmland. Japan's agricultural sector has

been steadily declining for decades. Overall farm output in 2008 was about 30% lower

than the all-time high recorded in 1984, and the average age of a farmer is over 65. The

number of farmers and the total amount of arable land have been declining for half a

century(TPP or No, Aging Farm Sector Needs True Reform 2013). In order to combat this

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general trend, the government is trying to push for consolidation of farmland, announcing

many deregulatory measures and financial support for large-scale farms. Through its

growth strategy proposed as one of the arrows of Abenomics, the government seeks

to double the income of the farming regions within a span of ten years, and to increasethe

number of farming firms by about 300% to 50 thousand (Otake and Yoshida 2013).

A total of 1,071 companies have launched food businesses since the Agricultural

Land Law was revised in 2009(Nakata 2013), allowing corporations to rent farmland

across the country. Farming firms include Lawson, the countrys second-biggest

convenience store chain, now runs as many as 10 large farms across the country. Another

retail chain, the Aeon group also has plans to run 30 large-scale farms by fiscal 2015(Aeon

Plans 30 Big Farms by FY2015 2013). The Abe administration and ruling bloc are

planning to make such large-scale farms the only recipients of rice subsidies (Rice

Subsidies for Big Players Only? 2013) as a way to improve the efficiency of the

agricultural sector ahead of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement that is

being predicted to decimate Japanese agriculture as it is.

The introduction of corporations is also expected to bring more of the younger

generation into 'agriculture' and repopulate the rural areas of Japan. The use of more

information technology is also being hailed as a way of increasing efficiency while

reducing crop yields. GPS positioning, cloud-based manuals with relevant information

shared across farmers, the collection and analysis of large amount of data and a greater

ability to reach out to customers are being cited as some of the benefits(Info Tech May

Rescue Japans Farms 2013). From this information, it can be gathered that the government

is pushing for a move into the third quadrant, basing improved production on the principles

of food security. Previous studies by noted Japanese environmentalists Yukiko Kada and

Hiroyuki Torigoe place these kinds of developments under the modern technicism

paradigm, citing their reliance on greater concentration of power and a discontinuity with

past traditions (Kada 2006).

The large-scale and industrial third quadrant has been under the scrutiny of many

writers in the past few years. Michael Pollan and Raj Patel both describe how the industrial

setup of modern agriculture has increased the distance between the producer and the

consumer, obscuring the true costs of cheap food. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan

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examines and compares mainly two food chains: the industrial food chain run according to

'the logic of human industry' and a shorter, more transparent food chain where Pollan either

grew, hunted or gathered all the ingredients by himself. Understanding just how much

effort and time went into the preparation of one meal through the latter food chain leads

Pollan to question just what is being sacrificed in order to provide the convenience that the

former chain offers (Pollan 2007). Paul Roberts in 'The End of Food' (Roberts 2009) argues

that the sacrifices are more than just a poor meal: he likens the growing ignorance of the

consumer regarding food to the handing over of the control of one's life. He also points

out that the right way to produce food has turned into an extraordinarily complex problem

because it lies at the intersection of so many variables, human decisions arguably

misguided by market ideologies.

Social justice is also being sacrificed. Trade in agricultural goods is rarely fair, as

Roberts points out (Roberts 2009:169) and transacted within a skewed global trade

structure, it is often the First World countries that exploit the Third World and developing

countries. Raj Patel employs the imagery of the hourglass (Patel 2008) when describing the

flow of food from many producers, through a handful of multinational corporations, on to

numerous consumers. The small number of corporations in the middle leads to a

concentration of wealth that deprives both the producer and the consumer of the full value

of their food (Patel 2008:1214). Those who stand to gain the most are also the ones who

have amassed the most power, he argues, pointing out that trade agreements like the TPP

are usually bartered with the heavy involvement of such organizations. Such neoliberal

policies are justified using the rhetoric of 'food security', which purports to aim to feed the

world through the spread of market principles. William Schanbacher, in his book 'The

Politics of Food', (Schanbacher 2010) contrasts this notion of food security with food

sovereignty, a debate that I have mapped out on the graph and which will be explored in

further detail later.

Food sovereignty, a concept that I have placed in the first quadrant, is one of the

ways in which many contemporary commentators in agriculture are pinning their hopes on

for a more just and healthy food system. The examples of Cuba, forced to adopt a nation-

wide movement of organic agriculture in the face of declining Soviet power leading to a

drying up of agriculture-related imports, and La Via Campesina, a movement to empower

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peasants around the world, have been raised as models that need to be emulated (Wiebe,

Desmarais, and Wittman 2010). Philip Ackerman-Leist, an expert on sustainable food

systems, also suggests Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a viable alternative.

(I)deas about food sovereignty force us to rethink our relationships with food, agriculture

and environment. But perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of food sovereignty is that it

forces us to rethink our relationships with one another (Wiebe et al. 2010:4). The concepts

which are placed within the first quadrant fit in with the concept of life environmentalism

as proposed by Torigoe and Kada: the idea that there exists neither discontinuity nor

separation between nature and living (Kada 2006). At the same time, it is acknowledged

that this task will be increasingly impossible in the context of the consumerist culture that

is increasingly spreading its effects to all corners of the globe. However, many hyakusho

are accomplishing just this, and my research hopes to focus on these people: the people

who persist with small-scale agriculture along principles of an agrarian ethic.

The second quadrant is more problematic. Purporting to be run on the principles

of organic farming, these farms appropriate the value that is attached to the notions that

organic embodies and use it to raise a profit. Vandana Shiva, seen by many as the

spokesperson for an alternative food system, calls the farms which lie within the second

quadrant pseudo-organics(Shiva 2008:125). Pollan also questions the viability of these

big organics(Pollan 2007:158184).At the same time, Paul Roberts believes that any

viable long-term solution will lie somewhere in this second quadrant, with mid-sized farms

producing the bulk of food in an acceptable manner (Roberts 2009:275284). However, I

disagree, and as I hope my research shows, ideas of agrarianism are irrevocably linked to

the small-scale. The dangers of organic being appropriated are very real. The book

'Agrarian Dreams' by Julie Guthman highlights the poor working conditions for laborers

on so-called organic farms in California, discussing the many human rights abuse that are

occurring on the very farms that promote their products by exploiting the myths that have

come to be associated with the word 'organic' (Guthman 2004). 'Labor and the

Locavore' (Gray 2014) also calls for a comprehensive food ethic that encompasses not only

the final product (the food) but also the people involved in its production. Labor rights

become a key point of discontent with the labor-intensive organic sector. In a similar

manner, the JAS standards adopted in Japan do not specify that products need be produced

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within Japan. It allows for certification of products grown abroad, something that many

organic farmers believe is against the spirit of organic agriculture.

Most of this thesis moves back and forth between the first and the third quadrants,

and tries to argue for a society that aims to shift from the latter to the former. This thesis

aims to fill the gap created by the dearth of literature written from the viewpoint of

alternative farmers in Japan. Many of the recent debates on agriculture have focused on

food and how the consumer relates to it, while books by Japanese farmers often fail to

locate their experiences within larger movements like food sovereignty. This leads to a

situation where movements for food sovereignty and calls for its spread seem to be

concentrated around the Global South. It is important for hyakusho to participate in the

global movement for food sovereignty and bring their values into the global debate

occurring at the nexus of energy, food and society and thus involve First World actors in

the struggle for regaining control over our food chain. Finally, our understanding of human

psychology has also changed drastically in the last decade. Perhaps the most telling change

has been the exposure of the myth of the economically rational Homo oeconomicus.

Understanding the hyakusho requires a more nuanced understanding of what motivates us

humans, and this understanding may perhaps hold the key to the quest to creating a more

sustainable society.

!Field-work

Yasato is a town in Ibaraki prefecture of Japan. Located about 100 kilometers

north-east of Tokyo, it is suitably located: not too far but not too close to the largest city in

Japan. The area is surrounded on three sides by low mountain ranges, part of the Yamizo

Mountains. These are the first mountains that one encounters as one heads north-east from

the Kanto plain, and the landscape is representative of the quintessential Japanese rural

landscape (satoyama). The low hills surround the Yasato settlement to form a basin

(bonchi) which creates the updrafts that make Yasato a mecca for para-gliders. Many of the

farmers noted that the scenery in this region reminded them of their childhoods spent in the

rural areas (inaka) influencing their decision to settle here. Yasato was merged with the

closest city, Ishioka, in 2005 as part of an ongoing trend of enlargement of administration

areas in order to reduce the strain on local government bodies. Local farmland is

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concentrated in the lower plains, but is available in smaller plots on the slopes of the hills.

Owing to the landscape of Yasato, agriculture could only be small-scale, with plots of land

including the terraced fields so evocative of Japan. This constraint meant that the large-

scale agriculture that came to occupy most of the open plains around Yasato could not

make its entry into this area.

The data kept by the Ishioka municipal government suggests that around 27% of

the farmers in the area are practicing subsistence farming (jikyujisoku teki nougyou), with

the average area of the farms being 18.4a. During one interview, one farmer reckoned that

there were around 70 organic farmers in Yasato; of these, there only 10 farmers who were

originally in Yasato and decided to switch over; the rest of the farmers were first

generation farmers (Ujita). I interviewed 8 farming families in this region, many of whom

were first generation farmers. These include the Iida () family (2 children), the

Sugiyama() family (2 children), the Shibata() family (3 children), the Kimatas(

) (married), Kimura() and Kurata(). The Ujitas() (2 children) were one

of the first settlers, starting farming around the year 1985. They were followed by the

Sugiyama family who settled in Yasato in 1997.

Jiro Kakei (), one of my main informants, also farms in this area. Kakei

used to be a professor of philosophy at Kyoto University, but decided to start farming in

order to put theory into practice. He has been farming for over three decades in this region

along with his partner. On his Rokuon Farm (Rokuon being the place where the Buddha

gave his first sermon after enlightenment to an audience of deer), Kakei uses minimal

machinery as he tries to live according to the principles of Mahatma Gandhi.

Takao Furuno is one of the most renowned organic farmers in Japan. He is

credited with the spread of duck-integrated farming (aigamo nouhou) across the world, and

particularly to Korea. He is based in Keisen town of Fukuoka prefecture, in the southern

island of Kyushu and runs a farm with his wife and two of his sons known as the Aigamo

Kazoku Noujou (The Aigamo Family Farm). He has achieved world-wide acclaim for the

possibilities that his agricultural method promises. The subject of various documentaries

produced both internationally and domestically, he has also been raised as an example of

small-scale agriculture in the book, The End of Food He has also started a group to share

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experiences of farming with ducks (Zenkoku Aigamo Inasaku Kai) with hopes of creating a

common platform where farmers from across the world are able to share information about

better farming practices (Furuno and Sato 2012:13).

Yuuki Uehara is a fruit cultivator in Ehime Prefecture in Shikoku. Yuuki, his wife

Wakana and three children live together in a 130 year-old house that they reformed with

the help of a friend. After having lived in India (West Bengal) for several years, they came

back to Japan to take part in community building. Uehara grows citrus fruits and is also

experimenting with other different fruits on his farm Nanchiya which he has started in

2011 after an apprenticeship with a local cultivator.

Koutaro Sakamoto is a pig farmer living in Mihara City of Hiroshima with his

wife and three children on their farm called Sakuranoyama Noujou (Cherry Blossom

Farm) He collects feed from the wastes of the local community, turning what would be

trash into a useful resource. He is also highly interested in achieving energy self-

sufficiency, and his widely read blog chronicles his various undertakings regarding

appropriate technology.

Through my various conversations with these farmers, I tried to understand what

motivates them to farm in the manner they do and the things that they value. Through this

exercise, I hope to have been able to look at society from their viewpoint and highlight the

problems that they feel are expressed at present within our society and the solutions that

they propose.

!!

Anthropology

Any work in anthropology is accompanied by a reflection of what anthropology is

or should be. As a student of this discipline, it is often the case that one has no definitive

answer to just what it is that one does, or what the discipline of anthropology is about. This

endless soul-searching (by the discipline itself) while being a source of frustration at times,

gives some degree of freedom to the scholar eager to research something which captures

his interest. Through empirical observations, it strives to accurately reflect the increasingly

complex world which we inhabit, where knowledges are ever-shifting and the world of

yesterday is unrecognizable to the world of tomorrow. Anthropologist Ted Lewellen notes

!15

that the easy categories of the past seem oddly out of place in a world that is fragmented

and in which space and time have imploded(Lewellen 2002:3). Indeed, no longer are the

boundaries geographical, or even chronological. Boundaries are ever-shifting and driven

out of traditional contexts by the winds of change. Anthropology however, provides the

tools necessary to acknowledge the changing structure of these categories and make sense

of them across cultures for the reshaping of categories (ours and other peoplesthink of

taboo) so that they can reach beyond contexts in which they originally arose and took their

meaning so as to locate affinities and mark differences is a great part of what translation

comes to in anthropology(Geertz 1983:12).

Clifford Geertz, in his interesting analysis of the discipline, accurately points out

what the role of anthropology might be, and what it has to contribute to the world. It

seems likely that whatever use ethnographic texts will have in the future, if in fact they

actually have any, it will involve enabling conversation across societal linesof ethnicity,

religion , class, gender, language, racethat have grown progressively more nuanced,

more immediate, and more irregular. The next necessary thingis to enlarge the

possibility of intelligible discourse between people quite different from one another in

interest, outlook, wealth, and power, and yet contained in a world where, tumbled as they

are into endless connection, it is increasingly difficult to get out of each others

way (Geertz 1988:147). More specifically, it will allow for a way to initiate a dialogue

between the predominant consumerist society and the hyakusho.

More importantly, anthropology teaches us humility, the ability to entertain the

thought that we might be wrong. 'To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To

see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far

more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the

forms human life has locally taken, a case amongst cases, a world among worlds that the

true value of anthropology is realized (Geertz 1988:16). Take, for instance, Marshall

Sahlin's 'Stone Age Economics' (1972). This book seeks to explain the concept of affluence

that is very different from the meaning that it was being used in modern society, making it

relevant to this thesis which seeks to understand what motivates the hyakusho:

For there are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be

easily satisfied by producing much or desiring little. The familiar

!16

conception, the Galbraithean way, makes assumptions peculiarly

appropriate to market economies: that mans wants are great, not to

say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improvable:

thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial

productivity, at least to the point that urgent goods become

plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, departing from

premises somewhat different from our own: that human material

wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the

whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy

unparalleled material plentywith a low standard of living

(Sahlins 1972:2)

Finally, it must be noted that many anthropologists feel that this discipline should

be activist in nature. No more can anthropology afford to be a mere observer, a bystander.

Instead, it must observe what problems a society might have and then seek solutions for it.

'Anthropology must be ready to contest unjust systems of domination, along the way

seeking to decide what injustice actually is, and be prepared to bring potentially

controversial issues to light. Only then will anthropology 'contribute to the collective effort

that the social sciences as a whole need to make to confront a social world which has

changed almost out of recognition in a few short years' (Pottier 1999:4). There is a

similarity here with the opposition to exploitative practices that the organic farmers I

interviewed had. Anthropology allows the researcher to go out in the field and ask

questions, enabling an alternative face of society to emerge. Particularly in the case of

literature about farming, James Scott observes that 'historians and journalists, for the most

part, write history from the large urban centers and from the perspective of literal elites.

The rural population is generally treated as the more-or-less passive recipient of projects

hatched and implemented from above'(Scott 2012:4). This work, and indeed work by many

anthropologists working with agricultural communities can help to restore a voice to those

who dwell far from the center and form an understanding of minorities on their terms.

Through my year of researching for this thesis, anthropology gave me a reason to

focus my attention on the fascinating world that is organic agriculture. It provided me with

an opportunity to listen to and learn from people who have their 'skin in the game',

!17

meaning that their livelihoods depend on the way they perceive their world and act (Taleb

2013:l. 6620). And finally, to do what anthropology does best: to connect the dots, to make

sense of seemingly unrelated ideas by figuratively bringing different people together at the

same table and getting them to talk to each other.

!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!18

!Chapter 2: Resources

!Precious Soil

A farmer has to make several decisions to manage her resources that allow her to

achieve goals of agricultural production. One of the key resources in farming is the soil.

Indeed, 'organic philosophy began as a philosophy of the soil(Guthman 2004:l.3167), and

it is not hard to understand why, once one begins to understand the centrality of soil in

agriculture. One of the most interesting terms that deal with soil in Japan is the idea of

shindofuji, with four chinese characters denoting that soil and the body are inseparable.

Soil making, or tsuchi-dsukuri in Japanese, refers to the ways in which farmers

nourish and maintain their soil. The centrality of this practice is readily apparent when one

hears of the various 'factions' (ha) in agriculture that arise as a result of differences in the

way one treats the soil. Hidemasa Koizumi is well known within organic farming circles

for his method of collecting fallen leaves from the nearby satoyama and composting it

before putting it in his soil (Koizumi 2004); Furuno relies on his aigamo ducks to replenish

soil fertility; and most farmers add some version of compost, taihi, the contents of which

are as varied as the number of farmers who make it (Hashimoto 2011). Some farmers take

precise measurements of the nutrients in the soil and replenish any depleted mineral

(Solomon and Reinheimer 2013); others make it a point to add various bacteria cultures to

the soil in order to improve the bacterial composition of the soil. A whole other group

advocates the no-till practices of Masanobu Fukuoka (of 'One-Straw Revolution fame),

preferring to trust the power of nature (shizen no chikara ni makaseru).

Understanding the soil, therefore, is key to understanding those who profess to be

its stewards. But soil is significant for people in general: Soil is our most under-

appreciated, least valued and yet essential natural resource' (Montgomery 2012:3). In his

masterful inquiry into the importance of soil, David Montgomery notes, 'soil is an

intergenerational resource, natural capital that can be used conservatively or

squandered'(Montgomery 2012:5). He highlights the problems of erosion, reporting that an

estimated twenty-four billion tons of soil are lost annually around the worldseveral tons

for each person on the planet (2012:4). This is something that we should be worried about

!19

when we look back on collapsed civilizations. Soil, of all things, brought down ancient

societies that abused their land and paid the ultimate price, leaving a legacy of degraded,

worn-out fields that impoverished descendants (2012:l.61). The deserts of Egypt, the

desolation of Rapa Nui and the fall of the Roman empire have all been linked to the ill-

effects of soil abuse.

The hyakusho I interviewed, however, understood the value of this precious

resource. Soil in Japan, Furuno says, acts as a record of the efforts of previous generations

of farmers to make the lean soil more fertile. By growing legume cover crops and adding

night soil, they managed to build up a layer of topsoil rich in humus, a layer that is almost

ten centimeters deep in places. It represents the gradual accumulation of labor and organic

material, a treasure within which lies the seeds of sustainability (Furuno and Sato

2012:57).

The way we treat our soil also speaks to us about ourselves, revealing to us an

important aspect of human psychology. Looking back on history from the perspective of

soil reveals an uncomfortable truth about our ability to grasp change over time: our

memory and attention spans are short. Efforts to reverse the course of soil erosion tend to

get hijacked by other priorities (Montgomery 2012:l.76). Soil is a valuable resource

because it takes so long to form, and yet the time-spans involved do not allow it to capture

the collective imagination. It is not urgent enough to warrant our immediate attention and

decisive action. Instead, and as in all other environmental issues like climate change and

the extinction of species, it seems that the slower the emergency, the less motivated we are

to do anything about itDegradation has occurred over extended time spans that mask the

severity of the extended problem and prevent it from becoming a priority that compels

effective action' (2012:l.127). Jeffrey Sachs, the prominent economist, also laments the

drastic shrinking of the time horizon for public debate and its adverse effects on the way in

which we approach environmental issues, asserting that we cant address any of these

problems if we cant think systematically about the future (Sachs 2011:176).

!Soil as Dirt

Under an industrial ethic, soil is reduced to being just another resource,

something to be exploited by extracting the largest possible amount of nutrients as

!20

efficiently as possible. Applying the principles of increasing production in an industrial

setting has led to a change in the way agriculture is practiced, observes Kakei. In a

capitalist industry set-up, one of the most fundamental ways of increasing ones profits is

the reduction of production costs while maintaining the cost outputs. To maintain the same

level of output with lesser capital is something that is a relatively straightforward idea in

the service sector, but when this principle is applied in agriculture, it leads to a loss of

respect for the soil. Simply treated as another tool in production, its significance is

diminished and it is exploited in order to extract as much from it as possible. The

introduction of chemicals to the soil led to a fall in the quality of soil over the years in

exchange for marginal production gains in the short-term (Kakei and Shirato 2009:14).

Montgomery notes that conventional agriculture in the U.S in particular and in other

countries in general tends to view soil as a commodity, something to be used up and

thrown away. This is something that will not benefit later generations. Although it takes

around 200 years for a centimeter of topsoil to form, conventional agriculture typically

increases soil erosion to well above natural rates, resulting in a fundamental problem

where soil is depleted at a much faster rate than it accumulates, sometimes taking less than

a decade to lose centuries' worth of accumulated soil(Montgomery 2012:24). The logic of

expendable resources has also led to the operation Concentrated Animal Feeding

Operations (CAFOs) where animals are crowded into small spaces for the sake of

productivity, with no regard to the rights that the animals possess; again, they are just

tools (Kakei and Shirato 2009 :19).

!Waste as a Resource

One of the problems with the globalized industrial food chain is the tremendous

amount of food that is wasted. Ackerman-Leist estimates that around 1.3 billion tons of

food is wasted annually, a figure that translates into the wastage of more than one-third of

edible products(Ackerman-Leist and Madison 2013:l. 1413). Japan is guilty as well, with

sources suggesting that the amount of food wasted is in the range of 17 to 23 million tons,

again equal to roughly one-third of the food in circulation (An Appalling Waste of Food

2013). Sakamoto uses a novel approach to this problem of food wastes: he uses it to feed

his pigs. It is an innovative solution that addresses two problems, that of the rising prices

!21

of imported feed and the strain that is put on waste disposal facilities because of the large

amount of raw waste. I had the chance to help Sakamoto with the process of procuring and

preparing the feed for the pigs. We first visited the local garbage collection center.

Sakamoto has had experience working part-time for garbage collection companies before

he settled on his farm, and this experience stands him in good stead. He is on good terms

with the local garbage collection company, and he asks them to spare anything edible for

his pigs. The intrigued workers help out somewhat overzealously, and save anything that

looks remotely edible. When I am told that we will be rummaging through the waste, I

steel myself for nauseating odors and maggots, but am pleasantly surprised: decomposition

has not yet set in. Who says beggars cant be choosers? laughs Sakamoto as we pick our

way through the containers full of discarded vegetables that still look edible, lined up

behind the garbage trucks. Wherever we find signs of damage or rot, we throw it into the

back of the dump-trucks which will later head to the incinerators where everything will be

burnt. We keep the best for the pigs and throw away the rest since we have more food than

we will need. Our next stop is a local factory specializing in processing wheat. Behind the

low buildings housing the work area, there is a small refrigerated shed where all the waste

is kept. I come here twice a week, Sakamoto explains, as he opens up the shed and starts

handing me black trash-bags. They use these black bags to hide all the waste from the

eyes of the manager. At least they feel some shame! The bags are heavy; I peer inside and

see many packets of gyoza dumpling skins. These are the result of overproduction, the

predicted demand falling short of supply. These too! he says, grabbing some blue plastic

bags. In order to make the process of making the circular discs of dumpling skins more

efficient and speedy, the round pieces are cut out of rectangular sheets of kneaded wheat.

The leftover parts are thrown into the blue bags. Then there are some curiously squishy

bags. Fillings he explains. The seasoned meat that forms the filling of the dumpling is

also there, discarded. There was also one unopened sack of wheat, and half a sack of

cornstarch. Later, back on the farm, he shakes his head as he opens the sack of wheat.

What farmer would imagine the wheat that he put so much effort into would end up going

straight to the dump? It really is shameful. They really cannot understand nor imagine the

thought that goes into the production of this sack of wheat. Sakamoto does not buy animal

feed. The irony is not lost on him. Of the food that is gathered from around the world,

!22

processed, packaged and displayed on shelves, more than half finds its way to the landfill

in Japan. Food that is wrested from producers in impoverished parts of the world is used to

provide the Japanese consumer with enough choices. If not bought it goes into the dump

and becomes waste, or in this case, feed for pigs. Perhaps this is the symbol of power

within the exploitation economy: feeding surplus food taken from other nations and

feeding it to swine (Sakamoto 2013).

The third place on the route is the local tofu store. We receive two crates full of

okara, the pulp that is left over after the process of making tofu. We also receive two

buckets full of left-over tofu. Being a specialty shop (kodawari no aru mise)concerned

with selling only fresh tofu, any tofu left unsold would be thrown out. As Sakamoto thanks

the owner who has come out to greet us, Sakamotos eldest son (around 5 years old)

nonchalantly scoops up a slice of tofu out of the container and starts eating. Wanna try

some? he offers me the bucket. I take some of the tofu and eat cautiously. After all, this

was being thrown out. It tasted good with a very delicate texture. I ate some more. Our

round for the day was over. Other days take him to different shops, and between these

shops, he manages to procure more than enough food for his pigs.

Work begins after returning back to the farm. I start opening the packets of

dumpling skins. After a few minutes, the process becomes repetitive. I shift to opening

packets full of ramen noodles once every ten minutes or so in order to break the monotony.

I spend an hour and a half, removing all the plastic wrapping on the food. Over the next

few days, he will use a machine to chop up the chunks of wheat into smaller particles and

then leave them to ferment, increasing their nutritional value and also getting rid of

unnecessary chemicals. I cant feed them food that is supposed to be safe for humans to

eat because they wont touch it, referring to some food that is full of anti-oxidants and

other preservatives.

Furunos fields are also fertilized with a different form of waste: the manure from

the ducks as they swim in the paddy fields is integrated back into the soil. The manure

from Sakamotos pig farms also go back into the paddy fields. Organic systems are

essentially cyclic and have space for, even welcoming waste. On the other hand,

industrial notions of efficiency and speed mean that waste is problematic and has to be

!23

disposed of, be removed from the system as quickly as possible. Thus, the way in which

waste is viewed is another key aspect to demarcating organic and industrial agriculture.

On my last day in Hiroshima, Sakamoto proudly showed me a makeshift cage

made of wood panels he had scavenged. Inside were two chickens and a pig. In here goes

all our food scraps and left-overs. The pig eats some, the birds eat the rest, and what is not

eaten attracts insects which are delicious tidbits for the chickens. He goes on to explain

that this is how animal husbandry should be: the conversion of what is not edible to man

into something that is nutritious. This is a miniature ecosystem, and it encapsulates what I

am trying to achieve here.

!The Machine

The machine embodies a technology which is part of modern

science. Speed, scale, noise, glitter are its characteristics one

observes at first glance. The machine organizes men, materials,

energy, and information on a scale unknown before and at an ever-

increasing speed. So does it disorganize societies and destroy their

knowledge bases elsewhere on a colossal scale with equal speed. It

has produced wealth and glitter for a few, and poverty, darkness, and

noise for the rest. Underlying both creation and destruction,

organization and disorganization, lies a common characteristic of

modern technology: violence. Modern technology is violent for all

(Raghuramaraju 2006:178179).

!Modern society fosters the notion that technology will provide solutions to just

about any problem. Indeed, the industrial ethic is based upon this assumption. But no

matter how fervently we believe in its power to improve our lives, technology simply

cannot solve the problem of consuming a resource like soil faster than we can generate it

(Montgomery 2012:6). Another resource that is limited, and yet is being consumed faster

than we can replace, if we can replace it, is oil. Fossil fuels form the backbone of

agriculture in the third quadrant as the following graph shows.

!24

! Fig 2. A comparison of energy flows in food (Ackerman-Leist and Madison 2013:l. 1072)

Oil is present in different forms. It fuels the machinery in fields and in the

transportation, it provides the raw material for the packaging, and more often than not, it is

used to produce our electricity with which we run the refrigerator and the microwave oven.

This predominance of fossil fuels has been enabled by the mechanization of agriculture.

Indeed, technology has helped to reduce the strain of farm work, and has allowed a small

farming population to feed the masses. However, machines have also led to many changes

for the worse.

Paul Roberts has identified the technology treadmill as one key problem

encountered by farmers around the world (2009:l.152). Garkovich (1995) also deals with

the treadmill phenomenon in her research of fourth quadrant farmers. New technology is

often expensive, and must be purchased through various loans and subsidies offered by the

government. The specialized nature of the technology and machines involved makes them

a sunken asset, something that can be paid off only through an increase in production,

although an increase in production does not necessarily lead to an increase in income. Rice

transplanters and Combine harvesters are two of the machines that are heavily used in

Japanese agriculture but at the same time are sunken assets. They can be used only for the

expressed purpose of planting and harvesting rice, respectively, and because every farmer

needs it at around the same time, it is near impossible to share. Maintenance of the

!25

machines, as well as upgrades are similarly expensive. The machinery allows the farmer to

increase her productivity, and more often than not, leads to an expansion of the area under

cultivation. However, the resulting increase in production may not translate into an

increase in income; prices may fall because of a supply surplus.

This vicious circle of ever-increasing amount of produce flooding the market is

behind many of the incongruities of the modern-day food supply, notes Roberts, pointing

to the multiple uses of corn that rose to utilize surplus corn. Furuno highlights the plight of

the farmer within this mechanization, observing that simply encouraging mechanization

without rethinking the fundamental principles of agriculture, while looking good on the

surface, is a sure recipe for a steady slide into poverty. I cannot help but conclude that this

is exactly the predicament that many farmers are in (Furuno 2011:178). Indeed, this is the

plight of many in the fourth quadrant, as the farmer tries to improve yields through

mechanization. Farming is a business where debt is a part of operational reality

(Garkovich, Bokemeier, and Foote 1995:132136). Montgomery also describes reliance on

technology as 'addictivetechnology and chemical based farming are mainly composed of

practices promoted by multinational corporations to increase the reliance on its

products' (Montgomery 2012:242).

!Labor

All the farmers in the Yasato region I interviewed possessed minimal machinery

by the standards of a conventional farm. Machines are considered more of a nuisance than

a necessity. They are too expensive to use on the hyakushos income. Machines are not a

must in a self-sufficient lifestyle, Kakei explains to me (Kakei 2013). He cites Gandhis

doctrine of bread-labor, the moral imperative that one must earn ones bread by the sweat

of ones browBodily labour is a duty imposed by nature on mankind. And one who eats

but does not do any manual work in effect steals food (Dasgupta 1996:36). The labor is

something he welcomes more than new machines, the machines which he feels exposes the

farmer to dangers never experienced before and reduces farming into small, easily

understandable steps, making it a dull and numbing repetitive business (Kakei and Shirato

2009:14) .

!26

Furuno is different from other farmers I interviewed in the sense that he is an

advocate of appropriate machinery in organic agriculture. Perhaps this is a position born of

necessity; unlike the other farmers I interviewed, his family has been involved in

agriculture for many generations. Thus, he has access to prime land, land that is flat and

easily accessible, and located close by. Even then, the total area of the land he farms is

around 3 hectares, not much when compared to the average large-scale farm in America.

He tells me that some work can only be done by a machine. He shows me the largest

machine he uses: a tractor to pull along a sub-soiler, an attachment that is basically two

long prongs mounted on a frame behind the tractor. This machine is key to growing the

second round of crops after the rice has been harvested. The sub-soiler manages to break

through the thick layer of soil that allows the paddy field to retain the water during the

rice-growing season. It also opens up deep furrows in the soil, allowing the water to

evaporate more quickly than it would have otherwise, so much so that just three days later,

the field was lined with long ridges (une), beds onto which the winter harvest of Chinese

cabbage were to be transplanted. It is the only way in which he can grow two crops on the

same piece of land, and yet it does not cost much. Machines can also allow a small farmer

to do so much more. The key, he says, is to create a technology that manages to reduce the

labor of the farmer at affordable prices (Furuno 2013). Most of the machines he uses have

small engines and are pushed along in the fields by hand, and Furuno is working with a

local company to design better small machinery.

Sakamoto is also a supporter of appropriate technology. He improvises a lot,

trying to make the best out of the trash that he occasionally finds, resulting in a very cost-

effective mechanization on his farm. Improvising has another benefit. Being a form of

problem-solving, it allows him to exercise his innovativeness. Benri sugiru, ima no nihon

shakai wa! (modern Japanese society is too convenient!) exclaims Sakamoto (Sakamoto

2013). Another key to success is not to rush things and to instead try things that are

realistic and achievable. Identifying the problem or need is one of the keys to success.

Instead of relying on market-made answers, its much better if you can rely on common

sense and careful observation. Although the resulting mix of energy sources and machines

may seem complicated when one considers how convenient market solutions are, but the

!27

payoffs include more redundancy, more control over energy decisions, and more fun and

education as the children start helping out.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!28

Chapter 3: Community !

The Village and The City

Souichi Yamashita is one of the most prolific farmer-writers of Japan. To date, he has

authored around 45 books, mostly dealing with agriculture (Bird 2013b). Yamashita details

how the rural areas are acting as a receptacle for those who have been used and then

discarded by the high-growth high-competition society that has characterized much of

Japans post-war growth. He uses figures from a 1994 census to illustrate his point

(Yamashita 1999). Of the nearly 36 thousand people who returned to agriculture, 32

thousand were aged 40 years and over. The village, forgotten for the 33 years of Japans

phenomenal growth, had been robbed of its vitality but was now acting to provide a place

for those deemed useless by the society they had worked so hard to create. He notes with

a sense of irony that when the economy falls apart, people will come back to the land. Our

job is to preserve these places. People need something to return to(Bird 2013b).

Yamashita provides us with a record of the rapid shift that Japan underwent post-war,

when the rising prospects of life in the city lured many of the young away from the rural

communities. Yamashita notes that the song Tokyo e ikou yo (Lets go to Tokyo;

interestingly, this song, released in 1955, was banned because it enticed the young

generation to go to Tokyo) by Fujio Maki marks the start of the mass exodus towards the

city centers. Five years later, the exodus would be exacerbated by the sending off of whole

groups of promising young children fresh out of junior high school, known in the local

parlance as golden eggs (kin no tamago), to earn money in Tokyo. The extent of the

outflow can be seen in the fact that many special trains were arranged for the expressed

purpose of ferrying these young hopefuls to the three mega-metropolitan areas of Tokyo,

Nagoya and Osaka. In the decade spanning from 1957 to 1966, close to 4 million people

moved out of the rural areas and into these urban areas, shifting the balance in such a way

that the three cities together were home to more than 45% of the Japanese population

(Yamashita 1999:1823). However, in the years to come, the myths that had made Japan

Inc. distinctive and envied started crumbling. The waves of globalization would hit hard,

making ideas like the convoy system , the common destiny company and the promise of

!29

lifetime employment impossible to implement (Yamashita 1999:32). This resulted in the

situation that Yamashita observed as noted earlier.

Recognition of the fact that agriculture is deeply connected to agriculture has provided

the impetus for some well-known community movements. Two prime examples are The

Ainou Movement Ainou Undou (based in Mie Prefecture) and the Reverence for Life

Movement (RLM) Inochi wo Mamoru Undou(based in Kumamoto Prefecture). The

Ainou Movement began in the aftermath of World War II as a way of disseminating

agricultural knowledge to help raise productivity, but gradually changed into a movement

calling for the creation of a more sustainable and harmonious society built around agrarian

villages. Started by a charismatic leader called Junichiro Kotani, the Ainou movement is

still in existence more than 50 years after its inception (Kotani 2004). The RLM was a movement that lasted from 1962 to 1980, and was started by a group of concerned doctors that called for a conceptual framework for health that encompassed healthcare, safe food and good eating practice, and agriculture (Takekuma-Katsumata 2011:xiv). It involved farmers in a movement that called for rural health. It calls for recognition that food is what our bodies are made of and through the recognition of this simple fact, to support organic methods of production. One of the leaders in this movement, Yoshitaka Takekuma notes that farmers are just as important as doctors; yet do not receive the same amount of recognition. Citing the notion of ishokudougen (a saying that implies that food and medicine have the same origins), he notes that eating good food is the best way we can ensure our health. He makes use of the concept of Food as Life (shoku wa inochi nari) to put this idea in more simpler terms (Takekuma 1983:174). Both of these movements place emphasis on the role that farming plays within the community, and worked to spread this fundamental recognition. And as we shall see in the next section, community is inseparable from the notion of food.

!Local/Transnational: Debates on Food Security and Food Sovereignty

Food security is a growing concern, both for the various bodies and entities

dealing with the problem of hunger in third-world countries and countries like Japan which

are dependent on imports for food. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of

the United Nations, food security at the individual, household, national, regional and

global level will be achieved when all people at all times have physical and economic

access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food

preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle (Schanbacher 2010:13). An important point

to be noted here is that the concept of food security does not include the need for self-

!30

sufficiency of a community. Instead, it concentrates on the acquirement of the greatest

amount of food at the least cost. To this end, policies which encourage trade relations in the

food sector are put in place. Japan is no stranger to this globalized market: it is the largest

importer of agricultural goods, with an import market estimated to be worth around 6

trillion in 2008 (MAFF 2009). On a calorie-based calculation, this means that 61% of the

food consumed in Japan produced elsewhere. Food here is divorced from the cultural

contexts in which it has traditionally existed, and is instead used as a tool for imposing

neoliberal policies. Lewellen notes that a great deal of anthropological data suggests that

such 'unimpeded neoliberal capitalism increases inequality, destroys indigenous cultures,

promotes rampant consumerism, commodifies everything, transfers wealth from the poor

to the rich, eviscerates the environment, and disempowers the weak while further

empowering the strong' (2002:192). Indeed, Schanbacher points out that the dominant food

security model guided by neoliberal economic theory leads to the global concentration of

agricultural sectors," leading to the destruction of peoples sovereignty over the

production, distribution, and consumption of the foods they desire and the livelihoods

associated with them(2010:105). The concentration of agricultural sectors also implies the

concentration of industrial and knowledge-based sectors in First-world countries, creating

a fundamental imbalance of power between the two because of the differences in the

currency value of the products of these sectors. The disparity in the value of currencies also

favors a move into the third sector. Many developed countries are using their superior

economic position to shift their centers of production to third-world countries and

implement capital-intensive agriculture. Lewellen observes that while small farmers may

be able to produce food at a more efficient rate, (e)fficiency in cropping is only one part of

the whole process, and the small farmer is at a disadvantage in every other

aspect(Lewellen 2002:226227) be it in processing, transport, access to markets,

distribution or loans. At the same time, Lewellen notes that such movements of

globalization and neoliberal capitalism do not go unchallenged (2002:192). In this case, the

challenge comes from local movements all over the world intent on securing their food

sovereignty. In order to provide an alternative to the neoliberal concept that is food

security, the concept of food sovereignty has been advocated by peasant groups across the

world. La Via Campesina (International Peasant Movement), the organization which is

!31

widely acknowledged to have consolidated the idea of food sovereignty, defines it as the

right of peoples, countries and state unions to define their agricultural and food policy

without the dumping of agricultural commodities into foreign countries. Food sovereignty

organizes food production and consumption according to the needs of local communities,

giving priority to production for local consumption (Schanbacher 2010:54). This

approach stands in stark contrast to the purely economic approach put forward by food

security, which creates the illusion of plenty by exploiting the availability of superior

economic resources to procure food. Instead, food sovereignty recognizes the societal

value that food production holds and emphasizes the role of the local community in food

production, processing and consumption. As a concrete step towards the achievement of

food sovereignty, the idea of localized production is often used, citing the fact that to the

productive, economic, and environmental benefits of small farm agriculture, we can add

the continuance of cultural traditions and the preservation of the rural way of life. If we are

truly concerned about rural peoples and ecosystems, then the preservation and promotion

of small, family farm agriculture is a crucial step we must take(Schanbacher 2010). Thus,

there is a concept of farming communities as not merely an economic entity but as a

powerful player in molding the idea of a community. This also meshes closely with the

idea of life environmentalism that has been put forward by Torigoe and Kada.

!Community and the Farmer

Perhaps one of the most interesting findings was the cosmopolitan nature of the

conception of community that the farmers had. Farmers have traditionally been viewed as

rooted to the local community (Lewellen 2002:223), yet the farmers I interviewed proved

otherwise. While their immediate surroundings are local, and the work they do is on the

local scale, their ideas and the communities are decidedly cosmopolitan or global.

Uehara for example, was drawn to the possibilities of agriculture in building up

and maintaining communities. One of the big topics in the 1970s and recently as well,

community-building or chiiki zukuri garnered the interest of many university study

groups. Uehara belonged to one such group in Waseda during university, and later went on

to study the same in graduate school (Uehara 2013). Through his research he was able to

meet the people who were involved in the so-called primary sector, agriculture and

!32

forestry. The people who were involved in production were all very independent and

skilled, and he was drawn to their way of life and philosophy. This would later provide him

with the motivation to see for himself the places where agrarian communities were

thriving: he decided to intern in an NGO that specialized in development aid for third-

world countries. Visiting Nepal and Bangladesh, he visited the agrarian communities there.

Yet he was surprised by what he found. The goals and aspirations of the villagers he

interacted with were strikingly similar to their First-world counterparts. Their definition of

the better life was defined by the acquisitions of cars and television sets, the new gadgets

and the fast food that were the symbols of the first world. The boundaries that he had in his

mind aligned along national borders faded away as he saw the glaring similarities in

outlook. The blessings and curses of modernity was something no longer confined to

within the first world nations but had transcended geographical boundaries.

Furuno talks about his experiences at a group set up for the expressed purpose of

creating a get-together for farmers in the Kyushu area (Kyushu hyakusho deai no kai) . He

remarks that there are two things essential for agriculture: soil and people (Furuno and

Sato 2012:37). Ideally, the farmers identity is formed through interaction with two groups

of people: People in the sense of consumers, who evaluate the product and then pay for it,

and people as fellow producers, who share philosophies and techniques. At the get-

together, Furuno recalls how lucky he was to meet celebrity farmers like Souichi

Yamashita and Une Yutaka (Bird 2013a). They were some of the big names in the

alternative agriculture movement, and Furuno felt that it was important to have such role-

models. At the same time, not all the farmers who came were using alternative methods

there were many conventional farmers as well. But Furuno says that he had much to learn

from them, in terms of finding solutions to the same problems and accumulating important

skills. It was also a good opportunity to hear voices from outside ones circles. Whether

alternative or not, all the farmers would gather together and share their experiences over

cups of sake and good food, and forget their solitary existences as a minor group in society.

Their common hardships and shared passion for farming brought them together. At the

same time, Furuno extended his reach beyond Japan, transmitting the knowledge he had

acquired to rice-growing regions in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the

Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam in an effort to introduce the method (Japan

!33

Information Network 2002). Here too, he declared that whatever the nationality, the fellow

farmer would always be a friend. His concept of community is truly transnational. The

Iidas are also well-travelled. Koji Iida had spent around five years, travelling through

various countries in Latin America and Asia. The friends he made along the way still visit

them on their farm in Yasato (Iida 2013).

!The State and the Farmer

Mi no take ni atta seikatsu, is a phrase that roughly translates as a life lived in a

manner befitting of ones stature. Sakamoto used this phrase often to describe his and his

familys approach to life. The first three words mi no take refers to ones stature, and is

used in a humble manner, to suggest that the speaker is not worthy of too much. The latter

part, ni atta seikatsu completes the sentence, and means a life adjusted to. This means

that one is not overreaching for goods or lifestyles beyond ones means, thus preventing

any unnecessary strain or pressure to keep achieving more. Contrary to the popular image

of agriculture as being protected by subsidies from the government, all of the farmers I

interviewed from the Yasato region have no debt; they take no loans and subsidies issued

by the government. All of them managed to procure enough money to start off, and then

keep things as simple as possible, and try their best to keep within their own limits. The

small scale of the fields is also not conducive to the increase of production through

machines. Sakamoto observes that this is a powerful fact that allows the hyakusho to enjoy

farming (Sakamoto 2013). Agriculture is fun when one can do as one pleases, enjoyable to

an unsuspected point. When he would watch his parents at work, his attention was drawn

to the unpleasant sides of this vocation (taihen na bubun). Sakamotos parents are both

farmers, and he recounts how his father would put in long hours in the field and at work,

out of proportion to his earnings. Feeling that his father was somehow mistaken, he

promised himself that he would find a way to get more money without working as hard.

But strangely, once he started farming, he started understanding that there was little

distinction between play and work. More often than not, work for the organic farmer is the

same as leisure. It is in toil that they find pleasure, something that is hard to understand,

especially for children.

!34

He does not use any hojokin, subsidies or grants provided by the government

because it does not fit in with their self-sufficient lifestyle. Everything has to be black and

white, everything has to be accounted and paid for. He told me of the time when he built

the structure that houses his pigs.While he had managed to get hold of the roofing and

wood required to make the framework of the building, he still needed some concrete for

the foundations. When he tried applying for the hojokin in order to pay for the concrete

only, he was denied because he was not employing specialists who would be able to

compose the required documents. Figuring it was not worth the hassle, he borrowed the

help of his family and built the shed up from scratch according to his own preferences.

In his book, Rural Society in Japan (1980), Tadashi Fukutake provides a

glimpse into the lives of farmers in Japan in pre- and post-war Japan, and the role the state

played in their lives. Through his work, we see what farmers expected, and more

importantly, what was expected of farmers. Fukutake notes the clear intertwining of the

agricultural classes and the ruling class. There is a sense here of the state rewarding the

farmers and peasants who were instrumental post-war in the production of enough food to

feed the masses, not through economic incentives or better living standards, but instead by

extolling the virtues of agriculture (Fukutake 1980:17), claiming that it was the

foundation of state and society (1980:17). It was the ideology of the imperial state which

provided the justification for the existence of farmers, Fukutake explains, and with Japans

loss in the Second World War, the imperial state took along with it the strong sense of

purpose that had guided the peasantry up till then (1980:22). This meant that the rationale

which justified the poor compensation received from farming in comparison with other

professions because it was a noble calling could no longer be supported by the state, and

that the rapid spread of capitalist principles of production mean that farming is now

thought of as an enterprise that should show a profit (Fukutake 1980:202). This

conception has been transcended somewhat by the existence of small farmers who eschew

ties with both the state and unfettered capitalism in evaluating the meaning of their work.

!

Knowledge

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In Ueharas orchard, we start pruning off dead branches.The trees act as living

records: each cut the tree receives, each typhoon it survives, each year of high

temperatures: all influence the growth of the tree and are therein recorded. This is what

makes fruit growing tricky, the fact that the time-spans involved are so long. The trees we

were pruning on that day were some he had been entrusted with by a more elder farmer

who had retired. He points out some of the branches and tells me how he does not agree

with some of the pruning work of his predecessor, while acknowledging that it was the

way that everybody normally did it (minna ga futsuu ni yatteiru). Based on knowledge that

he has learnt from some biology textbooks on plant development and physiology, he

modifies the advice of his neighbors and prunes the branches according to his own system.

The process will be gradual and it will be years before the trees start assuming the shape he

is envisioning. When I ask him if there are any traditional pruning methods that have been

handed down, he tells me that they exist, but that he prefers to work out a system that he

truly understands instead of doing 'what everyone else is doing' (Uehara 2013). On the

lowest part of the orchard, I find a tree with unfamiliar leaves. It turns out to be an avocado

plant, something that he is experimenting because he hopes to grow different varieties of

fruit in the future. This approach to farming is what Montgomery advocates in order to

change agriculture. He calls for farming techniques which do not rely on the

implementation of a standardized model or system but rather the creation of farming

systems which are optimal for the local conditions, something which he terms farming

with brains rather than by habit or convenience (Montgomery 2012:241).

For the more than 35 years that Furuno has been farming, he has been

experimenting constantly in order to deal with problems that crop up with the method of

farming that uses ducks. Because he farms using knowledge that he finds for himself, he is

constantly using a trial-and-error method. The knowledge he has managed to accumulate,

however, is formidable and has even enabled him to earn a doctorate degree in 2007

through a dissertation he worked on for more than two years, writing in the little time he

had to spare after working in the fields. He laments the current situation in education,

where the gain of agricultural science is the loss of agricultural communities (nouga

sakaete nougyou horobu) . He says that those who receive a college degree education in

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agricultural science should be out in the fields helping to find new knowledge to help

sustain farming communities, instead of working in cities. Sadly, this is not the case.

Kakei feels a need for a fundamental rethink of the education system and the

information distribution system to ensure that it does not favor the ethics and principles of

an industrial society, but instead envisions a less exploitative and more sustainable society

(Kakei 2013). The economist Jeffrey Sachs observes that, Taking moral responsibility for

the future, accepting the reality that our actions today will determine the fates of

generations to live, is daunting enough. Taking practical responsibility is equally

difficult(Sachs 2011:177). Kakei felt that practicing a morally responsible agriculture

would be very difficult, but after experiencing the farming life, the life of the hyakusho for

himself, he found out very quickly that the agricultural way of life was prosperous,

healthy and fun. He had assumed that the economic poverty and manual labor he

associated with the farming life would be too much for him to bear. The dark images he

and his generation had associated with farming were the result of a journalism that was

financed by the growing industries in the post-war years and a warped education that

prepared the numerous workers needed to fuel Japans miraculous industrialization (Kakei

and Shirato 2009:89)

Indeed, there exist a fundamental imbalance in the treatment accorded to the

knowledge that is produced in institutions and the knowledge that is gained over decades

of experimentation by farmers and passed down as traditional wisdom. Recalling his years

as an undergraduate and graduate student, Uehara notes that the experts in the community-

building study group he studied under relied on the advice of doctors and politicians, and

bureaucrats well-versed in policies. Uehara felt a fundamental discord: The people who

were being asked to advise on the creation and maintenance of communities were people

far removed from the everyday community, the lived community. The problems mentioned

by the study group and the answers formed were predictable as well. The problem was

always people: that there were not enough of them. To somehow bring people back to the

village, the study group would resort to pseudo-colonial approaches: most notably the

promotion of tourism to the village. Bringing in industries was also a popular solution to

the problem of the thinning village population. The failings common to these approaches

was and is the fact that they have little use for the tremendous amount of knowledge that

!37

the local community members possess, because it fails to fit into their idea of community.

The education system is of little help either; it gears children towards a life in the city and

based around the service and industrial sector. Little in the curriculum legitimizes the

knowledge of the villagers, and it is only natural that young people seek employment

elsewhere, usually in nearby cities. Simply because the younger generation has not learnt

of the skills to maintain an agrarian community, the community is changed into an entity

peripheral to the city, forced into a crude imitation of the city and judged on how well it

can achieve this goal. Kakei laments this situation, saying that those who have had first-

hand experience of a farmers life end up losing sight of the meaning of life, so how can

we expect children who have been brought up in a society where irresponsible adults

choose to have material wealth over all else to understand what it is that allows them to

live? In our modern times, where food and clothing can be found on supermarket stores,

the best way to get access to these goods is by dutifully following orders (Kakei and

Shirato 2009:25). A move into the first quadrant will not be possible without the support of

society as a whole, and knowledge dissemination is thought to play a large part in this

movement.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Chapter 4: Visibility !

Food and Images

Japans traditional cuisine washoku was added to UNESCOs Intangible Cultural

Heritage list late in 2013 (Japanese Cuisine Added to UNESCO Intangible Heritage List

2013). The idea of washoku encompasses so many different philosophies, like that of

seasonality, sparseness and making do with what one has; it is as rich in meaning as it is

pleasing to the eye. Yet all too often, the message implied within this cuisine is studiously

ignored. Most of the ingredients used to create a washoku dish come from abroad,

vegetables and fruit available year round allow for consumers to disregard seasonality, and

sparseness of food is something that is unthinkable. What remains is an imitation of

washoku, something fit for the showcases in the museum to which this cultural heritage is

increasingly in danger of being relegated to:

It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a

question of substituting the signs of the real for the realan operation of deterring every

real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive

machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its

vicissitudes (Baudrillard and Glaser 1994:2)

In an eerie echo of this situation, food has become mystical for many in the first

world. It has been unceremoniously removed from the position of the main concern of

households and instead has been shunted into the corner, viewed as no more than a

necessary burden. In order to free up more of the family budget to spend on other pursuits,

food has been relegated down the list. People are increasingly finding recourse to fast food,

with less and less people spending time in the kitchen. The MAFF Annual Report on Food,

Agriculture and Rural Areas (FY2012) notes, 'the share of overall food expenditure has

declined for meat and vegetables while increasing for cooked food and oils/fats/

condiments'. Other figures, mainly those pointing to the gradual decline in couple-and-

child households, suggest that the trend is likely to continue, with the externalization of the

Japanese diet projected to grow further. The value of the sales of the home-meal

replacement industry has more than doubled in the past twenty years, going from a net

worth of 2.3 trillion in 1990 to 5.8 trillion in 2011, and is expected to keep rising (MAFF

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2012). The organic farmers stand to lose the most from this trend, since the majority of

their consumers are people who subscribe to get boxes of fresh produce delivered every

week, in a system that is now famous as the Teikei system. The Japanese predecessor of

the CSA (community-supported agriculture) set-up connects the farmer to the consumer

and is one of the ways in which farmers can get higher renumeration for their products. It

also allows them to get recognition for their organic products without having to get JAS

certification. It is predicated, however, on the consumer choosing to cook, instead of

ordering pre-cooked food. A general shift in society towards ready-made foods hurts the

prospects of organic farmers who hope to make a living solely out of selling farm produce.

Yet it is not only the organic farmer who suffers. Michael Pollan records the ill-effects of

this trend away from preparing ones own food for society in general in his book Cooked:

A Natural History of Transformation (2013). The pre-packaged foods that dominate First

World markets cause problems, he claims, for the health of our bodies, our families, our

communities, and our land but also more importantly, it disrupts our sense of how our

eating connects us to the world (Pollan 2013). He elaborates that the growing distance

from any direct, physical engagement with the processes by which the raw stuff of nature

gets transformed into a cooked meal is chaining our understanding of what food is,' usually

for the worse (2013:9). The ability of the processed foods industry to provide us with

neatly packaged food has reduced i t to just another commodity, an

abstraction(2013:9).This abstraction of the many complex processes that gets food on the

table pushes us further and further into a vacuum with no place for physical engagement or

the proper appreciation of the value of the things that keep us functioning. Indeed, as

Pollan wryly observes, we end up trying to nourish ourselves on images (2013:10) . And

images dominate the shelves of the modern grocery store or conbini creating a simplistic

facade where nothing is really connected (Iwasaki 2013:28). Indeed, a quick trip to the

grocery store will allay fears of any immediate crisis (Montgomery 2012:2; Roberts

2009:298) for those living in developed nations, simply because so much of the food is

processed .

Without a television at home, Sakamoto is astounded by the speed of the

television commercials he sees whenever he happens to be in town. He learnt an important

message though: that people are buying images and stories (Michaels 2011:3).

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Understanding that making good agricultural produce is only part of the story, with the

ability to sell making up the rest is a realization that is essential to market ones product.

People must be convinced of certain narratives and images in order to buy something.

Once a narrative is accepted, there are no questions asked, even questions regarding

authenticity or intrinsic value. It is not enough, Sakamoto observes, to produce the

authentic. One must market it as such. People can be convinced that anything is good for

them. That is how things like fizzy drinks, fast food and pesticides are soldthe

consumers are taught that these products will somehow heighten the quality of their lives.

The creators of the authentic thus have their work cut out; they must educate t