During the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), Japan closed its borders to the outside world in a successful effort to keep from being swallowed by European colonial empires. With few natural resources, Tokugawa Japan ran almost entirely on human muscle power, reusing and repurposing.

From the link above:

- Ash buyers:

Ash is a natural byproduct of fuelwood burning. During the Edo Period, buyers collected ash and sold it to farmers as fertilizer. Ordinary houses had an ash box, and public bathhouses and larger shops an “ash hut” for storage until buyers came by.

- Human waste dipper

Until around 1955, human waste (night soil) was the most important fertilizer source for farmers in Japan. Farmers regularly visited homes with whom they had contracts and paid money or offered vegetables they had grown, in return for night soil to be used as fertilizer. As distribution channels became more established, specialized night soil warehouses and retailers emerged.

In the future, I think i’m going to be an Ash Trader.

ken

So you’re deep in the woods and see something other-worldly, but don’t exactly know what it is; a spirit, a ghost, a supernatural being? You come home and do a little research and find out that what you saw was a Yama-uba (山姥), or an old Japanese Mountain Witch. And that she is an old mountain spirit found in Japanese Folklore.

Quote:
Beyond the habitation of most humans, in the wilds of the mountains, live the Yama- uba. Like the oni, yama-uba are viewed with a mixture of awe, respect, and fear as they too have special and fearsome powers beyond that of the average human. Yama-uba appear as an old woman with a head of fluffy white hair, dressed in old clothes or, sometimes, rags; typically they will live in small, old-fashioned cottages hidden in the woods of the mountains where they live.

Wicked.

For more on Yama-uba

One of my favorite ’snacks’ in Japan is “goheimochi”(五平餅). It’s said that this simple dish (rice on a stick with a dab of sweet miso paste) was first conceived by an ancient Japanese lumberjack named Gohei.

As the story goes (the one I like to believe), he’d been getting tired of cold onigiri and miso on even colder winter days for lunch. So with unlimited amounts of tree branches at his disposable, he decided to whittle a long, flat stick, pat his onigiri onto it, and cook it over an open fire. He then would put the miso paste on the onigiri after it had got warm and eat them both together.

And there you have it, a meal concocted while lumberjacking that would be loved by generations to come. Thanks Gohei !

There’s something I want to try.

Cooking rice underneath a fire, in a hole. Yeah, apparently
ninjas used to do it in the mountains when traveling.

Quote:

They would dig up the earth, put a fistful of rice into a cloth, mix the rice with gravel and wash it in the mountain streams. Then, in the same hole that they had made, they would start a fire for cooking and steaming the rice.

Wicked.

I seen this scene in a dream:

I was out in the deep-woods, and while I was drinking water from my cupped hands alongside a small stream I heard the most peculiar sound. I looked Northward, across the stream, up the ridge in a hazy distance, at a savage, pathless, unfrequented woods— and out of this howling wilderness three ancient deer-hunters appeared.

A future Scenario:

2o19

A Policeman, an Ainu man, a Poacher and the Forest

A Policeman, an Ainu man, and a Poacher, all live and work in the same area of the Hokkaido woods. All three men love the woods and subsist because of them. The Poacher kills bears for a living, selling the internal organs to Korean merchants. The Ainu man, living in a neighboring valley, is an environmental “terrorist:” sabotaging logging and surveying equipment he is an expert marksman and shoots out the equipment from great distances with his bow and arrow. The Policeman’s job is to stop both the Ainu and the Poacher. To the Policeman’s chagrin and embarrassment he also supervises the logging operation in his neck of the National Forest. Also, the Policeman and the Ainu man are good friends. Worse still, the Policeman completely agrees with what the Ainu stands for, just not his methods.

The Poacher’s favorite spot to hunt bear is in a place called Yakozue, which means ‘Eight Tree Tops’, in a section of a grove area bordering the tract of National Forest that’s being logged. Yakozue is the ancient Ainu burial ground with old markings on the trees. The bears come there because of the stream that runs through it - it’s where the Salmon spawn. The Poacher kills a bear and just as he’s skinning it he finds a knife at his throat. It’s the Ainu man’s knife. The Ainu informs him to stop hunting in Yakozue, or else! The Poacher pleads to the Ainu man to let him take the bear’s organs with him, for he’s got five kids and needs the money to feed them. No luck. The Poacher leaves empty handed. The Ainu man takes as much of the bear meat as he can and carries it back to the valley. Soon thereafter the Policeman comes upon the blood stains of the bear carcass and is sickened. He doesn’t know who the poacher is, but someday he’ll nab him.

The town that administers the valley where the Ainu man lives has already sold off the water rights to the stream in Yakozue. And very soon they will be building a hydro-electric damn in the northern part of the valley, just below Yakozue. The town council now wants to sell off Yakozue itself to the same Developer who bought the water rights and is also logging the National Forest. The Ainu man is flatly against this, but no one listens.

The only access to the spot where the damn will be built is an old, steel bridge. The Ainu man sneaks up to the bridge at night with a rucksack full of dynamite. As he’s preparing the charges, the bridge blows up. He sees the Poacher fleeing the scene. The Poacher sees the Ainu man. When the Ainu man nears the the valley he sees Prefectural Police surrounding his house. The Poacher had set him up. The Ainu man takes off into the woods, away from the police, and after the Poacher.

The furious Developer, sabotaged many times in the past by the Ainu man, now screwed to the tune of billions of yen with the destruction of the bridge, berates the Policeman for not looking after his interests. He then hires his own “Bounty hunters” to go into the woods after the Ainu to kill him.

The Policeman heads out into the woods he knows so well to get to the Ainu man before the “bounty hunters” get him.

The Ainu man is stalking the Poacher who set him up.
Behind the three of them are the “bounty hunters” led by the Developer.

The chase, full of booby traps and ambushes, leads them to a mountain. Only the three woodsmen – the Policeman, the Ainu man and the Poacher, have the ability to scale it and make it to the other side. The Developer and his “bounty hunters” give up and turn back.

From here on out, as the chase goes into its second and third day, it is just the three men and their abilities to live in the woods, hunt and stalk.

The Poacher hides on the side of a wooded hill and awaits the approach of the Ainu man. As the Ainu man nears a shot rings out from the hillside, striking him in the shoulder knocking him down. He drops to the ground behind a fallen tree. Bullets crash in all around. He peers over the tree and watches the wooded hillside. Finally, he sees the glare of something reflective. The Ainu man stands up, draws his bow, and shoots at the glare…….. and a moment later the Poacher’s body comes rolling down the hill out of the woods. The Poacher is bleeding profusely from the gut and is sure to die. The Ainu man asks the Poacher why he blew up the bridge? “To stop the hydro-electric damn construction so the Salmon will come, for the bears,” the Poacher says. The Ainu man now knows that he can never go back because he’s a killer. He takes off further into the woods.

The Policeman arrives at the downed Poacher, still alive, but clearly dying. The Policeman tells him to hold on, the Developer and his men should be there soon. The Policeman continues the chase. A few moments later the Poacher hears footsteps in the leaves…. thank God, it’s the Developer’s men, he’ll be saved! He cranes his head around to see a ferocious, snarling bear coming for him. Maul…sreams….maul.

The Policeman tracks the blood of the Ainu man deeper and deeper into the woods as the clouds grow thick and dark. Soon it is snowing.

The Ainu man is going as fast as he can and losing a lot of blood. He suddenly comes out into an immense clear cut……. an area totally logged out; nothing but stumps as far as the eye can see. No cover. The Ainu man hears the Police man approaching from behind, fires an arrow and takes off running through the stumps.

The Policeman has been hit in the thigh. Nevertheless, he keeps coming into the clear cut. More shots ring out. The Ainu man has stationed himself behind a stump. The Policeman quickly drops behind another stump. It’s now a stand off; nowhere to go. The Policeman hollers out for the Ainu man to just give up, he’ll do everything he can so that he’ll be treated fairly. The Ainu man says no, he’ll never go back. He’s now a killer. He tells the Policeman to just leave and he’ll never see him again. The Policeman says no, he can’t do that. It’s his duty to bring him back. So they keep each other pinned down as the snow floats from the sky and the evening nears.

Finally, the Ainu man has a stick of dynamite out, has inserted a fuse, has a lighter ready, but doesn’t light it. He tries but can’t. He gives up on the dynamite and pulls out the fuse. He stands up and shoots another arrow at the policeman.

The arrow hits the Policeman’s stump blasting off wood chunks. The Policeman pulls his .38 pistol from his belt. He cocks it and sets it on the stump. He then pops the clip from his rifle, quietly pulls the bolt and removes the bullets. He considers what he’s doing for a second, shrugs, then picks up the pistol and aims it, his hand resting on top of the stump. He raises the rifle in the air with his other hand and dry fires. The click is loud in the still night.

The Ainu man pops his head up over his stump to see what’s happening. The Policeman fires the pistol and plugs the Ainu man between the eyes. The Policeman goes over to the dead Ainu man and sadly sits with him, his friend, as night comes and snow falls from the sky.

The animals of the forest burrow into their holes and the birds fly into their nest and hollow trees,

The next morning….

. . . A beautiful, rosy dawn comes to the snowy forest. The animals come out of their holes, the birds fly from their nests.

chuka chuka chuka chuka…..

A helicopter descends from the rosy sky and lands in the clear cut. Inside are the Developer and a few of his men. They cautiously walk through the stumps and come upon the Ainu man’s dead body, a bullet hole between his eyes, a stream of frozen blood running to the ground.

They then find more blood behind another stump and a blood trail leading out of the clear cut, back into the forest. They follow it to a lean of Yezu spruce branches. They can see the Policeman’s boots protruding from the end of the lean to. They pull back the branches revealing the Policeman frozen solid, dead, his skin bluish white.

The Developer and his men get back into the helicopter and rise into the air. With a view of the clear cut, the endless rows of stumps grows wider and wider until we see that it goes on for kilometers in every direction.

We then see the trees of Yakozue with their ancient markings…..One by one they crash to the ground as loggers cut them down.

I’ve got something to share - Something that I think I’ve figured out.

I haven’t read about this anywhere else, and maybe you haven’t either. We hear news all the time about the state of Japan’s agriculture: full of “hearsay” and “security” and “projections” and “forecasts” and “statistics”, but how far along are the “ideas” surrounding Japan’s agri-business future and agri-sustainability future coming? How are these “ideas” being shaped? And by whom ?

Recently, I’ve been taking the agriculture news at face value, believing most of it, but remembering that the truth about what the future holds lies in what we don’t hear, what the reporters don’t tell us. But since this post isn’t about how I sift through agriculture news and gain agriculture knowledge on the ground about agriculture here in Japan……. I’ll just get to the point of this post:

There is an Agriculture Land-grab taking place as we type – unnoticed – and unreported.

From my readings and hearings it appears to me that there is an agriculture land-grab taking place here in Japan by a two headed oni: the Government (MAFF) and Farm Management Companies. Anyone interested ? Well, if you work for a Robotics Company

Quote:
In the agriculture and forestry sector, 450,000 jobs could be held by robots if harvesting and pruning robots spread widely, according to the foundation, an affiliate of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

or Monsanto or Kubota/Yanmar/Suzuki Farm Machinery or Jomo petrol or any company that receives subsidiaries from MAFF…you bet your buttons you’re interested !! I’ll tell you why.

Agriculture Business Rundown:

The average farm size in Japan is a very small 1.6 hectares and many rice farmers work part-time. Around 64% of rice farmers engage in farming only as a sideline to their main source of income and so have little incentive to improve profitability. There are many a “reform plan,” and for the most part they all include a policy to promote collective farming and the consolidation of farm use so that small-scale farmers can join principal regional farm managements.

However, these policies are (for the most part) failing. Many factors: lack of individual interest, the impeding rural uchi-soto conundrum, money, etcetera. And because of this, more and more small-scale farmers are leasing their farms to large Farm Management Companies instead. Why ? Because it’s easier and quicker for older rural land-owners to deal with an accredited, slick uniform wearing, well-known and highly-recommend Farm Management Company, rather than some unknown, new, independent farmer looking to get into farming and lease land.

Are there lots of these FMCs in Japan?

Well, according to NHK (the mouthpiece of MAFF),

1. Right now, through-out Japan, there are around 10,000 private farming companies that are partially (some fully) subsidized MAFF. Yes……, subsidized by “us” the people.

And 2. The average salary for a Nougyou Sarari-man comes in at 140,000 yen - 180,000 yen per month and he/she lives in a FMC dormitory.

And 3. NHK quips that the young kids these FMCs are recruiting couldn’t be happier with their dormitory lifestyles, low pay, and long hours. NHK is even recruiting young persons through NHK’s official website !

Just one example of these FMCs in practice is the company Watami Farm, a subsidiary of a izakaya-style restaurant operator Watami Co that operates farms in government-designated special deregulation zones comprised of leased fields from local farmers.

I just read an article about how Watami Farm foresees an increase in domestic food-oriented consumers and how they’re gearing up to try to make a profit in the foreseeable future.

It seems to me that MAFF is forging alliances with FMCs such as Watami Farm under MAFF’s NEW DIRECTION OF FARMLAND POLICY in an attempt to, as they say,

Quote:
“efficiently raise production levels, practice more cost-effective agri-business, and closely monitor the nations farmlands through centralized management”.

MAFF’s new direction of farmland policy also says

Quote:
“MAFF promotes the effective utilization of farmland through incorporating the farming of villages to firms, developing the management of agricultural production legal persons and new entry of eager people who have a passion for farm management.

Quote:
“As for the expansion of the farmers’ options to development their farm management, , long-term leases of farmland is now being planned, while the system of tenant farmer rent will be re-examined to be abolished.”

So the government (MAFF) is pushing for “incorporating the farming of villages to firms” and “abolishing the system of tenant farming and renting to farm.” Why ? Because all these I-turn, U-turn, me-turn, we-turn, 田舎暮らし, Slow Life Movement schemes have floundered, and because there is more and more land being reclaimed by nature every season, and the old-timers aren’t getting any younger. Also, and this one is a biggie, the amount of foods coming in from abroad is shrinking.

There has always been talk of agricultural “structural reform” and “change,” and it seems to me that we are beginning to see it, but in a most dangerous form.

Why dangerous ?

Now, here’s where my whole ‘land-grab’ jive comes into form. Over the years the FMC businesses grow and more and more old-timers plots are being managed by them. And all the ‘small farmers who have a passion for farmland management,’ are continually being stonewalled. Remember, It’s a highly subsidized Japan ag-inc (with their salaried farmer, high-tech machinary, agro-chemical JA cool-aid mixes, and on-site farmer dormitories) versus the outsider Farmer Tanaka.

Old-timers pass-away and families eventually have to sell their land…… and who do you think is going be right there to buy it ? That’s right, the government and their loyal Farm Management Companies. And then it all becomes clear, the government and FMCs are not neccessarily getting in the business for the money now, but for the land, better management, and big money later . And when I say government, I mean ‘all the people involved, whoever they may be’. This includes all corporations whose’ interests lie in the agri-business sector.

Small farming families will only be able to fill in the cracks, while corporations will monopolize ! Remember, FMCs will be sudsidized with ‘our’ money. Then they’ll turn around and spend that money on advanced technology !! Sony Robotics must be tickled to death to hear about this land-grab stuff.

While this speak of “let’s efficiently raise production levels and practice more cost-effective agri-business” may sound good on the surface, I can’t help but think about how green this business will be, and how long it can last, and what happens when it’s no longer feasible? What then ? Who then will farm the land that was once spread out amongst all the peoples ?

Now, enter my future Industrial Agriculture scenario:

Over the next few years as farm landowners retire and sell-off or foreclose on their properties to MAFF and MAFF’s corporate cronies who are lining up in droves, we will see a slow transition from small family farms to giant corporate farms, with a few individual farmers and land owners scattered to the four winds. Try not to imagine the farms of the west with their wide open spaces. Just try to imagine the physical giant farm-hand danchi looking dormitories dotting the corners of continiouss blocks of farmland spread-out over Japan’s lowlands and the upper reaches of its’ over 200 some-odd river valleys. And as MAFF says, “The whole agricultural system will be closely monitored by centralized management with the intent to be not only more cost-effective, but to efficiently raise production levels as well.”

Umm….pardon my presumptuousness here, but doesn’t this sound a bit like Joseph Stalin’s USSR’ system of state and collective farms that grouped peasants (poorer people) onto collective farms and state farms? Of course it’s not exactly the same, because this time so-called ‘private companies and corporations’ with the help of the MAFF will be doing the bidding, but one wonders about the psychological effects this type of agriculture may have on the salaried farm workers and the remaining few old ruralites who persist in the country. Reading into the USSR’s failed system (from Wiki):

Quote:
Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred resentment and worker alienation across the countryside. The human toll was very large with millions, perhaps as many as 3 million, dying from famine in the wake of collectivisation.[In the collective and state farms, low labor productivity was a consequence for the entire Soviet period.

Okay, so maybe I’m over-reacting a little, but the idea of taking away land from the people and having corporations work it under some governmental Long term lease program while “technology-based” and “brave new world so-called eco-friendly and sustainable ideas and corporations” line their pockets doesn’t appeal to me, atoll. Smells like Agriculture subprime, not to mention Island agriculture harakiri.

I wonder if it wouldn’t be fair to say that our current agriculture, and the products we make and sell, is not sustainable, but just less unsustainable and a bit greener than other “industrialized” nations. And that most folks aren’t driven to get independent of the current subsidized agriculture, to persistently reduce the amount of money they need, to produce more and more of their own necessities. They’re not going to make passive-solar-heated cob and straw bale houses, or replace the subsidized hatake and tambo with fruit and nut and berry orchards that would eventually produce 20 times as much food. And I wonder if it wouldn’t be fair to say that only a few people are interested in seed banks and permaculture, or catching rainwater, self-sufficiency, or tracking wild animals.

In ten years from now, I hope I turn out to be just some cook that was over-reacting to what seemed to him an idea that MAFF was forging alliances with FMCs to grab-land. I hope I was just naive. I hope I just turn out to be an over-exaggerator — some dude with an irrational attachment to the ideas that bigger is worse and less is better. I hope I was just a guy who thought this island was being suckered by the mythology of civilization, which says that “simple and more primitive people” live difficult lives, scrambling constantly to survive, while modern technology saves more and more labor as it gets more “advanced.”

I hope I turn out to be just some two-bit rebel who had no real cause for ranting, who just polluted the internets with his at-the-time backward thinking that we ought to preserve autonomous high-quality work against hierarchically-commanded low-quality work, and its’ allies to certain technologies(Cue-up tractor gundam track: TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS)

Unfortunately though, I think I may be right.

So unless you can live with the aformentioned double headed oni land-grabing and neo-industrial agriculture, I reckon we ought to best start thinking a little harder about the future of agriculture on this island.

###

Check out this future Industrial Agriculutre scenario: Immigrants Head for the Countryside

39%. 39 ? Really ? Nah– more like 10%. Or it could be 65%? All depends on how you look at it !

Current situation:

A.) lotsa farming experience being lost
B.) Japan at a (reported) 39% food self-sufficiency rate
C.) Population shrinkage

Analysis.

A.) 2/3 of all Japanese farmers are in their 60’s, so in ten years time they’ll be in their 70’s. Ouch.

B.) As noted, the national food self-sufficiency rate is at 39%. But I don’t take this number seriously. Reason being, it could be a lot lower or a lot higher depending on how you look at it. This number has been figured without taking into account non-industrial agricultural methods. It has also been figured taking into account current food and fuel import levels. Also, we can’t forget about the types of foods that are currently being eatin. Like all statistical numbers, it is flawed. At any rate, I think the type of transition and outcome we see in the farming sector will mainly be determined by how soon or how late the price of everything increases.

C.) Our Government projects that within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third. However , this projection does not take into account any dire events that may take place within this time frame. i.e., food shortages from abroad, fuel shortages from abroad, natural disasters, etc. Also, this projection does not take into account what would happen if our current over-working urban culture were to revert back to a culture of agri, or a real agri based culture.

In closing, I wonder if it would be safe to say that ancient peoples saw life like a circle. And now, civilized people see the past, the present, and the future as a line. But what we are going to see in the coming years will be more like an open plain - with epic transitions - like we’ve never seen before!

ken

So I’m thinking about becoming a Kudzu Farmer . Kudzu can be used to make various things. For example - medicines, foodstuffs, paper, and even clothing !

I figure to practice Kudzu Farming I wouldn’t actually need a farm. Kudzu is everywhere and I don’t need to grow it.

Farming structure:

A. Find kudzu growing like mad
B. Find the landowner
C. Tell him or her I’ll get rid of it for free (or pay them a small fee if necessary)
D.Harvest
E. …
F. Make some Yen, buy that goat I always wanted.

(Picture: An unsuspecting Country Kudzu Farm. Okay, so it’s really just an abandoned patch of roadside land . But hey, it could be a Farm !)

DEEP in rural Japan, where newspapers and internet do not reach, farmers still depend upon the age-old folk wisdom passed over by successive generations in predicting the weather.

All across a timeless Inaka, those living off the land are turning to ancient portents, including myself, rather than relying on government forecasting machinery and the news agency’s supercomputers and their sexy meteorologists. Because the technology and sexiness we see on the television simply cannot match the quaint ways the country folk predict the weather.

Only kidding !

It’s all over the radio, albeit in Japanese - and what we hear of late is “Global Warming is Here!” It’s in magazines, newspapers and on the television set, “Gigantic Ice Shelf Disintegrating Off Antarctica Peninsula.” Politicians, business leaders and common folk alike, chat about it as if it may be our fault and as if we should change our life-ways to reverse, or at least slow down, “global warming,” and to do our part to halt the melting of the Antarctic Ice Shelves.

There are those who have heard about global warming, but aren’t really interested. There’s a gazillion studies on it, people making money off of it, people losing money because of it, people banking on it, people studying up on it, and young college couples having sexual intercourse well into the night on sun-warmed co-ed dormitory rooftops. There are people who think it’s a lie, people who think other people are over reacting about it and there are even those rare Japanese individuals who travel to the poles to surf epic waves that are created by giant chunks of ice that break away from the sides of ice shelves and fall into the sea.

Now, clearly, something’s going on – With all this “Global Warming” chatter, artic wave riding and rooftop sex in the middle of the night. Call it “Global Warming” if you like, but I’m claiming the middle ground and call it “Global Torrent”. And I’m gunna define “Global Torrent” as the human psyche and human behavior under all the sexy news and hearsay on “Global Warming” bundled up with tomorrow’s weird weather.

With a little forward thinking and quaint ways to predict the coming rain, big storms and human predicament, in addition to gale winds, flurries, sunny days, high pressure, low pressure, “acidic yellow sandstorms,” breezes, sprinkles, showers, drizzle, rain, sleet and snow, in the coming years I’ll be expecting “Global Torrent” and what she brings.

And with “Global Torrent” I’m planning on some long hot summers, long cold winters, and sporadic weather patterns throughout the year. Weather patterns that will become virtually unpredictable by even the sexiest of supercomputers and meteorologists. So as to cover all my bases, I’m investing in a good pair of flip-flop sandals (for the summers), a maki-stove (for the winters) and strong window shutters for my home (for all that unpredictable country weather).