My Hometown Hirakata...

When thinking of a typical Japanese landscape, I have to admit that sometimes my mind jumps directly to the tight, and narrow streets in a seemingly over-crowded neighborhood. The beautiful snowcapped mountains, rice fields and streams come second.

So when my host family and I drove home for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised to see small rice paddies and vegetable fields dotting the landscape, hidden among the tightly packed together apartment complexes and tiny houses.


In doing a little research, I found out that many towns accumulated a number of these part-time farmers around WWII to help stabilize the price of rice and get more food out to the Japanese people. In 1950 there were 6.18 million farming households, 3.09 million of them full-time. Today, 23% of farmers are full-time, 16% are part-time type 1 (primarily farm) and 62% are part-time type 2 (primarily don't farm) (The Tokyo Foundation). All farmers were a part of an organization called the JA (Japan Agricultural Cooperative Associations) which marketed the crops and began as small organizations.


The addition of these small rice and vegetable fields scattered about suburban towns is quite beautiful and really significant. Farming food for people is not only a difficult and time-consuming job, but its something that not many people want to do. The number of farmers in the US has decreased quickly over the last few decades, to a point where the government must pay farmers to continue doing their jobs. In Japan, you can physically see the evidence of farming everywhere. This tradition has continued for generations and has left Japan beautiful and alive.

Here I am providing a link to a Japanese farming blog (in japanese) which has some lovely pictures, and here is a link to an interesting site about Satoyama, Japan's hidden water garden. A BBC special was done on this area of Japan and a youtube video can be accessed through this site about Satoyama.

(From Satoyama: Japan's Amazing Rice Fields and Farms)