I awoke to the familiar sound of my iPhone’s alarm. Rolling over onto my side I peered at the little bright screen, 4:30 AM, I was already running late. I pulled on my clothes, brushed my teeth quickly, and walked into the small kitchen to fill up my water bottle. Taro, my host, emerged from his bedroom rubbing his eyes. “Do you need another coil?” he asked. He was, of course, referring to a mosquito coil, a little green spiral about the size of my hand that, when lit, produced a small cloud of smoke that served as an insecticide. These coils are often used by Japanese farmers in the early morning and early evening to ward off the mosquitos that carry the Japanese encephalitis virus. “Yeah,” I replied, “Do you have your lighter? I’ll get them started for us.”
By 5:00 AM, Taro and I were driving through the small organic farming community of Sinohara, a smaller population with a majority of the community upwards of 60 years of age. I gazed out the window, drinking in the Japanese countryside with its sloping farm plots seamlessly meshing into the forest’s edge. The plots that Taro farmed on were located at various places all over the mountainous village. This morning he decided we would harvest peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, and eggplant before the sun came up. He handed me my coil, which I tied around my waist, a pair of clippers, a pair of gloves, and a basket to place the harvested fruits and vegetables. “After we’re done here, we’ll move to the next plot.”
I walked down the narrow dirt path, my work boots leaving impressions in the soft, moist soil. “Hey!” called Taro after me, “Be careful where you’re stepping!” I looked down at the footprints I had left behind. They were a few inches to the right, off the path just slightly on an empty plot of land with a few patches of overgrown weeds. He caught up to me and explained “It’s okay in this case because I know the owner and he’s more relaxed, but some of these traditional farming types see even this empty plot and these weeds as their land.”
There is a long history of tension between landowners and farmers in Japan that began in 1947 with the introduction of the 1947 Land Reform Act implemented under the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers staff at the end of World War II. Between 1947 and 1949, an approximated 2,347,176 hectares (5,800,000 acres) of land (about 38% of Japan’s cultivated land) were redistributed from wealthy landlords to the farming class, restructuring Japan’s agricultural sector into small parcels of about 1-2 hectares (5 acres) each.
(expanding on significance of 1947 Land Reform Act and implications on the changing dynamics of ownership later; most of my research is at school. I can add it later to the blog version, but this information should be enough for the formatting in the meantime).
