Traditional Japan

What year is it?

So we're putting on the matsuri (festival) last week, right? Yeah, me and my fellow townspeople were parading the local god around on the mikoshi (portable shrine), when my buddy Goemon says, "Hey, guys, what're all these loud boxy things that keep almost hitting us? And what the heck are we walking on, anyway? This isn't dirt." But Boss Kenichi, smooth operator as usual, just tells him not to worry about it and sends two guys to the front to keep the road clear.

The Japanese have been holding these (usually) small-scale local events for ages and ages. In fact, I couldn't even find an internet source that made a guess at how long they've been going on.

This particular one was being held in Hirakata. I haven't been able to find out about the history of this particular festival, but it didn't look like there was any particular theme, anyway, except maybe Everyone Wear White Shorts Kudasai.

So You Want To Kill Yourself

Looking for a way to inflict as much physical pain on yourself as possible, while being able to pass it off as an educational experience? You should try harvesting rice on a hot October afternoon, as I did last weekend outside of Nagoya.

My friend Yuka, who arranged for me to participate in the inekari, suggested that we would spend the day hacking at handfuls of rice stalks and bundling them into piles, much as rice farmers have been doing since the early days of agriculture. However, this turned out to be only a small part of the process. Most of the work was done by a boxy vehicle on tank treads with what looked like half of a cow catcher on the front. The vehicle couldn't get the corners of the field though, so for a short time, we were doing it old school, bent backs and all. Feeding the hand-cut stalks into the machine an armload at a time was probably scarier than anything our collective forefathers had done, though.

Also, regardless of what modern tools one takes with them to the field, the rice itself probably hasn't changed much over the years. Neither have the bugs or the sunburn, for that matter. Koume (rice on the stalk) puts out a LOT of dust. Its gets on your skin and itches. It gets in your lungs and burns. The sun puts out a LOT of radiation, too, apparently. And the bugs are hungry as ever. These things have been plaguing Taro the Farmer forever, and this past weekend was no exception.

The Japanese seem to keep the tradition alive in other ways, too - a significant number of Yuka's relatives came to the house, if not to work in the field, then to help obaa-chan in the garden or to make an enormous lunch for everyone. When Yuka's grandfather, uncle and I came in all covered in itchy dust and sweat, there were the aunts and cousins putting shrimp and veggies on top of heaping rice piles. (I hope this isn't coming across as MAN BASH FOOD, WOMAN COOK FOOD or anything.)

So while the experience as a whole was not the "ditch your tie and live off the land" experience I was hoping for, it wasn't a total bust. What I didn't learn about traditional methods of farming was more than compensated for by a chance to see the Japanese family dynamic at work.

Here's the angry tyrannosaurus of a machine, carving a path of destruction through the field.

When working around heavy machinery with sharp parts, as we were doing, it's generally not a good idea to worry about things that aren't vital to the survival of your extremities. So unfortunately, I wasn't able to get more than a couple photos of the process.