Nippon no Arashi - Sakurai (Part 1 of 3)
Hello all~!
We're over half way there now!! This weekend it's Sho-chan; he went to Nara to learn a little more about agriculture in Japan and some of the issues facing it. This one was quite a bit easier for me to translate than I anticipated, but the person that Sho-chan visits with talks A LOT, haha. But, his story was quite fun, so I hope you guys enjoy!
Sakurai Sho and Japan’s Agriculture
Nara
Since he also wears the hat of being a newscaster, Sakurai has the most opportunities of any of the members to learn about the various issues that Japan faces. And the theme that he came up with was “agriculture.” And so Sakurai decided to start his trip by going to meet a young man who grows tea on the Yamato Plateau, in the northeastern region of Nara Prefecture.
Kenichi’s Natural Plantation and Yamato tea
Sakurai took a plane first thing in the morning to Itami Airport, and from there got in a car and drove directly to Nara Prefecture. While getting some sleep in the car, he arrived at the Hari Interchange in about an hour and a half. After resting here for a bit, the group headed for their destination, “Kenichi’s Natural Plantation,” which was still some tens of minutes away. Yamato Plateau is in the northeastern part of Nara Prefecture. And in the area, the highest parts are part of Tsuge Village. Because of the merging of the cities, towns, and villages, it’s now part of Nara City, but one young man came here by himself about 10 years ago to start farming. This man is the person that would be taking care of the group for this trip, the owner of Kenichi’s Natural Plantation, Igawa Kenichi-san (28 years-old).
The road continued past the peaceful green mountainous scenery. The view passing outside the car windows was very quiet, with its scattered tea plant fields and tea processing factories with signs reading Yamato Tea, the message that tea is the town’s specialty came across loud and clear. In fact the main product of Kenichi’s Natural Plantation, where they would be visiting the next 2 days, is tea. Here Sakurai would have his first experience in producing tea.
After driving through the winding road, they stopped the car at the edge of a large field, and Sakurai was the first to spring out of the car. He gave a huge stretch of his body, deeply breathing the air of the Yamato Plateau, and experienced that particular uplifting feeling when one first comes to the open land. And, upon climbing the small hill in front of them, they saw a single cute house with a sheet-iron roof. And standing in front of it was Igawa Kenichi-san, who was waiting for Sakurai with a huge smile.
“Hello~.” They were shown into the house by Kenichi-san, and to their surprise found Kenichi’s father, mother, and younger sister and brother, indeed the whole family was there preparing lunch. But, this was not the Igawa family’s home, it was Kenichi’s house. It seems that the family lives elsewhere normally, but when the farm work becomes busy, they come out like this to support Kenichi and help out. Watching them prepare lunch, one could feel the warmth of the Igawa family.
In the midst of that, what surprised Sakurai first was the dirt floor and kitchen hearth. He was fascinated by the kitchen that looked like it belonged in the old folk tales. The mom, who noticed Sakurai like that, opened the lid on the kettle and instantly the wonderful smell of freshly cooked rice and white steam came wafting into the room. They had only just arrived, but Sakurai and the staff as well could not wait for when lunch would be served. Perhaps Kenichi-san sensed that mood, but he suggested then, “Why don’t we start with lunch.”
One by one, the colorful dishes were brought out to the table. The mom was pouring miso soup, and the father was in the corridor, with the doors wide open, deftly mixing the rice in the kettle. Like a grandchild who was visiting his grandparents’ house in the country for summer vacation, Sakurai was light-heartedly taking pictures of the family and meal. Then, Kenichi-san suddenly brought out a menu that he had written himself.
At Kenichi’s signal, everyone said, “Itadakimasu!” They all started eating, as if they were saying, “Finally!” and soon, comments of “It’s good!” and “Delicious~” were flying around, not only from Sakurai, but from the others as well. The ingredients they used were donated by colleagues of Kenichi’s Natural Plantation. And even the dishes they were being served on were made by other colleagues. Now that they had eaten and calmed their stomachs down a little, Sakurai and Kenichi-san finally sat down to talk.
When Igawa Kenichi chose to do farming
Sakurai: How old were you when you thought you wanted to go into farming?
Kenichi: I was 15. When I was 15 and unsure about my future, I thought that I wanted to at least make my own food and live amongst nature while not using that much money. I started thinking that way because I originally wanted to become a doctor or schoolteacher, and even went to cram school to study, but I then questioned myself, like even if I went and became a teacher, would something worth teaching the children ever come from within me? After that I started saying that I didn’t want to go to high school or take the entrance exams.
Sakurai: That’s the exact opposite of what’s usual (lol). What student that wants to become a doctor or schoolteacher says they don’t want to go to high school (lol).
Kenichi: I did wind up going to high school (lol). When I graduated middle school, my grandpa, who lived with us, was diagnosed with lung cancer and was told he had 6 months to live. Before he died, he told me to at least go to high school. Around that time, I kept going back and forth about it, and in the meantime, my mom’s stomach was getting bigger, so much so I thought she was sick. I asked her, “Are you alright?” and she told me, “I’m going to have a baby.” I was like, “Eh!” (lol). I asked, “When will it be born?” and she said within the month. I was so caught up with myself that I hadn’t noticed at all. And so my younger brother was born in the middle of all that. 16 years younger than me. My grandpa died about 2 months after my younger brother was born, and my dad is the kind of person that takes a ton of photos of the family, so he took lots of photos of my younger brother next to my grandpa, even when he was connected to the ventilator, and I thought it really was like life and death. My grandpa died soon after that, and then for some reason I wound up going to the hospital in an ambulance in the middle of his funeral.
Sakurai: Eh!? Why (lol)? Your family certainly is hectic.
Kenichi: (lol). Right at the climax of the funeral, I started getting short of breath and fainted.
Father: I heard the ambulance sirens right when we were nailing the coffin closed. I never thought it was coming for my own child though (lol).
Sakurai: Eh? But why did you faint?
Kenichi: It was the first funeral I’d ever been to. When I started thinking about my grandpa, for some reason it gradually got harder for me to breathe, and on top of that, I was crying really hard (lol). You already aren’t breathing right when you’re crying. So it was like, “At any rate, call an ambulance!” (lol). So then they gave me a shot to stabilize me, and when I got back, it was just when the cremation was finishing. So then, more than worrying about what my job was going to be or what kind of lifestyle I would live, I was faced head on with the fact that someday I will definitely die, and how life starts, as I saw first-hand with my brother’s birth and grandpa’s death. One thing I decided on then was that I definitely wanted to live in a way that I would be satisfied with, and that I would make each decision so that I would be satisfied, no matter what anyone else says. And then when I thought about what I could do, I thought that while people now have moved away from nature and advanced civilization quite a lot, they have a lot of worries, and so I thought that if I myself tried out the lifestyle that humans had for tens of thousands of years, that I might realize something very important. That was when I was 15.
Sakurai: Ehh~~~.
Kenichi: I got very excited about the whole thing back then. Thought more wildly. Like, I would go join a native tribe somewhere (lol), or hole up in the mountains without any electricity or gas and make my own food and eventually become a mountain hermit. That’s what I thought when I was 15.
Sakurai: Surely there wasn’t anyone else around you who thought like that too.
Kenichi: No, there wasn’t.
Sakurai: So how did you go on to pursue that lifestyle, on your own?
Kenichi: That’s a good question. I said this earlier, but first I had been told by my grandpa before he died that I should go to high school. He came all the way to my room for something, and I wondered what he wanted. And he suddenly said, “Graduate from high school” (lol). That was still in my mind, and my parents also told me they wanted me to graduate from high school too, so I decided to go. I decided to do what I could while I was there. So, I put on my school uniform and then went to the mountains instead of school (lol). Because if I left without wearing my uniform it would be suspicious. So I left the house, and then took the train going in the other direction (lol).
Sakurai: (lol).
Kenichi: First, since I thought it would be handy to experience what I could first-hand, I bought some straw sandals at a store and went deeper and deeper into the mountains. I was looking for areas of nature that hadn’t been touched by humans before. And I thought my parents would be fine as long as I came home on time (lol).
Sakurai: So you basically became a delinquent but in a really strange way.
Everyone: (lol).
Kenichi: That’s about right. I didn’t do things like dye my hair or anything, but I hated wearing sneakers, so I wore leather sandals that I tied with straw. To me, they were very logical, and I would say things like, “The act of tying things with your fingers is very important” to my teachers. And actually, I was allowed to wear the sandals.
Sakurai: They allowed that (lol).
Kenichi: It didn’t catch on at all though (lol).
Sakurai: In the first place, did you have something like a book or a person you admired to go to as a reference?
Kenichi: This person is more like a god to me, but it was someone named Fukuoka Masanobu; he was known world-wide. I once watched a tv special that they did about him that my father recorded for me for some reason. He came up with the method of natural farming and left his family for 50 years to live in the mountains. I think the video must have been taken in the springtime, but there were flowers blooming and small cabbage butterflies flying by, it really looked like a paradise. There was no electricity or gas there. It showed what nature should really look like. According to Fukuoka-san, in the end, all humans have done are first destroy the environment around them, and then try to fix things up to be just a little bit more ecological and feel proud of themselves for that, but that way is fundamentally wrong. Rather than patch things up a little bit after the fact and then feel accomplished, nothing would get better unless people really repent for what they’ve done. But, if people threw away such a civilization and returned to the world they’re in, nature would accept them and they could return to the paradise, and that this is done most easily from the position of farming. He died at the age of 95, but when I watched that video at the age of 15, I really thought that he was right. Though I didn’t understand all of it, there were things I saw on the news or in the world of adults that I thought weren’t right, and that Fukuoka-san had the answers to all that within him. I thought if I did what he did it would be fine, and that became my biggest pillar/support. He was living that way too, and I felt a relief thinking that even if I had no money I would still be ok just doing this. All I had left to do was take on whatever challenge I wanted to. I entered a cram school for natural farming in Mie Prefecture at age 17, their youngest student there, and while still going to high school, I spent my weekends working on a field.
Sakurai: And from there you started making tea?
Kenichi: I still went to that cram school even after graduating high school, and started looking for land that I could use to start my own farm. I eventually found this land and actually had originally planned to grow vegetables here. But the field I borrowed had tea growing on it, so I decided to do tea.
Sakurai: That’s what the reason was. I thought it was because you really liked tea or something like that (lol).
Kenichi: The first time I saw it, I had no idea what it was. Like, what are these rough-looking trees? So then I was told, “These are tea plants, you know” and I said, “It’s tea!? I don’t know anything about tea” (lol). I said, “I’ll cut down all the tea plants, and grow vegetables here instead.” But from the perspective of natural farming, it makes the most sense to grow whatever best fits that environment. I realized I was the one being unnatural in saying I wanted to grow vegetables here, so then I decided to grow tea wherever the tea plants already were, and to grow vegetables in the places where they weren’t. And then I just dived right in. I spent the first 3 or 4 years constantly working in the fields without any days off in order to somehow get by with the vegetables and tea. At first I had trouble getting enough to be able to rent a house, so I commuted from my parent’s house 40 minutes one way. All the while thinking about how much gas I was burning to do so (lol). Even though I was trying to be as natural as possible. I was burning 20 or 30,000 yen a month (lol). At first there was hardly any crops to harvest, and I’d bring home like 3 cucumbers and think it’s no good. Even though I started doing it for the earth, I thought it wasn’t supposed to turn out like that. But gradually I started getting more vegetables to harvest, and began looking for people to buy them, so I put up fliers at the train stations, but didn’t get a single phone call. Finally I just started leaving my friends’ moms like 5 heads of lettuce each, saying, “I started growing lettuce, please have some” (lol). But then, maybe one or two of them told me, “Bring me some more next week.” Those were my first customers. After that, with the power of word of mouth, if one or two people knew, it would spread to 10 just like that. That’s how I started growing vegetables and delivering them to people’s houses. At the same time as all that, I had the field where the tea trees branches had grown too thick, so my father and I went at the peak of summer wearing raincoats to cut the trees that had grown to about 3 meters high. We stood on a platform and swung around a grass cutter. Looking back now I realize what a dangerous thing we did (lol).
Sakurai: How tall do the tea plants normally grow to?
Kenichi: Normally like 50 or 60 cm. About as tall as I am now sitting here on the floor.
Sakurai: And those ones grew to be 3 meters because they were left alone?
Kenichi: Yes, over about 15 years. Apparently they have some tea trees in other countries like China that are up to 15 meters tall.
Sakurai: Eh~~.
Kenichi: So we cut them and got them down to around 30 cm tall and I thought it would be ok, but the neighbors told me, “No matter what you do the tea plants will grow back” and “Even if you cut them to the ground, they’ll grow back” and sure enough, a few months later they grew back. I was moved by that. Like, they’re really living~. It was fast after that. In about 6 months, the tea plants made an arch, and my first harvest I was able to get 24 kg. Now I’m making about 5 tons of it.
Sakurai: Eh~~~~!
Kenichi: That first 24 kg had lots of sprouts and branches and stuff mixed in, but I wanted to try making tea from it myself, so I dried it out on a woven straw mat I put in a corner of the tea field. That was the first tea I made. I didn’t know how it would taste but I thought it should at least be drinkable and I tried it, but it had a wild taste, or rather, it was like, “Is this tea!?” (lol). It wasn’t ok like that after all, so I looked for someone in the village who could process the tea and Nakao-san was the one that told me, “You can bring it to my place.” Normally one wouldn’t want to take just 24 kg, it’s too small an amount and won’t make any money. So at the time I was just grateful that she would process it for me. And thanks to that, we were able to make a really clean, beautiful tea. When I was super happy and celebrating about it, Nakao-san told me, “Igawa-kun, you can’t think about how much money you’ll make if you sell this for such and such a price per 100 grams.” She said, “Give it to the people who have taken care of you so far so they can drink it” and that really stuck in my heart and I did just that. And that’s how I started out in tea making.
Sakurai: Eh~. That’s wonderful. So to begin with, you’ve been renting the fields?
Kenichi: I’m renting them all. It’s a life of borrowing (lol).
Sakurai: Where is your parents’ house?
Kenichi: My parents live about 30-40 minutes away from here, in a valley in Nara called Yamato Kooriyama. Right now my family is here helping me out.
Sakurai: I see~. Why did you pick this village in the first place?
Kenichi: For me, there were two choices. I was going back and forth between going to a mostly unexplored place with a clear water stream and tons of nature, or working at a place somewhat nearby a town and keep in touch with my family, but after talking to the people around me and getting a sense of my own thoughts, I chose the latter one. And I was looking for a field in the winter time, and was super cold while driving outside on my family’s scooter. My ears were going to fall off, but despite that I was driving around trying to find a field to rent, but it was cold out and no one was outside (lol). It was so cold that I just stumbled into a friend’s house, and they said, “Igawa-kun, if you’re having that much trouble I can introduce you to my grandpa in the country.” And I thought it was some kind of destiny, so I chose this village. And I decided to just take whatever field they gave me, since I wasn’t in a position to be picky. And he introduced me to this elderly man named Kohigashi-san, who had these wonderful wrinkles when he smiled, and he understood my feelings so well and said that if I really wanted to farm so badly I should definitely do it in this village. But, he unfortunately passed away about 5 years ago now. In this area people are buried, and when I went to his funeral, I saw that they had put the hatchet he had used for about 50 years near his pillow, and he was buried with it in his coffin.
Sakurai: Listening to you talk, it sounds like all of the people that have taken care of you are older. It makes me wonder if there are any younger people around you.
Kenichi: It really feels like I have lots of people like my grandpa around me. Lately there have been more and more young people around though.
Sakurai: The tea that you make is organic?
Kenichi: Yes it is. We don’t use any fertilizers, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides at all. At this farm, we don’t even have any fertilizer. Everyone pictures farming as using fertilizer to create the soil, but I think that putting in a lot of outside fertilizer into the soil is unnatural in the end. In the past here, they used to grow the rapeseed and squeeze it to make the oil cake fertilizers to use on their own, but now the oil cake fertilizers are made from rapeseed grown in Australia or Canada. For instance, with regards to livestock manure, Japan doesn’t import any manure, but Japan has quite a lot of livestock in relation to the population and land area, and the food for that livestock comes mostly from overseas. The farms being supported like that by foreign land or organic farming are still common. I didn’t want that, I was trying to have a farm that could be sustained with only what it has on its land, or with the help of the village nearby, so I try to make the tea that way too. What I make my priority is not that I make something, it’s that I don’t get in the way of nature. If there are the tea trees, sun, water, and the earth as a foundation, it will naturally grow on its own.
Sakurai: About how many workers do you have here at Kenichi’s Natural Plantation?
Kenichi: Right now, there are about 5 or 6 main people. They live here, trying to figure out their way of life, and then eventually strike out on their own. If you include the people that settled within a 30 minute drive of here, it’s probably about 10-15 people. All of us together made a group called the “Yamato Heart Farm Bond” and do many activities here. Like there is the word “Yamato Soul,” there is also the word “Yamato Heart.” Even before the era from the “Kojiki” (TN: Historical chronicle of Japan from the 8th century) or the history in textbooks, people lived in harmony with the four seasons and it was important to them to be thankful to nature. That spirit is called the “Yamato Heart,” and I really want to get back to that and connect with other people who also engage in the Yamato Heart through farming, that’s why it’s called the Yamato Heart Farm Bond. I noticed then that Nara is also called Yamato, and coincidentally the next village over is called Yamazoe Village (TN: The Kanji literally means “accompanying the mountain” village), and in the valley there’s an amazing place that has a spiritual boulder there called “Iwakura.” Now there are temples and shrines around and it’s believed the gods are there, but in the past, the mountains and boulders themselves were thought to house the gods. Yamazoe Village is probably the oldest place in Western Japan where people started to live; they’ve been there since the beginning of the Joumon era, so around 12,000 years ago. The people of that time tried to imitate the constellations and heavenly bodies, and placed the boulders there.
Sakurai: Eh~~.
Kenichi: In places where the Summer Triangle or the Milky Way lie, there are about 650 meters of stones lined up like a rock river. These stones are very heavy Ikoma stones that are only found in that part of this mountain.
Sakurai: Eh~~. I’d like to go see it.
Kenichi: There are places like that, and there was a religion that was centered around the mountain here. Before I realized it, I’d come to the birthplace of the Yamato Heart. I feel like conveying that message one more time is the mission of us, the next generation. I say that, but the Yamato Heart Farm Bond members are all people in their 20s and 30s, so we also have various areas we still need to mature in too (lol). But, nature has a very motherly open-mindedness, so I think it would be difficult for humans to distort it very much. No matter how hard it gets I wouldn’t give up life, because I have the foundation of the support from nature and the elderly people of the village, and I think this is really the treasure/asset of Japan. I don’t think there’s anyone who won’t make good use of that here. I’ve benefited from that blessing these past 10 years, and now I want to figure out how to share it in some way with the young people that will carry Japan onwards.
Phew, that was a bit long! But onwards to the next part, where Sho-chan starts harvesting the tea!
Next part here~
Masterpost is here.
We're over half way there now!! This weekend it's Sho-chan; he went to Nara to learn a little more about agriculture in Japan and some of the issues facing it. This one was quite a bit easier for me to translate than I anticipated, but the person that Sho-chan visits with talks A LOT, haha. But, his story was quite fun, so I hope you guys enjoy!
Sakurai Sho and Japan’s Agriculture
Nara
Since he also wears the hat of being a newscaster, Sakurai has the most opportunities of any of the members to learn about the various issues that Japan faces. And the theme that he came up with was “agriculture.” And so Sakurai decided to start his trip by going to meet a young man who grows tea on the Yamato Plateau, in the northeastern region of Nara Prefecture.
Kenichi’s Natural Plantation and Yamato tea
Sakurai took a plane first thing in the morning to Itami Airport, and from there got in a car and drove directly to Nara Prefecture. While getting some sleep in the car, he arrived at the Hari Interchange in about an hour and a half. After resting here for a bit, the group headed for their destination, “Kenichi’s Natural Plantation,” which was still some tens of minutes away. Yamato Plateau is in the northeastern part of Nara Prefecture. And in the area, the highest parts are part of Tsuge Village. Because of the merging of the cities, towns, and villages, it’s now part of Nara City, but one young man came here by himself about 10 years ago to start farming. This man is the person that would be taking care of the group for this trip, the owner of Kenichi’s Natural Plantation, Igawa Kenichi-san (28 years-old).
The road continued past the peaceful green mountainous scenery. The view passing outside the car windows was very quiet, with its scattered tea plant fields and tea processing factories with signs reading Yamato Tea, the message that tea is the town’s specialty came across loud and clear. In fact the main product of Kenichi’s Natural Plantation, where they would be visiting the next 2 days, is tea. Here Sakurai would have his first experience in producing tea.
After driving through the winding road, they stopped the car at the edge of a large field, and Sakurai was the first to spring out of the car. He gave a huge stretch of his body, deeply breathing the air of the Yamato Plateau, and experienced that particular uplifting feeling when one first comes to the open land. And, upon climbing the small hill in front of them, they saw a single cute house with a sheet-iron roof. And standing in front of it was Igawa Kenichi-san, who was waiting for Sakurai with a huge smile.
“Hello~.” They were shown into the house by Kenichi-san, and to their surprise found Kenichi’s father, mother, and younger sister and brother, indeed the whole family was there preparing lunch. But, this was not the Igawa family’s home, it was Kenichi’s house. It seems that the family lives elsewhere normally, but when the farm work becomes busy, they come out like this to support Kenichi and help out. Watching them prepare lunch, one could feel the warmth of the Igawa family.
In the midst of that, what surprised Sakurai first was the dirt floor and kitchen hearth. He was fascinated by the kitchen that looked like it belonged in the old folk tales. The mom, who noticed Sakurai like that, opened the lid on the kettle and instantly the wonderful smell of freshly cooked rice and white steam came wafting into the room. They had only just arrived, but Sakurai and the staff as well could not wait for when lunch would be served. Perhaps Kenichi-san sensed that mood, but he suggested then, “Why don’t we start with lunch.”
One by one, the colorful dishes were brought out to the table. The mom was pouring miso soup, and the father was in the corridor, with the doors wide open, deftly mixing the rice in the kettle. Like a grandchild who was visiting his grandparents’ house in the country for summer vacation, Sakurai was light-heartedly taking pictures of the family and meal. Then, Kenichi-san suddenly brought out a menu that he had written himself.
At Kenichi’s signal, everyone said, “Itadakimasu!” They all started eating, as if they were saying, “Finally!” and soon, comments of “It’s good!” and “Delicious~” were flying around, not only from Sakurai, but from the others as well. The ingredients they used were donated by colleagues of Kenichi’s Natural Plantation. And even the dishes they were being served on were made by other colleagues. Now that they had eaten and calmed their stomachs down a little, Sakurai and Kenichi-san finally sat down to talk.
When Igawa Kenichi chose to do farming
Sakurai: How old were you when you thought you wanted to go into farming?
Kenichi: I was 15. When I was 15 and unsure about my future, I thought that I wanted to at least make my own food and live amongst nature while not using that much money. I started thinking that way because I originally wanted to become a doctor or schoolteacher, and even went to cram school to study, but I then questioned myself, like even if I went and became a teacher, would something worth teaching the children ever come from within me? After that I started saying that I didn’t want to go to high school or take the entrance exams.
Sakurai: That’s the exact opposite of what’s usual (lol). What student that wants to become a doctor or schoolteacher says they don’t want to go to high school (lol).
Kenichi: I did wind up going to high school (lol). When I graduated middle school, my grandpa, who lived with us, was diagnosed with lung cancer and was told he had 6 months to live. Before he died, he told me to at least go to high school. Around that time, I kept going back and forth about it, and in the meantime, my mom’s stomach was getting bigger, so much so I thought she was sick. I asked her, “Are you alright?” and she told me, “I’m going to have a baby.” I was like, “Eh!” (lol). I asked, “When will it be born?” and she said within the month. I was so caught up with myself that I hadn’t noticed at all. And so my younger brother was born in the middle of all that. 16 years younger than me. My grandpa died about 2 months after my younger brother was born, and my dad is the kind of person that takes a ton of photos of the family, so he took lots of photos of my younger brother next to my grandpa, even when he was connected to the ventilator, and I thought it really was like life and death. My grandpa died soon after that, and then for some reason I wound up going to the hospital in an ambulance in the middle of his funeral.
Sakurai: Eh!? Why (lol)? Your family certainly is hectic.
Kenichi: (lol). Right at the climax of the funeral, I started getting short of breath and fainted.
Father: I heard the ambulance sirens right when we were nailing the coffin closed. I never thought it was coming for my own child though (lol).
Sakurai: Eh? But why did you faint?
Kenichi: It was the first funeral I’d ever been to. When I started thinking about my grandpa, for some reason it gradually got harder for me to breathe, and on top of that, I was crying really hard (lol). You already aren’t breathing right when you’re crying. So it was like, “At any rate, call an ambulance!” (lol). So then they gave me a shot to stabilize me, and when I got back, it was just when the cremation was finishing. So then, more than worrying about what my job was going to be or what kind of lifestyle I would live, I was faced head on with the fact that someday I will definitely die, and how life starts, as I saw first-hand with my brother’s birth and grandpa’s death. One thing I decided on then was that I definitely wanted to live in a way that I would be satisfied with, and that I would make each decision so that I would be satisfied, no matter what anyone else says. And then when I thought about what I could do, I thought that while people now have moved away from nature and advanced civilization quite a lot, they have a lot of worries, and so I thought that if I myself tried out the lifestyle that humans had for tens of thousands of years, that I might realize something very important. That was when I was 15.
Sakurai: Ehh~~~.
Kenichi: I got very excited about the whole thing back then. Thought more wildly. Like, I would go join a native tribe somewhere (lol), or hole up in the mountains without any electricity or gas and make my own food and eventually become a mountain hermit. That’s what I thought when I was 15.
Sakurai: Surely there wasn’t anyone else around you who thought like that too.
Kenichi: No, there wasn’t.
Sakurai: So how did you go on to pursue that lifestyle, on your own?
Kenichi: That’s a good question. I said this earlier, but first I had been told by my grandpa before he died that I should go to high school. He came all the way to my room for something, and I wondered what he wanted. And he suddenly said, “Graduate from high school” (lol). That was still in my mind, and my parents also told me they wanted me to graduate from high school too, so I decided to go. I decided to do what I could while I was there. So, I put on my school uniform and then went to the mountains instead of school (lol). Because if I left without wearing my uniform it would be suspicious. So I left the house, and then took the train going in the other direction (lol).
Sakurai: (lol).
Kenichi: First, since I thought it would be handy to experience what I could first-hand, I bought some straw sandals at a store and went deeper and deeper into the mountains. I was looking for areas of nature that hadn’t been touched by humans before. And I thought my parents would be fine as long as I came home on time (lol).
Sakurai: So you basically became a delinquent but in a really strange way.
Everyone: (lol).
Kenichi: That’s about right. I didn’t do things like dye my hair or anything, but I hated wearing sneakers, so I wore leather sandals that I tied with straw. To me, they were very logical, and I would say things like, “The act of tying things with your fingers is very important” to my teachers. And actually, I was allowed to wear the sandals.
Sakurai: They allowed that (lol).
Kenichi: It didn’t catch on at all though (lol).
Sakurai: In the first place, did you have something like a book or a person you admired to go to as a reference?
Kenichi: This person is more like a god to me, but it was someone named Fukuoka Masanobu; he was known world-wide. I once watched a tv special that they did about him that my father recorded for me for some reason. He came up with the method of natural farming and left his family for 50 years to live in the mountains. I think the video must have been taken in the springtime, but there were flowers blooming and small cabbage butterflies flying by, it really looked like a paradise. There was no electricity or gas there. It showed what nature should really look like. According to Fukuoka-san, in the end, all humans have done are first destroy the environment around them, and then try to fix things up to be just a little bit more ecological and feel proud of themselves for that, but that way is fundamentally wrong. Rather than patch things up a little bit after the fact and then feel accomplished, nothing would get better unless people really repent for what they’ve done. But, if people threw away such a civilization and returned to the world they’re in, nature would accept them and they could return to the paradise, and that this is done most easily from the position of farming. He died at the age of 95, but when I watched that video at the age of 15, I really thought that he was right. Though I didn’t understand all of it, there were things I saw on the news or in the world of adults that I thought weren’t right, and that Fukuoka-san had the answers to all that within him. I thought if I did what he did it would be fine, and that became my biggest pillar/support. He was living that way too, and I felt a relief thinking that even if I had no money I would still be ok just doing this. All I had left to do was take on whatever challenge I wanted to. I entered a cram school for natural farming in Mie Prefecture at age 17, their youngest student there, and while still going to high school, I spent my weekends working on a field.
Sakurai: And from there you started making tea?
Kenichi: I still went to that cram school even after graduating high school, and started looking for land that I could use to start my own farm. I eventually found this land and actually had originally planned to grow vegetables here. But the field I borrowed had tea growing on it, so I decided to do tea.
Sakurai: That’s what the reason was. I thought it was because you really liked tea or something like that (lol).
Kenichi: The first time I saw it, I had no idea what it was. Like, what are these rough-looking trees? So then I was told, “These are tea plants, you know” and I said, “It’s tea!? I don’t know anything about tea” (lol). I said, “I’ll cut down all the tea plants, and grow vegetables here instead.” But from the perspective of natural farming, it makes the most sense to grow whatever best fits that environment. I realized I was the one being unnatural in saying I wanted to grow vegetables here, so then I decided to grow tea wherever the tea plants already were, and to grow vegetables in the places where they weren’t. And then I just dived right in. I spent the first 3 or 4 years constantly working in the fields without any days off in order to somehow get by with the vegetables and tea. At first I had trouble getting enough to be able to rent a house, so I commuted from my parent’s house 40 minutes one way. All the while thinking about how much gas I was burning to do so (lol). Even though I was trying to be as natural as possible. I was burning 20 or 30,000 yen a month (lol). At first there was hardly any crops to harvest, and I’d bring home like 3 cucumbers and think it’s no good. Even though I started doing it for the earth, I thought it wasn’t supposed to turn out like that. But gradually I started getting more vegetables to harvest, and began looking for people to buy them, so I put up fliers at the train stations, but didn’t get a single phone call. Finally I just started leaving my friends’ moms like 5 heads of lettuce each, saying, “I started growing lettuce, please have some” (lol). But then, maybe one or two of them told me, “Bring me some more next week.” Those were my first customers. After that, with the power of word of mouth, if one or two people knew, it would spread to 10 just like that. That’s how I started growing vegetables and delivering them to people’s houses. At the same time as all that, I had the field where the tea trees branches had grown too thick, so my father and I went at the peak of summer wearing raincoats to cut the trees that had grown to about 3 meters high. We stood on a platform and swung around a grass cutter. Looking back now I realize what a dangerous thing we did (lol).
Sakurai: How tall do the tea plants normally grow to?
Kenichi: Normally like 50 or 60 cm. About as tall as I am now sitting here on the floor.
Sakurai: And those ones grew to be 3 meters because they were left alone?
Kenichi: Yes, over about 15 years. Apparently they have some tea trees in other countries like China that are up to 15 meters tall.
Sakurai: Eh~~.
Kenichi: So we cut them and got them down to around 30 cm tall and I thought it would be ok, but the neighbors told me, “No matter what you do the tea plants will grow back” and “Even if you cut them to the ground, they’ll grow back” and sure enough, a few months later they grew back. I was moved by that. Like, they’re really living~. It was fast after that. In about 6 months, the tea plants made an arch, and my first harvest I was able to get 24 kg. Now I’m making about 5 tons of it.
Sakurai: Eh~~~~!
Kenichi: That first 24 kg had lots of sprouts and branches and stuff mixed in, but I wanted to try making tea from it myself, so I dried it out on a woven straw mat I put in a corner of the tea field. That was the first tea I made. I didn’t know how it would taste but I thought it should at least be drinkable and I tried it, but it had a wild taste, or rather, it was like, “Is this tea!?” (lol). It wasn’t ok like that after all, so I looked for someone in the village who could process the tea and Nakao-san was the one that told me, “You can bring it to my place.” Normally one wouldn’t want to take just 24 kg, it’s too small an amount and won’t make any money. So at the time I was just grateful that she would process it for me. And thanks to that, we were able to make a really clean, beautiful tea. When I was super happy and celebrating about it, Nakao-san told me, “Igawa-kun, you can’t think about how much money you’ll make if you sell this for such and such a price per 100 grams.” She said, “Give it to the people who have taken care of you so far so they can drink it” and that really stuck in my heart and I did just that. And that’s how I started out in tea making.
Sakurai: Eh~. That’s wonderful. So to begin with, you’ve been renting the fields?
Kenichi: I’m renting them all. It’s a life of borrowing (lol).
Sakurai: Where is your parents’ house?
Kenichi: My parents live about 30-40 minutes away from here, in a valley in Nara called Yamato Kooriyama. Right now my family is here helping me out.
Sakurai: I see~. Why did you pick this village in the first place?
Kenichi: For me, there were two choices. I was going back and forth between going to a mostly unexplored place with a clear water stream and tons of nature, or working at a place somewhat nearby a town and keep in touch with my family, but after talking to the people around me and getting a sense of my own thoughts, I chose the latter one. And I was looking for a field in the winter time, and was super cold while driving outside on my family’s scooter. My ears were going to fall off, but despite that I was driving around trying to find a field to rent, but it was cold out and no one was outside (lol). It was so cold that I just stumbled into a friend’s house, and they said, “Igawa-kun, if you’re having that much trouble I can introduce you to my grandpa in the country.” And I thought it was some kind of destiny, so I chose this village. And I decided to just take whatever field they gave me, since I wasn’t in a position to be picky. And he introduced me to this elderly man named Kohigashi-san, who had these wonderful wrinkles when he smiled, and he understood my feelings so well and said that if I really wanted to farm so badly I should definitely do it in this village. But, he unfortunately passed away about 5 years ago now. In this area people are buried, and when I went to his funeral, I saw that they had put the hatchet he had used for about 50 years near his pillow, and he was buried with it in his coffin.
Sakurai: Listening to you talk, it sounds like all of the people that have taken care of you are older. It makes me wonder if there are any younger people around you.
Kenichi: It really feels like I have lots of people like my grandpa around me. Lately there have been more and more young people around though.
Sakurai: The tea that you make is organic?
Kenichi: Yes it is. We don’t use any fertilizers, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides at all. At this farm, we don’t even have any fertilizer. Everyone pictures farming as using fertilizer to create the soil, but I think that putting in a lot of outside fertilizer into the soil is unnatural in the end. In the past here, they used to grow the rapeseed and squeeze it to make the oil cake fertilizers to use on their own, but now the oil cake fertilizers are made from rapeseed grown in Australia or Canada. For instance, with regards to livestock manure, Japan doesn’t import any manure, but Japan has quite a lot of livestock in relation to the population and land area, and the food for that livestock comes mostly from overseas. The farms being supported like that by foreign land or organic farming are still common. I didn’t want that, I was trying to have a farm that could be sustained with only what it has on its land, or with the help of the village nearby, so I try to make the tea that way too. What I make my priority is not that I make something, it’s that I don’t get in the way of nature. If there are the tea trees, sun, water, and the earth as a foundation, it will naturally grow on its own.
Sakurai: About how many workers do you have here at Kenichi’s Natural Plantation?
Kenichi: Right now, there are about 5 or 6 main people. They live here, trying to figure out their way of life, and then eventually strike out on their own. If you include the people that settled within a 30 minute drive of here, it’s probably about 10-15 people. All of us together made a group called the “Yamato Heart Farm Bond” and do many activities here. Like there is the word “Yamato Soul,” there is also the word “Yamato Heart.” Even before the era from the “Kojiki” (TN: Historical chronicle of Japan from the 8th century) or the history in textbooks, people lived in harmony with the four seasons and it was important to them to be thankful to nature. That spirit is called the “Yamato Heart,” and I really want to get back to that and connect with other people who also engage in the Yamato Heart through farming, that’s why it’s called the Yamato Heart Farm Bond. I noticed then that Nara is also called Yamato, and coincidentally the next village over is called Yamazoe Village (TN: The Kanji literally means “accompanying the mountain” village), and in the valley there’s an amazing place that has a spiritual boulder there called “Iwakura.” Now there are temples and shrines around and it’s believed the gods are there, but in the past, the mountains and boulders themselves were thought to house the gods. Yamazoe Village is probably the oldest place in Western Japan where people started to live; they’ve been there since the beginning of the Joumon era, so around 12,000 years ago. The people of that time tried to imitate the constellations and heavenly bodies, and placed the boulders there.
Sakurai: Eh~~.
Kenichi: In places where the Summer Triangle or the Milky Way lie, there are about 650 meters of stones lined up like a rock river. These stones are very heavy Ikoma stones that are only found in that part of this mountain.
Sakurai: Eh~~. I’d like to go see it.
Kenichi: There are places like that, and there was a religion that was centered around the mountain here. Before I realized it, I’d come to the birthplace of the Yamato Heart. I feel like conveying that message one more time is the mission of us, the next generation. I say that, but the Yamato Heart Farm Bond members are all people in their 20s and 30s, so we also have various areas we still need to mature in too (lol). But, nature has a very motherly open-mindedness, so I think it would be difficult for humans to distort it very much. No matter how hard it gets I wouldn’t give up life, because I have the foundation of the support from nature and the elderly people of the village, and I think this is really the treasure/asset of Japan. I don’t think there’s anyone who won’t make good use of that here. I’ve benefited from that blessing these past 10 years, and now I want to figure out how to share it in some way with the young people that will carry Japan onwards.
Phew, that was a bit long! But onwards to the next part, where Sho-chan starts harvesting the tea!
Next part here~
Masterpost is here.