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Rice paddies and small time farmers
Mr. Kudo stands in front straw tee-pees drying in a rice field. 99.10.12/ Temperature: 15C/ Weather: Partly Cloudy/Wind Direction: W
Start: Kasuga, Mukawa /Latitude: 42 35 00 N /Longitude: 142 00 00E
Destination: Atsuma Latitude: 42 43 29 N/ Longitude: 141 49 05 E
Distance Traveled: 21 kmToday I stumbled upon yet another new landscape-rice paddies!
Most of the original inhabitants of Hokkaido were hunters and gatherers and it is said that the whole island was a forest. What remains of this scenery I passed through in Shiretoko, Akan, and Daisetsuzan National Parks.
All of the farmland that lies between is the result of the pioneer days in the late 1800's. Similar to the great push west in my own American history, pioneers in Japan sought to make new fortunes off of the land in Hokkaido. Rice paddies are said to be part of the original landscape in Japan, not Hokkaido. The pioneers brought the landscape with them.
Straight rows of rice straw arranged in tee-pee like fashion created an artistic arrangement in the freshly harvested field that lay before me. The straw is sitting out to dry so it can be sold off as horse feed. Large rectangular paddies stretched all along the Mu River basin and much of the 21 kilometers I traveled today.
I approached an elderly man out doing morning chores in his garden. "My parents came to Hokkaido before I was born," said Mr. Kudo, 90. The shadow of his hat covered part of his face. No matter how hard I looked it was hard to see his age in his face. "My parents farmed rice as have I. We used to do everything by hand," he said.
The expansive rice paddies of Atsuma. Approaching from the house came Mr. Kudo's son Komatsu , also a rice farmer. "You won't find this kind of scenery in other fields down the road. We are the only ones who still do this," said Komatsu, 60. "We don't have the machines that other places have. We've also been doing it this way from long ago," he told me. The Kudo's harvest their rice with machines, but they continue to collect the rice-straw by hand.
There is nothing romantic about the hard work of the farm work that three generations of Kudos have gone through with. In fact, due to all of the hard work of farming, Komatsu encouraged his children not to be farmers. "They should choose their own paths freely," he told me.
"There used to be 16 families working the fields cooperatively. Now only 4 remain. Many of the 25 families in the village have found other work," said Mr. Kudo. "In another few years you may not see these tee-pees around here."
More important that the tee-pees is the experience of the generations that have created them year after year. Small scale farms like the Kubotas have supported generation after generation in Japanese history.
Questioning the merits of farming and paving the way for a different lifestyle may be a necessity of the times. I just hope that the next generation of Kudos will be able to pass on the family experience.
Greg
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