The Rice Cycle in Japan: April is the Beginning of Life

APRIL
April 1st, 1998 I went out for a long walk in the fields today. The rice season should be starting very soon and these fields will be teeming with people, working long hours at very intense manual labor. But right now it is quiet. And warm. The paddies are still fields, covered in winter growth that has begun to bloom. If I didn't know better I would say that someone is growing beautiful purple flowers just for the fun of it. Before long though, these flowering weeds will all be cut back, turned under, flooded and planted over with rice. So for now I enjoy the colors of spring.
April 10th The phone rings. It is an employee from Nokyo, the nationalized agricultural cooperative, calling to say that they will be delivering the rice seedlings today about 2pm. After hanging up the phone Ryoko Nambu calls her husband at the office and informs him of the delivery. She is to have them bring the boxes of seedlings into the greenhouse. After her husband rings off, Ryoko puts on her boots, apron and farmers hat, then heads out to the greenhouse.
	The arrival of the seedlings signifies the beginning of the preparation of the fields. From last years harvest to the beginning of April, the fields were allowed to sit in silence, quietly replenishing their nutrient for the next year's crop. Weeds will have grown in and the mud walls around the fields will have degenerated somewhat and need rebuilding. Even though these are weeds, they still add a lot of beautiful color to the landscape. The dog likes to run through these fields like a maniac, doing circles, figure-eights, and whatever he can manage. I guess he likes the feel of the soft, pink flowers against his flanks.
The Nambu family have quite a large amount of land for rice so their greenhouse for the seedlings needs to be fairly large. Our neighbor has less land and he makes a low, long Quonset-like structure that is about 30cm high for his seedlings. Other Sunday farmers have similar make-shift, temporary structures, albeit smaller. When the seedlings are ready to plant, the greenhouse is dismantled and put away until next year. The Nambu greenhouse looks like a typical North American Greenhouse, except for the fact that the skin is made from clear veneer, much like a plastic garbage bag. It is located in a sunny part of the yard, near the cherry blossom tree, such that when the doors are opened the breeze can blow freely through. As it is a warm, sunny day, Ryoko opens the door to the greenhouse and prepares for the arrival of the seedlings. At just after 2:00 a small white lorry arrives carrying pallets of rice seedlings. The one centimeter high seedlings are in boxes that are about 30cm wide by 60cm long. Three young men hop out and begin carting the low boxes to the greenhouse where Ryoko begins laying them out, side-by-side in long rows. These young, vulnerable seedlings will sit in the closed greenhouse for about three days until they become stronger. After that, the day being a nice sunny one, the doors will be opened and a breeze allowed to waft through the baby blades. After the boxes are all laid out in perfect lines, Ryoko turns on the water and begins to give them a slight watering. She or her husband will continue to do this for the next twenty days until the seedlings are ready to plant at a strong 10cm length.
The Nambus are in their sixties, their parents having passed away several years ago. Two of their three daughters are away in different parts of the country starting new families and the youngest daughter, Maki works every day in the city. That leaves Ryoko and her husband to look after the fields. It is hard, backbreaking work, digging in the mud, but honest, and satisfying. In many cases, if the family is younger, the the parents are still doing the work. It is not unusual to see 80 year old men and women out working their fields; doing what they have been doing for the past 65 years.
Mr. Nambu starts up his well-kept tractor and drives over to his fields, where he begins tilling the earth, turning under the weeds that have grown up over the winter. When that is done, he dons his thick apron, puts on his face protector and, using an evil-looking gas-powered weed cutter, begins to cut back all of the foliage that has taken root along the banks of the fields. Lots of people are out here doing this at this time of the year and it isn't surprising to see a half-dozen men garbed in mysterious robes and headgear weeding away at their fields. They will probably do it another two times over the course of the season.
April 15th Before heading off to his job in the city, Mr. Nambu takes an early-morning trip to the fields and opens the water vents, allowing the fields to flood entirely. The hard, nutrient-rich soil becomes completely saturated, turning into a knee-high deep, slurry. If you take a walk through these paddies at this time you can smell the fresh earth in the air. It might even remind you of the dirt you have to wash off your garden carrots before you take that first bite. This is a time of sunshine, warmth, fresh yet not cold breezes that seem to bring with them the first signs of spring. April 19th I was out with my dog for a walk today and bumped into Mr. and Mrs. Nambu in their fields. Ryoko was calf-deep in muck, methodically rebuilding the 30cm-high mud banks that line the paddies, preventing the water from running off. She had a flat-bladed hoe and was using it to scoop up mud, then pack it on the sides of the banks, patting it firm. Many others were doing this as well. It seems to be pretty much the standard method of operation in the small, family-run rice fields. When the sun hits these mud embankments they will harden and dry, much like clay pottery bakes if left in the sun. Her husband was running the tractor through the slurry, attempting to make the surface perfectly smooth. The tractors used for rice paddies have a unique paddle-like system attached to their tires, allowing them to paddle their way through the deep muck. A normal tractor would bog down in an instant but since these beasts are geared so low, with the help of the paddles they are able to keep moving, tilling the mud so that the surface becomes very smooth and even, no ruts or tracks left. This is important for the rice because the paddies will be flooded regularly during the growing season and soil must be even and level throughout the entire area with no high or low spots or some of the rice will not get enough water. This uniform height allows the seedlings to grow at a uniform pace. The Nambus said they would be at it all day, since the weather was so nice (unusual in Fukui Prefecture). I bade them good luck and headed home. This kind of hands-on approach gets you closer to your crops for a much more personal feel, don't you think? How close to his rice crop can a "fly-by" seeder, and cropduster really get? Only a bird's eye view of the whole procedure.
April 26th There is a really interesting machine that people use for dispensing fertilizer about their paddies. It looks like a big vacuum cleaner that is strapped to the back with a huge "milk jug" attached to that. In the container is fertilizer and below that is a motor. It looks really heavy. A long, thick pipe is attached to that and it blows the fertilizer beads out into the paddies. I saw a man walking through his fields today with it on his back, blowing the fertilizer all around. This is something that you would probably never see in North America or Europe. It just seems so primitive compared to what is available in this age. But then again, Japan is a very traditional country and as the saying goes, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks."And yet, you know? It works. If rice farming were on a larger scale it would seem very impractical however with such small plots to walk through and the fact that there are big ditches surrounding every field, the idea of carrying something on your back as you walk through the rice, inspecting the field has some appeal to it.
April 28th Usually when I go out for a walk with the dog it is in the morning before work. That is when the farmers seem to be busiest. I noticed that the seedlings, in their trays were sitting along the banks of some of the tambo, ready for planting. I asked a farmer when he plans on putting them in the ground and he told me on the first or second of May. Then he jumped back on his tractor and began pulling a long beam behind his tiller in order to smooth the mud out evenly for the planting. I noticed the other day that someone was doing this as well. I wonder if the Nambus do this as well. It reminds me of when I was a kid out at my dad's farm. Every year we used to go out for a trip and he would have to level out the gravel yard. He would pull a beam behind the truck and we kids would stand on it and pretend we were surfing. It kept weight on the beam and it kept us out of my dad's hair. The May Edition of The Rice Cycle Cam Switzer April 19, 1998