One Day the Shadow Passed

by Jonathan Reggio

  What is more I wasn’t alone. It was the farmer who was the odd one out; it was he and not I who had the strange ideas. No one else in Japan farmed as he did; centuries of trial and error had established hallowed routines of plough and harvest, and besides, there was hardly a farmer left who didn’t also use chemicals.

  Frustration was welling up within me.

  “Why then do people plough? Why then does everyone else in Japan and the developed world use pesticides? Why do they toil away pruning their trees? All over the world people do these things. Are they all wrong? Are they wasting their time? Are you seriously suggesting that centuries of progress in agricultural techniques should be thrown away?”

  The farmer was frowning. It was the first time since I had met him that his face had been disturbed by such an expression.

  “People think that the modern world has emerged from the chaos of the past; they think that the good comes slowly from the bad. But this is not so.

  “In the old days, here on Shikoku Island, people lived happy lives on small farms, eating well. Their houses were made of wood, earth and paper and their clothes were made from cotton and straw. The food they ate grew at their feet and it was the best food in the entire world.

  “The winter holiday would last for three months. Farmers even had time to write haikus, to fish and to hunt rabbits in the hills. The harvest was a time of joy and celebration, and people lived healthy lives outdoors under the sun.

  “The farmers today work night and day on big machines, laying down chemicals and destroying pests, and in ten years’ time almost all the old family farms will be gone. The farmers watch television in the evening or do their accounts. They even have to buy much of their own food from the supermarket.

  “Their children leave them for the city where they live tiny, cramped lives, and the farms are swallowed up. Why does this all happen? Most people simply shrug. It is progress towards a better world, they say.

  “I don’t see that but then maybe I am lucky because I have seen that mankind knows nothing. I may be just a simple farmer, but I know that these people are wrong. I will not follow the crowd, I will follow nature instead.”

  Since the moment I had first set foot on the farm, I had not seen the farmer so emotional. He turned his head to take in the view of the monotonous fields of the commercial farms, stretching to the horizon.

  “When I see my neighbours’ fields, I feel an anger that I cannot even begin to express. They are destroying the soil and the ecosystem, and they are destroying their spirits too.”

  He gazed at me with a look that stung me to my soul. It was a look of accusation.

  “How can you call that progress? If such a word is to have any meaning then what we are doing here is progress, for we will not just create healthy rice plants, we will restore the human spirit.”

  I felt chastened and confused, and yet still I could not let go.

  “But there must be good reasons why they do these things? People wouldn’t go to all this effort for no reason.”

  The farmer sighed and looked out over the commercial fields. I knew then that he must have had this battle again and again with people, and I watched as he drew deep on his reserves of patience.

  “Once upon a time, when the heroes and gods still walked the earth, rice seeds were blown by the wind directly onto the river’s flood plain during the long days of the monsoon rains. The farmer’s life was truly carefree and all he did was reap the harvest.

  “Then one day he decided that he could improve on this natural method. He began to manufacture earth terraces that could hold the annual floods in place, and he diverted streams and rivers so that he could sow seed and farm on higher ground. And with every experiment his workload gradually increased.

  “But these early farmers still stayed close to nature. They saw that when wild rice had had its season its straw and leaves and seeds and husks were all returned to the soil. They knew that after every harvest they too had to give back to the land, but rather than simply return the straw to the field they began to compost it.

  “This is an exhausting process, for the compost heap has to be turned by hand with a fork in the hot summer sun. But they toiled away and added this compost, along with manure from the animals that they had domesticated, to the flooded terraces, and ploughed these first fields until they were like the pea soup that they saw on the alluvial plains below.

  “And gradually the farmer’s work increased again, but still he was not happy. Next he divided the young rice from the old. The young rice was grown in a starter bed and then when it was about seven inches tall it would be transferred by hand into another field where it could grow to maturity until it was ready to be harvested.

  “These new fields were works of art. The farmer would spend days on his hands and knees building ridged seed beds. He would light altars on them and make offerings to the gods. He would tidy the ridges and furrows as carefully as a mother arranges a baby’s crib. By the time he was finished with all this, his field would look as if it had been made by a master sculptor. The transplant was done by hand, with whole teams of people squatting in the mud for days at a time. From beginning to end every inch of the field was worked over four times – and it is backbreaking work too.

  “After the war, the Americans introduced modern chemical agriculture to Japan. People were amazed. By using these chemicals and machines, farmers could grow exactly the same amount of rice as they had grown using the traditional method, but they only had to do half the work. Can you imagine! This was a dream come true. Within a few years, everyone had switched over to the chemical method. But it was not good for the land. Compost and manure were no longer added, there was no need to rotate crops and, very quickly, the structure and quality of the soil deteriorated.

  “If you feed people on processed bread and processed meat, it is the same as growing rice plants in this unnatural soil. They will have energy to grow, it is true, but without the diverse plant and animal life, without worms and moles and humus from dead vegetation, the soil will lack all the micronutrients that make a healthy balanced living rice plant. How can you expect someone to be happy on such a diet, living in a tower block in a city, divorced from nature, eating food that is missing so much essential nutrition, surrounded by other people in a similar condition?

  “And with the new agriculture fewer people were needed to work the land. It became quicker and easier to lay on the chemicals using farm machinery and so the young people started to drift away. And along with chemicals, ploughing was also introduced to Japan. That is not to say that we had never used the plough before then – even as long ago as the Tokugawa period the land was shallow-ploughed – but it was only after the war that we began to adopt machine ploughing that turns the soil deep down.

  “This ploughing is a double-edged sword, like most things in the modern farmer’s armoury. For although it is true that ploughing brings air into the soil, it also destroys the natural structure of the soil and it breaks down the great big juicy clods turning them into little crumbs and finally into dust and sand. There is no air in a pile of sand and so it becomes necessary to plough it even more.

  “And along with the plough and the chemical fertilizer came the pesticides. The fat, weak plants lost their natural ability to fight off disease and insect damage, and so they became dependent on regular doses of poison. But the residues of these poisons stay in the food and are eaten by us, and the poisons themselves kill everything, including creatures that are essential to the health of the soil.

  “But once it has started it is hard to turn back; it would be like taking someone from the heart of Tokyo, someone who drinks coffee and alcohol and eats poor-quality food, and then expecting them to be able to live wild in the countryside. In reality the wild countryside provides for all their needs and it is a healthier place to live. There is no pollution and a million sources of food are available. But the person from Tokyo wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  I shook my head at the
thought. What the farmer was saying made so much sense and yet he was almost alone in his beliefs.

  “What do your neighbours think of your farming?”

  For a second the farmer looked disheartened.

  “My neighbours want me to fail. They can only see the bad in what I am doing. They hate me for what I am trying to do because they have become trapped in a nightmare of their own making. Experimental stations, agricultural co-operatives and then farming handbooks: that is the law in the commercial farmer’s world – a law that has replaced the rule of nature.

  “The co-operatives tell them what to plant when, what combination of fertilizers and pesticides to use, and they tell you all this in the most minute detail, right down to which days of the month you must apply which chemical. This means that the farmer doesn’t even have to think about what to do when he gets up in the morning.

  “On a preordained day the lorry from the co-operative will arrive to pick up the produce and the farmer will be there, ready and waiting, having packaged up his produce the night before, just as the co-operatives’ handbook advised him to do.

  “Now imagine if my neighbour dared even to deviate by one iota; imagine what might happen. Perhaps, for example, he thinks one day that he will skip a dose of pesticide. Well, if he does this he might as well just set fire to his fields. The citrus would have a slight discoloration and, consequently, thirty per cent of the fruit would be rejected by the big buyers from Yokohama and Tokyo, and before the snows had come the farmer would be bankrupt.

  “I have no bills to pay. I buy no farm machinery or expensive chemicals. If I sell my fruit at a lower price because it does not look as shiny as the other fruit, then it does not matter. I still have enough to live and, what is more, I am twice blessed because I have the honour of feeding the poor people who can’t afford the shiny fruit, and I am also feeding them fruit that is far more nutritious.

  “Grow a fat, soft rice plant in a flooded field and you get a plant that can be easily attacked by insects and disease. It will look big, but it will always need support from chemical insecticides and fertilizer. Grow a small, sturdy plant in a healthy environment and chemicals are unnecessary. The plant will be filled with the goodness that the human body needs.

  “Plough a flooded field by hand or with a tractor and the soil loses its shape and becomes deficient in oxygen; earthworms and microbes die and the earth becomes grainy and lifeless. Then the field has to be ploughed every year.

  “Leave the earth to cultivate itself and there is no need for the plough and the tractor. As the soil becomes poorer through ploughing, fertilizer becomes essential, but if fertilizer is used the weeds also grow up strong and so herbicides must also be applied. Return the straw from the harvest to the fields and sow clover with the grain and the soil gets all the nutrition it needs and there is no need for fertilizer or the plough. People meddle with something they don’t understand. That is the story of the modern world.”

  The farmer looked up at me. His face once again wore a gentle smile.

  “Do you believe what I tell you, Pilgrim?”

  My heart ached to know that what he told me was the truth of the world.

  “Yes. I believe you.”

  The farmer shook his head and stared into the rice plants with a sad look on his face.

  “I am glad that you say that, but you have not yet been tested. For now, those are only words.”

  “It is time I returned to the hillside,” said the farmer. “Why not go and drink tea and have a rest in the farmhouse? We can meet again in a couple of hours for some lunch.”

  I thanked the farmer for all that he had said and bade him farewell, then watched him as he strode through the rice fields and made his steady way back up the hillside, past the farmhouse, through the orchard and onto the wild slopes.

  But I didn’t feel like a rest. In fact, I wasn’t sure what I felt like. All that the farmer had said had profoundly excited my mind.

  I took a big lungful of fresh air and, deciding to stretch my legs, I resolved to continue along the mown path through the rice fields until I reached the boundary of his land. I wanted to take a closer look at the commercial fields. The farmer had said so much and I wanted to match what he had said to what I could see with my own eyes.

  As I wandered slowly through the rippling acres of rice, a story that I had once read by the great sage Chuang Tzu came into my mind.

  Once upon a time, so the story went, there lived a king who owned an enormous prize ox. The King planned to serve this ox at a banquet to celebrate his daughter’s wedding, and so he called down to his kitchen and ordered them to send a cook to cut up the beast for the pot.

  When a little old man arrived with an ancient carving knife the King was surprised, but because he was a wise man he remained silent and waited for the cook to begin his work.

  The little old man walked up to the great beast and, with a slight movement of a shoulder and with the gentle pressing of a knee, the ox fell apart with a whisper.

  The King was amazed. “How is it that you can do this?” he asked the old man in disbelief.

  The old man shrugged his shoulders and said: “When I first began to cut up oxen I had to think very hard about every stroke. They seemed to be such massive beasts. How long it would take, I thought, how hard I would have to strike. When I finally did start to cut I would hack and hack with all my might to get the job done.

  “After three years, I no longer saw the whole animal, I only saw its parts. A steak here, a leg there. I would choose my spot carefully and whack! I would smash through bone and gristle.

  “Now, after forty years, I see nothing. My mind is free. My cleaver finds its own way. I touch no bone, I cut no joint. Sometimes there are difficult points. I feel them coming, I breathe, I barely move the blade and whump – the beast falls apart like clods of earth. It takes one of the strong young men from the kitchen a whole day to do what I accomplish in a single hour, and at the end his knife is blunt. I have not changed my knife for thirty years.”

  The King was delighted.

  “Your method is the best of all!”

  The old cook smiled to himself: “Method?” He shook his head. “I follow nature, beyond all methods.”

  Far away on the horizon, great plumes of white cloud climbed towards the heavens, billow stacked upon billow, moving at a gentle summer’s pace. Around me on all sides, the golden rice plants rocked and whispered in the breeze. Something in the air spoke of evening rain, of fallen blossoms decorating the lunchtime meal, of the autumn sea and of changes to come.

  I had reached the edge of the fields. It had been good to spend the morning with the farmer and his words had made a very deep impression on me. The courage that he displayed in making his stand against the modern, scientific world-view filled me with hope. So strong was the feeling of inspiration that I felt as if a burden that I had been carrying for many years had been lifted suddenly from my shoulders and now I was free to walk through the world with my head held high.

  With a light heart I jumped over the narrow irrigation ditch that bordered the rice paddy and, grasping hold of a fence post, I hauled myself up onto the raised ground on the far side of the ditch. The long earthwork divided the farmer’s land from that of his neighbour, and before me now lay the endless uniform expanse of the commercial farms. Not a bee buzzed nor a bird sang, and as far as the eye could see there was not one single sign of animal life.

  Suddenly, to my amazement, I was confronted by an incredible vision. I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked again. I blinked, thinking that I must have been hallucinating. But the outlandish sight was still there. About twenty yards away, an astronaut appeared to be floating slowly through the commercial field.

  Dressed all in white, wearing a hooded, gauze helmet, like the sort that a beekeeper wears, a human being was advancing slowly towards me through the rice plants. His hands were covered by huge, padded white gloves and on his back was strapped an enormous canister. As h
e walked he rolled from side to side like a deep-sea diver, or a sailor on the deck of an unstable ship. I stood my ground and watched in fascination as the figure struggled along, moving at the speed of an ancient stag beetle, and then suddenly it dawned on me what was going on: he was spraying the crops with poison.

  “Hey,” I shouted, “stop a minute!”

  In my panic I had forgotten all my Japanese. I really didn’t want to breathe in lungfuls of dangerous chemicals, and if the wind turned that is exactly what was going to happen.

  The strange figure came to an ungainly halt and then very slowly manoeuvred itself round to face me. I was relieved to see that the long tube of the spray was now pointing down towards the ground. I stood frozen to the spot as he began to advance towards me, carving a path through the uniform swathes of the rice plants. Now that he had stopped spraying I found his presence in the field quite surreal.

  When he had got to within ten yards he stopped, and the huge white-gloved hands began to struggle ponderously with the helmet. After a minute or so he gave up and the gloves were thrown to the ground; small human hands worked quickly to remove the seals at the neck of the hood, revealing the thin, sweaty face of a young male farm worker.

  I smiled keenly, unsure what to say or do, but before I could decide the farm worker grinned back at me and started to shout in Japanese.

  I couldn’t understand what he was saying but he appeared to harbour no ill intent towards me. He was clearly hot and overexcited by his exertions in the white suit and he was definitely very keen to communicate something.

  I shrugged my shoulders in a theatrical fashion.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand Japanese!”

  He battled his way closer towards me, kicking his heavy feet up through the fragile rice.

  Slapping his head with his gloved left hand and, grinning, he said, “Fumimoto-san is mad!”

  I stared at him blankly, not understanding what he meant. Still grinning, he lifted the tip of the spray up into the air and pointed it past me and over towards the far side of the farm, in the direction of an area that I had not yet visited.