Our traditional method of producing rice, which boasts a history of several thousand years, has also been negated by the city (government, farming co-ops, machinery manufacturers), and the city has been able to achieve a system of rice production that suits its own purpose, that is, a system which makes full use of large machinery and agricultural chemicals, and which saddles the farmers with debts. That this new system of rice production (involving the planting of immature seedlings, dense planting, and early planting) is susceptible to frost damage, is the price the city must naturally pay.
The third is the desire of the Epicurean city dwellers to eat the famous varieties of particularly tasty rice. It is for this reason that the farmers plant more and more "sasanishiki" and "koshihikari," strains that are particularly susceptible to frost, blight, and wind damage. On the other hand, strains that are resistant to cold and disease, since they do not taste as good, have all but disappeared from the paddies. This is why I say that frost damage is human-caused.
The fourth is the decline in the will of the farmers to produce.
It would seem to be a mistake to ascribe the loss of the farmers" enthusiasm to the city, but sad to say, it is completely the fault of the city. It is because the city has meddled with the production of food that the farmers have lost their will to produce. Who was it that promoted the eating of bread (that considered eating rice bad) and increased the imports of wheat?
It was not the farmers of j.a.pan. It was clearly the city -- the politicians and traders and nutritionists of the tertiary industries -- who made deals with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and grain traders. It was then that the farmers began to lose the will to produce.
The creation of agribusiness in the early 1960s by means of the structural improvement of agriculture, in which the government was highly instrumental, resulted in debts for the farmers, the increase in the scale of agricultural operations, and the supply of great amounts of agricultural produce, which was accomplished by making the farmers busier than ever. The ability of the farmers to supply themselves with food -- their independence -- was completely lost at this time, and agriculture became highly dependent on the secondary and tertiary industries (chemical fertilizers, machinery, fuel, subsidies, etc.). This dependence is in other words the loss of autonomy; the farmers became prisoners and lackeys totally controlled by the politicos, the co-ops, the manufacturers, the trading companies, and the consumers, and their will to produce rice declined precipitously.
And what did they do to the remaining small-scale farmers? They made a big deal of the difference in income between the secondary/tertiary industries and the farmers, and promoted the move to the cities. As the number of farmers shrank, the urban population burgeoned, and where the government was not successful in getting them off the farm, they at least managed to create many Sunday farmers and part-time farmers. So the farmers, who were busy making money in town, lost interest in rice production, and they performed field work hastily with machinery, and neglected to apply compost to their paddies.
During the same period of time the raising of domestic animals became an industry independent of agriculture, this because j.a.panese agriculture was taken in by the stratagems of the big U.S. grain companies. Feeding great numbers of domestic animals with nothing but compound feed burdened the farmers with heavy debts, and this situation remains unchanged to the present day.
[18] But an even greater problem is that the loss of domestic animals to the farmer has resulted in the loss of manure (compost) to be returned to the soil, and this has in turn resulted in the forced use of larged amounts of chemical fertilizers and agricultural chemicals, and the weakening of food plants because of damage to the soil.
The fifth is the standardization of rice-growing techniques by means of standardized agricultural education.
Just as I mentioned earlier, it is needless to say that much of this standardization is the result of the interference of the government and farming co-ops, which is part and parcel of their infrastructure. But the farmers themselves, who accepted this system, looked with disdain upon the traditional and appropriate farming methods of their ancestors who farmed the same land, prevented these methods from being pa.s.sed on, went off to far away schools to learn standardized modern farming methods from a teacher that had never once held a hoe, and thus created an environment conducive to the acceptance of intrusion by the government and the co-ops (of course, most of the people who received this education became white collar workers, and so became those who also control agriculture and the farmers). In this way both Hokkaido and Kyushu now grow rice in the same way, and no longer have the diverse methods to deal with problems such as unusual weather, diseases, insects, and wind damage. Still, they may claim that the per-hectare yields of modern agriculture are increasing, but how far can we trust the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture? It is my suspicion that true yields will not jibe with desktop statistics which take into consideration such things as Staple Food Control Act accounts, the rice acreage reduction policy, and incentives for importation.
The above is a very general explanation, but we can see the "rice shortage" (or decrease in stores) does not find its only cause in unavoidable things like frost damage, but is due largely to the gratuitous meddling of the city.
Postscript
Without really planning it, I touched upon something I am going to cover in Chapter V, "Down with the Cities!", so I would like to mention here that by "Down with the cities!" I do not mean "Down with the people in the cities!" This I shall treat in detail in Chapter V.
SPECIAL CHAPTER NOTES
14
This chapter was written at the time the j.a.panese government imported rice from South Korea. The government suddenly discovered that it had no reserves of rice except for very old stores, unacceptable because of the high level of bromine (caused by fumigants). (Translator"s note)
15
Some groups of farmers went down to the ports during the unloading of the South Korean rice to protest. The January, 1985 issue of Gendai Nogyo ("Modern Agriculture") published a photo story about some young farmers in Miyagi Prefecture who protested the government"s policies by producing all the rice they could.
(Translator"s note)
16
If harvesting rice is a sacred occupation, then a snake"s capture of a frog is also a sacred occupation. There were originally no human occupations which could be considered sacred.
17
It was at a time when China carried on no trade with other countries that they said, "Though we have a nine years" store of rice, it is still insufficient" (of course, at that time other countries were also incapable of exporting). However, at present, when arable land all over the globe is eroding and being otherwise ruined, and the population is growing explosively, there is no doubt that food for human beings is heading for insufficiency. Though for j.a.pan imports are still possible, it will become difficult to import in the future, and we will be in the same position as ancient China. When such a food crisis results, we must not allow the money economy to interfere with food storage. Also, since money serves as the lubricant by which all the city"s evils arise, we must get rid of it sooner or later.
18
Debts are an excellent means of exploitation. In order to pay back their loans, the farmers must work themselves into the ground and offer large amounts of animal products.
CHAPTER III
The City and the Country
In Chapter II we learned that as long as the cities continue to exist, urban pollution -- which is the product of the cities"
activities -- is unavoidable. We also learned that urban pollution is at the same time the pollution of the Earth, and that, other than the cities, there can be no other destroyer and contaminator of the Earth.
In only a brief, cursory inspection we saw that there are far more deadly, serious kinds of pollution than we can count on two hands, and that the city is the sole perpetrator of these pollution crimes, and the source of all the evils that threaten humanity and the Earth.
The Entire j.a.panese Archipelago Has Been Urbanized
However, the cunning and arrogant city has shifted the responsibility for the destruction of the Earth -- a responsibility that is clearly its own -- to others, insisting that the pollution is the product of the science civilization or that it is brought about by the industrial state. And it goes without saying that the country is included within that civilized state.
In the country as well as in the city they drive cars, burn propane gas, use electricity, smoke cigarettes, waste paper, spread agricultural chemicals, and drain detergent into the rivers and lakes; as long as the country belongs to the civilized state, it cannot escape the fact that it is an accomplice. Thus saying, the city attempts to shift part of the blame for pollution onto the country. And what is more, the city also tries to justify its own pollution as an unavoidable phenomenon of a modern state.
But sorry to say, this is not at all consistent with reality.
The "country" that the city speaks of -- as if it had made some great and wonderful discovery -- is not the real country at all, but a fake, a red herring meant to keep us from seeing the truth. The real country is what is left after we have removed all urban influence. It is, in other words, that which can still exist after the cities have disappeared from the Earth.
The country that the city speaks of is a fake country that is under the influence of the city. When country people (actually half-urbanized people) ride in cars, drive tractors, watch television, smoke cigarettes, eat processed foods, burn petroleum, use electric lights, and read the newspaper, they are living a life that would be impossible without the city; this is therefore what we should probably call an "urbanized country." If we go a little bit further we could say that such a place does not even deserve the name "country" for it is none other than the city itself.
Let us take a look at a typical farm family. The son is a white collar worker, and so of course belongs to the city. The head of the household is a part-time farmer who farms on Sunday, and belongs to the city Monday through Sat.u.r.day. Even on Sunday when he does his farm work, he belongs to the city if he benefits from petroleum and agricultural chemicals. If, after he comes home from the fields, he drinks beer and watches television, he belongs to the city. In this way we can see that, in the entire country of j.a.pan there is not a single place that has not been urbanized, not a single place that deserves to be called "country." Yea, it is not going too far to say that the chilling breath of this devil the city can be felt now in the remotest corners of the villages, and that the country has been completely occupied by the city, or shall we say, the commercialism of the city.
But this is reality, says the city. We must recognize reality as it is. We must respect reality.
The Real, Invisible Country
However, when we take a close look we see that though they chant Reality! Reality! we can at any time invert this reality, and having done so we can see that what has been inverted is just as much "reality" as that which came before. There is no mistaking the fact that the country before urbanization was reality, and that the country after urbanization has become the kind of reality we now have. It is therefore a.s.sured that after inverting the present reality (that is, after eradicating the cities and doing away with their influence) the real country that remains will immediately become reality.
And so, rather than saying "The reality is that the country no longer exists," it is more accurate to say "If we remove the presently existing "urbanized country," that which remains is in reality the country itself."
I will say it once more: The real country is what remains after we get rid of the cities.