Urban Agriculture

Veggie garden, Tokyo

Shizuka’s parents are both retired now. Their daily life revolves around food. Shopping for food. Growing food. Preparing food. Eating food.  I have noticed this with the older generation here. They were brought up in a time when food was scarce and hunger an everyday reality. On awakening in the morning you will be asked what you want to eat tonight for dinner. Now I don’t really care much about food. If I could just take a pill for all my energy needs I would be quite happy with that. Imagine how much space and time you would free up. You wouldn’t have to good food shopping at a supermarket. You wouldn’t need to have a kitchen and all those cupboards full of pots and plates and all that other junk. You would have some extra hours in the week to do something better than making meals.  Japanese people love to grow vegetables. Shizuka’s mother has a veggie plot where she grows all kind of weird funny tasting stuff. Like all veggie growing activities, the place is an eyesore. Vegetable growing is always a mess. The plot is a patchwork of different plants at various stages, wooden sticks tried up into a framework, abandoned tools and pots, plastic mesh nets and those blue plastic tarpaulins you see all over the third world. Throw in an old bathtub full of stagnant water and some rusty old wire fencing and you’ve got a Japanese veggie garden. Now this plot is in the middle of some fairly nice houses just off the main street and a stones throw from the commercial area.

City farmers

 It’s another one of those Japan paradoxes. This country, renowned throughout the world for its high technology, manufacturing muscle and dense urban population, is at heart an agricultural society.  Most Japanese houses with any sort of garden will have some sort of food growing in them. The great appeal for them in countryside living is not the space, quiet or scenery but the ability to grow stuff. While Westerners have lawns Japanese have veggies.  We put in barbeque areas and swimming pools. They put in sticks and wire.  The weirdest urban farming I’ve seen here was a few years back at the Osaka Nissan auction house. There was a rice paddy there which was completely surrounded by factories and warehouses. The old boy who owned it could be seen there sometimes with his wife, messing around with his rice. The storm water runoff from all the concrete and factory roofs would have ended up in his paddy.  I shudder to think of what chemicals would have been in his rice. Just the oil and antifreeze dripped from the cars in the auction yard would have been enough to turn it toxic. That rice field is gone now, replaced with apartments and houses but I will never forget this little island of agriculture amid all that industry.