Keibo Oiwa on the Localization Movement & Heirloom Vegetable Revival in Yamagata

In Keibo Shinichi Oiwa Tsuji's (14-min.) talk, "Cultural Creatives and Localization Movements in Asia," at the 2013 International Society of Economics and Culture (ISEC)  Economics of Happiness conference, the slow life advocate explores the heirloom vegetable revival in Yamagata, a prefecture in northwestern Tohoku:

Many people feel that localization is isolation. This is totally wrong. In fact, localization is to rediscover and recreate relationships. It restores meanings to relationships.

I will try to illustrate this with one example from Japan.

Shonai is the northeastern part of Japan, in Yamagata Prefecture. At the center of this local food movement is a charismatic chef and restaurant owner, [Masayuki] Okuda. Today he is one of the most renowned chefs in Japan and recognized as one of the slow food master chefs. He is known for his cooking philosophy: The distance that ingredients travel from field to table should be as short as possible. Dinners are served with the freshest of local ingredients, brimming with life energy.

When I met Okuda, he was a young and unknown chef and had just opened his own restaurant in Tsuroka City. He was active in a citizens' group called "Good Water Fan Club" protesting the construction of a dam and trying to preserve underground water wells that were soon to be destroyed.

I asked him why he got involved in this kind of movement. And his answer was, "The kernel of cooking is water." In fact, the region of Shonai was known for good water throughout history, and good sake.

The name of his restaurant, Al che-cciano, sounds to Japanese like Italian, but is actually an expression in Shonai dialect, meaning "It's been always here, hasn't it?".

Just after he opened his restaurant, he became good friends with one of his regular customers, [Hiroaki] Egashira, an agronomist from Yamagata University. Okuda would tell Egashira that, "My mission as a chef is to let people rediscover the quality of almost forgotten local foods, to encourage and support local farmers, and to create a community with a vibrant local economy."

So this rediscovery is what Okuda really meant by Al che-cciano.

Egashira was so happy learning about his new friend's mission as he himself was just launching production of a variety of heirloom vegetables.  Inspired by each other's passion for heirloom crops, Egashira and Okuda formed a team and started to explore the Shonai region, looking for farmers still preserving heirloom seeds...Egashira formed the Yamagata Forum for Indigenous Crops, with a magazine called Seeds...The forum's researchers have identified already more than 160 varieties of plants which had been, at one point, heirloom crops, transferred from generation to generation, but which had been almost forgotten.  Today, the forum's membership amounts to almost 400 citizens with many different backgrounds.

Kusajima, one of the key figures in the Shonai local food movement, and now a member of the prefectural parliament, is a good example of the new political activism. At the time of the Great Kobe Earthquake in 1995, Kusajima left work in Tokyo, and went to work in the disaster zone in Kobe. It was there he felt, for the first time, that he was part of a community where people willingly helped and supported one another.

He decided to return to his native region, Shonai, where he got involved in environmental issues, and found himself in a community of ecologically conscious people like Okuda and Egashira. With the support of this group, he was elected as a city councilor, and later a prefectural member of parliament, independent of any political party.  Since he played a leading role in the Good Water Fan Club, Kusajima's main campaign was about safeguarding the natural water system.

His thinking has not only been influenced by modern Western teachings, but also stemmed from the ancient nature religion of the region. He's a believer and practitioner of Shugendo...of which one of the traditional centers is the holy mountains of Haguro, in the middle of the Shonai region.

Shugendo is an ancient religion that originated in ancient Japan. It's an amalgamation of Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism...In this tradition, enlightenment is achieved by attaining oneness with the kami (deity...or spirits). This enlightenment is achieved by understanding the relationship between human beings and nature...

Another member of the local food movement is [Satoshi] Watanabe, a Shonai native and professional filmmaker. Her second feature documentary is Reviving Recipes, a colorful portrait of a community in the making. The protagonists of this film are Okuda, Egashira, and a local businessman and partners whose mutual collaboration leads to the emergence of a new local economy.

Watanabe explains, "In plants are a living cultural heritage that have been passed through decades and centuries, to provide generations not only food...but also farming methods and cooking methods.  In this day of globalization, however, that heritage had been overshadowed by big-scale market agriculture and was on the brink of being forgotten."

Watanabe shares the view with fellow members of this movement: An understanding of heirloom plants leads to an understanding of food, farming, and all the people involved. To revive and pass on local heirloom plants is not just a means to enjoy the bounty of food, but also to create and strengthen bonds among local people.

He and all the supporters of the film hope that Reviving Recipes will help remedy the serious problems surrounding food and farming today, not only in Japan, but throughout the world.

It is important to note that the local food movement in Shonai has its roots in the movement to safeguard the communal access to deep underground water and seeds. The sense of the commons is the foundation of a community. Starting with air, water, and seeds. This is what global corporations are trying to commodify.

The sense of the sacred is essential for community, especially in a time of global market economy when nothing is sacred and everything is translated into monetary value.

The local food movement in Shonai is inseparable from the local spiritual tradition like Shugendo. I recently interviewed one of the leaders of this tradition, Hoshino...and he defined what the meaning of yamabushi [practitioner of Shugendo] is.  It is a connector. Anybody who connects things and people: that's yamabushi...

It is a connector, anyone who connects.  All of us here might be yamabushi.  It is a community of prayer.

The word for happiness in Japanese is shiawase.  Awase means to relate and to bring together. This implies that being slow is an essential part of happiness.  A slow life is a happy life. A slow economy is not a bad economy. A slow business is not a bad business.  It is an art that restores, discovers, and creates meaningful relationships between humans and nature, humans to the land, to the community...

As we get local, we get better connected.  Our life gets more interesting and exciting. A slow life is an exciting life. But I'm afraid it might be a busy one.

Oiwa Tsuji is a professor of international studies at Meiji Gakuin University, and the co-author (with David Suzuki) of The Japan We Never Knew: A Journey of Discovery (with David Suzuki), a groundbreaking travelogue/history/exploration of Japan's indigenous, environmentalist, peace, and nuclear-free movements.

More: 

"Japan's Heirloom Vegetable Revival" (April 6, 2012, Slowfood.com)

Sloth Club (Japanese)

Slow Japan (Sloth Club blog in English)

More great speakers from the 2013 Economics of Happiness conference on video:  http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/conference-video-gallery-2013.

The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival opens today

As Typhoon Melor leaves Japan, the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival opens today in capital city of Yamagata prefecture in the Tohoku region in northern Honshu--with a brilliant line-up of films. A few highlights:

The "Special Invitation" films include Memories of Agano by Sato Makoto; Spring: the Story of Hsu Chin-Yu, depicting the life of a woman who survived the White Terror in Taiwan • Japan-based, Chinese director Ling Yi's 2007 YASUKUNI (released in Japan in 2008 to the predictable outcry by Japan's noisy ultra-right and positive responses from the general Japanese audience) • Agrarian Utopia by director Uruphong Raksasad, about a small farming family in northern Thailand • Kotsunagi, Iriai, Commons, a long-term project by late Kikuchi Shu that followed a court battle over access rights to a mountain in a poor village in Tohoku • Tsuchimoto Noriaki’s Minamata Diary.

From "New Asian Currents," a program that seeks to support new Asian filmmakers who bring varied and intimate windows on Asia:

American Alley (Korea, 2008; Director: Kim Dong-ryung: Around 40% of the area of Dongduechon City is taken up by U.S. military bases. We learn the history of K, a Korean woman who has worked on “American Alley” for over 40 years, as well as the present situation for the increasing numbers of Russians and Filipinas who have started working here in recent years. The film examines these women’s relations with young American soldiers, and their feelings for their home.

Doctor Ma’s Country Clinic (China, 2008; Director: Cong Feng): In the waiting room of an eastern medicine clinic run by Dr. Ma in the mountains of Huangyangchuan in China’s Gansu Province, the patients never stop talking. Young migrant workers, miners, and women who dream of city life: their voices fill our ears, evoking the realities of life in a rural village.

Green Rocking Chair (Philippines, 2008; Director: Roxlee): Throughout the islands of the Philippines, Baybayin is alive! This road movie follows the director’s physically demanding and playful journey in search of Baybayin, a writing system used in the Philippines before it became a Spanish colony. The latest work from Roxlee, a familiar face at the festival who has made festival introfilms and designed T-shirts since his Harajuku screened at YIDFF ’93.

This is Lebanon (Lebanon, 2008; Director: Eliane Raheb): In Lebanon wracked by relentless civil war, the standoff between religious (political) factions has grown in intensity, fostering hatred between individuals. With no end in sight, the director, a member of the Christian minority Maronite family, involves her entire family in the production of her film and searches for solutions on a genuinely personal level.

Ximaojia Universe (China, 2009; Director: Mao Chenyu): The Ximao clan have lived for generations in Yueyang in Hunan Province, the director’s hometown. What remains in the village, and what kind of worldview does their myths and poems pass on? An experimental, ethnographic documentary that attempts new interpretations while carrying out personal ‘archaeological’ exploration and intervention.

Weabak: Stayed Out All Night (Korea, 2009; Director: Kim Mi-re) The documentary of energetic women who occupy a major supermarket to protest the mass lay off of part-time workers brings to light the distortions of a male-centered society. A latest work by Kim Mi-re who has been making documentaries on labor issues.

From the "International Competition" films:

Encirclement—Neo-Liberalism Ensnares Democracy (Canada, 2008, Director: Richard Brouillette): An interview documentary that critically reconstructs neoliberal ideology, the origins and current state of the elitism and imperialism that form its basis, and the media systems that support it. (The film features Noam Chomsky and Susan George; the photo in the poster is of the IMF Board; great clips at the film's site).

Auto*Mate (Czechoslovakia, 2009; Director: Martin Mareček): A playful, up-tempo essay film that documents six years of the cultural and social movement “AUTO*MATE” calling for restrictions on motor vehicles.

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate (UK, Japan, 2008; Director: Sean Mcallister): An international co-production depicting the woes and aspirations of Japan’s working poor, set in Yamagata and directed by an Englishman. Through revelations about his own life, he asks simple questions about Japan’s dark realities as an industrial power as he builds friendships and changes relationships.

Paying a well-deserved tribute to the late Korean-American writer and filmmaker Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, who emigrated to the United States as child with her family to escape the Korean War, the festival is showing her short films.

The festival's website is a wonderful resource on contemporary international film--with links to festivals around the world (including "The Seoul International Labor Film and Video Festival" and the "Kathmandu International Mountain Festival") and an online catalog of new Japanese documentaries available with English subtitles.

Darrell Moen on Organic Farming as Social Change: "Regional Revitalization in the Okitama Basin of Yamagata Prefecture"

Anthropologist Darrell Moen's fascinating account of disenchanted Japanese leaving large cities and taking up organic farming to revitalize rural areas:

Excerpt from "Regional Revitalization in the Okitama Basin of Yamagata Prefecture":

This report describes the ways in which a group of organic farmers in Yamagata Prefecture have been able to effect basic structural changes that contribute to the social transformative process of counter-hegemony.

Members of the Okitama farmers' League (OFL) have initiated a regional revitalization plan that is based on the concept of eco-circularity in which local household food wastes and other organic materials are converted into compost for use by area organic farmers. By forming organic farmers' collectives, members provide farm-related work in rural areas during the long winter months. The women farmers in the group formed a support group for farm wives to fight collectively against female subordination within the household as well as to improve the overall position of women in the Okitama area.

They are challenging the dominant culture's values and social assumptions, and are engaged in creating new cultural values and definitions of self in relation to others. The Okitama Farmers League offers a vision of a noneconomistic, democratized, and environmentally sustainable society centered on universal principles of human rights, social justice, and popular participation in the reformulation of the meanings attached to work, authority, culture, family, community, gender, and consumption.

At each of four regional organic farmers' groups I visited in Japan while engaged in my dissertation fieldwork research, I found at least two or three member farmers who had experienced living in the megalopolises of either Osaka or Tokyo for an extended period of time (between four and ten years). Some of these farmers left home to attend colleges and universities, returning to the family farm upon graduation; others had pursued careers in the city after finishing their schooling.

Referred to as the "U-turn phenomenon" in Japan, increasing numbers of the sons and daughters of farm families are returning to their natal towns and villages from often prolonged stays in major metropolises, and a large number of those who return and take over family farms are doing so on the condition that they will be able to farm organically. They bring back with them not only invigorating new ideas and new forms of behavior, but also eye-opening stories of the alienating lifestyles and hardships associated with city life that make life in the countryside appear greatly preferable in contrast.

The returnees often breathe new life into regional towns and villages, and their enthusiastic determination to succeed as full-time organic farmers, helping to form various organic farmers' collectives and (by the mind-1980s) working with other rural residents to revitalize the countryside, often acts as a catalyst, motivating others to work together to improve their lives.

The presence of the returnees accelerates the process of transcending the rural-urban dichotomy, as they maintain their ties (material and ideological) with both areas. Because of their familiarity with the hectic and congested urban lifestyle, their friendships with urban residents, their knowledge of broader social issues and their experience with some of the movements associated with them, and their ultimate decision to choose the rural over the urban, they have been able to make significant contributions to the growth of the organic farming movement in the relatively remote regional areas of Japan.

In this report, I focus on a group of organic farmers in Okitama County (Yamagata Prefecture) who are involved in revitalizing their entire regional economy.1 Okitama County, with its three cities, five towns, and numerous villages, lies in a fertile basin surrounded by the Northern Japan Alps. Situated in the middle of Japan's snow belt, the county has an agricultural season that lasts only six months, and 95 percent of the county's farm families obtain most of their income from a combination of local factory employment at subcontracting firms and migratory labor during the six months of winter.

(Originally posted at the Kyoto Journal website)