The New Rice is Ready | Tomohiro Ichinose, Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies
Fujisawa City is a municipality that boasts the fourth largest agricultural production in Kanagawa Prefecture. Most of that production takes place in the northern part of the city, where the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) is located. If you step outside the campus to the west (the opposite side from Shonandai), you can witness a landscape of fields and greenhouses. Fruit cultivation and livestock farming are also flourishing in the surrounding area. While there are agricultural circles at SFC and students who have connections with local farmers, most students leave SFC without ever having any connection to agriculture.
At such an SFC, the "Okomen Project" was launched by student volunteers in 2022. They rented a rice paddy of about 700m2 in the Goshomi district near the campus and took on the challenge of rice farming almost entirely by hand. In the first year, more than 200 students in total were reportedly involved from tilling the soil to harvesting. From the 2023 academic year, it became an activity of the Yoko Hasebe Seminar and was simultaneously positioned as part of the SFC Sustainable Campus Program. Since Professor Hasebe retired at the end of the 2024 academic year, it has become part of the activities of the Naoki Wada Seminar from the 2025 academic year.
This Okomen Project has been utilized since the fall semester of the 2023 academic year in the compulsory course "Environment and Information Studies" for new students. Students experience rice planting in the spring semester and rice harvesting in the fall semester. This year's rice harvest was held on the 18th of last weekend. Many of the students taking the course in the fall semester are international students or returnees. Leaving the campus at 9:00 AM, they moved to the rice paddy over about 30 minutes while visiting Utsumochi Shrine and the surrounding fields.
The rice harvesting proceeded in groups of three. One person cuts the rice with a sickle, and the other two tie the bundles with string. Glutinous rice and green rice are planted in the paddy, and each is bundled separately. Additionally, the bundles must be tied firmly for "hazagake" (hanging the rice to dry). Work began before 10:00 AM, and in just under an hour and a half, about half of one rice field was completed. At first glance, it is a simple task, but after working in the same posture for nearly an hour, pain begins to appear here and there. On that day, the temperature rose above 25 degrees Celsius, making it unseasonably hot. The work finished around 11:30 AM, and everyone dispersed after eating light snacks, including rice balls.
While some students were completely exhausted halfway through, others continued to work silently until the end. I thought it would be a first-time experience for the international students, but it turned out that many of the Japanese students were also experiencing rice harvesting for the first time. Japan has been experiencing a rice shortage since last year, and it is not easy to produce the rice we usually eat. Modern Japanese rice farming does not involve harvesting by hand, but some students remarked poignantly, "Being a farmer is really hard work." Although it was a limited time of half a day, I think it was a valuable opportunity to learn about a part of the local community surrounding SFC and the livelihoods of the people.