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Serving As Your Voice of the Nikkei Community Since 1902
Vol. 63, Issue 14 / March 26, 2008
Back to the Land
By David K. Yamaguchi
The North American Post
Yamaguchi clan, Takefu, Japan, about 1921. My great grandfather is at center. The little girl, second left, is my late Auntie Taeko, Dad's older sister, who was stranded in Japan by the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, which nearly killed my grandmother on a family visit. Taeko would inherit the farm, giving Seattle, Chicago, and Hawaii Sansei a place to visit.
(click photo to enlarge)
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Yamaguchis descend from country peasants. We would probably have been okay, out standing in our Fukui fields, except that my great-grandfather, descended from a line of ojoya [village headmen], countersigned a loan for a friend that went south. This made it necessary for his second son, Tadashi, to set out east with an American Dream in 1906, shortly after rail lines linked the Japan Sea coast to the great cities on the Pacific coast, including Yokohama, the port of departure for the West.
A century later, there is much in our present-day Seattle lives that our ancestors would think strange. They would not understand the time we spend sitting in front of glowing boxes, pressing buttons with our fingers. They would puzzle over the ease with which we glide about town, in conveyances that samurai would have killed for. They would tsk tsk at how some of us insist on staying up into the night, by the light of strange, smokeless candles. But there is one thing about the two remaining Seattle households that they would nod over approvingly. The Yamaguchis have been returning to the land.
my Beacon Hill "waribashi" field.
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Inspired by my cousin Roger, these days I spade up more of the backyard with each passing week. After at first hacking and uprooting blackberries, like my ancestors I now race the spring sun to turn over the soil and plant seeds. Starting with ordinary American vegetables (brown and red potatoes, "rainbow" carrots, beets, peas, and "icicle" radish, apparently I got enough in the ground early enough to pass muster with Roger. He brought over the seeds of some better stuff-gobo [burdock root], horenso [a Japanese variety of spinach], and the object of my desire last summer, red shisou, a herb for flavoring umeboshi [pickled plums].
There are many reasons for starting a garden. In my case, one is to add structure and sun to Dad's home life. Like many Nisei men, Dad did not learn to do meaningful activities at home. But according to many health publications, we must continue do fulfilling things, at all life stages, or find ourselves withering on the vine. A second reason to garden is exercise, for both Dad and I. Gardening might not seem to be aerobic, until one finds oneself huffing and puffing over a giant blackberry root that makes one secretly wish for the dynamite of Issei farmers. There is no "slack time" of going to and from the gym. Step out of the house, and your very own gym is waiting. A third reason to garden, of course, is to grow wonderful things to eat. Here, all of us grandkids who have visited the old Fukui farmhouse fell under the spell of Auntie Taeko's great vegetable fields, from which she fed us like country kings (photo).
While Roger has years of gardening experience under his belt, I don't know yet if I am growing anything but split chopsticks. We'll see.
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