Field Notes from My Master's Project in Japan 1997: Week 7

Week Seven
Monday-Tuesday, August 25-26, 1997
What Happens when the Flute Player Dies?
The past few days have been spent studying the culture. Monday, I went to my old friend's house today to ask a few questions about trends. He was an English teacher so I thought he could explain things in English and I would understand better what is going on here as far as older and younger people go. Most of the conversation was in Japanese, though. Then I went to the town office to ask a few more questions. Amazingly I am able to communicate quite well in Japanese. It takes some time but so far one of my friends has been in all of the different offices that I have had to go to.

Tuesday, during driving practice (Takahashi insists that I do before I drive a car), I went to my old junior high school. There I met a professor I used to know who is both a photographer and a Japanese studies teacher. I told him about my ideas (discussed below). He said that they were right on as far as discussion of Japan. I said I needed to find one thing to tie all this together. He told me about these rituals every month to pray for good harvest. My original thought was that maybe the rituals could be the bridge between the ages.

I also met with a cultural anthropologist from the Minnesota University Akita Campus which is just up the hill. He really liked the idea of photographing in the nursing home. And he gave me a few really good ideas. He also pointed out that I need to be careful about what I say about rituals. He said that he came to Japan 20 years ago and thought “oh these rituals are going to die.” And now he sees the people who were once younger, taking over the responsibility of rituals. He says he is going to introduce me to a teacher who has been studying this and has written an article that looks at the gradual disappearing of craftsmen and musicians called "What Happens When the Flute Player Dies?"

I have a shot that shows all the people cleaning their graves. It is for the most part all older people. He thinks that this is perfect to show the ages, but I also have several shots that show the younger members of the society learning different aspects of the rituals. So my thought is that although it is mostly just the very young and the older members of the society, the rituals are actually the bridge because the younger people learn them, then don't really partake until they are adults.

Anyway, below is a discussion of sorts of what I am trying to accomplish and the questions I am asking.

What are the big concerns of rural Japan right now? My thought is to try and illustrate the big changes going on here.

Problem 1. Depopulation: this is the biggie that everyone is talking about.
The young people are leaving for the city leaving the rural areas without enough people to do farming, run shops, etc. This is also means that the growing older population is being left without the traditional family to care for them. In short, I see the traditional family breaking up. John Mock says it is adapting. I like this better because there is less of an inherent negative connotation. I see this as being the most important. (Japan prides itself on the fact that they take care of their older people in their own houses.)

I am illustrating this by shooting the nursing home. When the young people go to the city, there is no one left to care for the older people. Also, their role in society is disappearing as the farming decreases. They end up in nursing homes, like Mrs. Noto. Here they have to redefine their roles and adapt their habits and customs. For the healthier ones, they take care of the weaker ones. For some who have not adapted they sit all day in bed and stare, waiting.

I am also looking for photographs as I photograph the pepper farmer, or his mother (Obaachan or Baa), doing the household duties and working in the family maintaining her roll in the society. This Friday I am going with her as she goes to visit her husband who has been in the hospital for two years. Evidently he has Alzheimer's; she goes once a week to do his laundry and spend the night.

Problem 2. The changes going on in rice farming. As I mentioned, farmers are having to take on full-time jobs, switch crops to support themselves. Rice is a part of Japan's identity. Research at the town hall and with the anthropologists proved that nearly everyone in this town is a part-time farmer.

So far every Japanese person I have talked to from cultural anthropology professor to office worker to governmental worker agrees that this is a good area to focus on here. The farming has changed. The national government decides yearly how much rice each prefecture will produce and buys it at a predetermined price that is ten times the world market value. This means inflated rice prices but at the same time there is a lot of cash exchanging hands in the economy. Whereas rice farming has been a lucrative business, enabling many families to live a wealthy lifestyle, the country has gradually been decreasing the amount of land allotted for farming rice. What this means is that those who farmed rice all their lives have either had to take on other jobs or switch crops; regardless, there an income adjustment. There are only a few full-time rice farmers left, most of the farmers have taken on part-time jobs. John Mock, the cultural anthropologist, also contributed a few other changes that will result from this change. First the families that have previously been wealthy from the rice farming will shift economic classes, becoming apart of the lower or middle class unless another job is taken on to subsidize income. Also, the green space that acted as a huge water filter will disappear (and has started disappearing) into a huge urban sprawl. He notes that Japan’s sewage system is primitive at best, hence there will be a dramatic increase in pollution. And the family structure will continue to adapt. Currently, the older members of the family's (grandmother, grandfather) main purpose is to tend to the fields and family vegetable garden, (and younger children (if there are any)). At harvest time, the father, mother, and older children take vacation days from work to harvest the rice along with the grandparents. As the green space disappears, the older members of the family's purpose will also disappear. What this means is that basically once their family role is gone they will just be sitting around waiting to die.

As I mentioned, I am photographing a full-time farmer who farmed rice until 10 years ago when he switched to peppers and cows. He and his wife farm, his mother tends to the house (she is 75) while his three boys go to school, work part-time jobs, and sleep. He says his boys don't want to farm. He says he does not know a farmer in their 30s. He sees this as the country’s biggest problem. A country that cannot feed itself faces starvation, he says. To understand why this is perceived as such a huge problem, you need to have studied Japanese history. The Japanese have long prided themselves on self-sufficiency. Since the beginning of their history, they have worked very hard to achieve this. Gradually, the farmer is under siege. Not only from a government that is slowly tightening the noose by mandating less rice production, but also from its younger populations who do not want to assume farming duties because the lifestyle is so hard and the pay is unpromising. I think that the hard work is what really scares the younger people. They do not like to work. Is it because they are burned out from studying? I don't think so because I never see any of them studying. I do see a lack of discipline in the home. The kids get away with murder. There is no form of punishment, that I can see. Kids can stay out all hours of the night. I think what has happened here is that the parents were products of WW2 and had harsh lives with no food or luxuries. Now they are trying to give to their children what they did not have. The discipline thing is something that I am amazed at. Parents have no idea where there kids are and they live in the same house. It feels so disconnected. It feel like the ages of this society are totally disconnected. The 20's and the 40's are miles apart. Same for the 30's and the 50's. Not all parents are like this of course. I am trying to figure out how to do this. It seems like in the nursing home there is a bridge between the ages.

Problem 3: Not many babies are being born, although this affects the country on a national basis; rural areas are hard hit because they do not have the population base to begin with. Tied in with this is the fact that many young Japanese women do not want to get married, especially to farmers. I think this is a common problem all over the world. This to me seems like a subset of Problem 1.

Need help with this one. I have photographed a bunch of young folks doing what they do best, partying and playing. I want to find a young woman and do some photographs of her. But this seems boring. I am trying to see about photographing a Filipino bride. Evidently Filipinos are the fastest growing group in Akita Prefecture. I am not sure there are any Filipinos in Kawabe Town. I think there is one in the neighboring town which is also a part of the Kawabe region.

Wednesday-Thursday, August 27-28, 1997 - Kawabe, Japan
Hidoi ne? (It's terrible)
Did some more work this morning. I am continuing to investigate the Filipino house wife thing. I have been invited to meet a bunch of them at the end of September. And if I make some friends, then maybe I will have something to photograph. I am not sure that I need another thing to photograph. I am starting to think that the themes that I am interested in can be found in the two places that I am shooting, the nursing home and the pepper farming family. I think that in order to do a good job with these things, I will need to stick with them. Also, harvest is coming up and there will be some good images.

In the afternoon, my life moved from being "a graduate student in Japan" to a "one-eyed graduate student in Japan." I touched a friend's cat, Hana (which means flower in Japanese). Then I touched my eye. For all my friends who were with me during New Years, it happened again. My eye blew up the size of a golf ball. I quickly figured out that this was happening and told my friend that I needed to go to a hospital right away. I learned a new phrase "pin to kita" which means essentially ding and it came, I get it. I go to the hospital and all the nurses freak out running around to get the doctor like ET has just walking in. Once they had me lying down and a needle in my arm, a small round nurse in blue short dress came in and sat down. She looked over at me and in a whisper under her breath she said "hidoi ne" and sighed. I said is it that bad (they wouldn't give me a mirror), and she sighed again. I finally looked in a mirror, I could only see out of one eye. It was huge and very puffy. So Wednesday and Thursday have been spent lying with ice on my eye and sleeping. I have been to two doctors. I told them the last time it went away right after I got the shot in the US. The doctor said to me what is your hurry. Well I tried to explain to him, I am trying to finish a master's project. He told me to do that tomorrow and to go home and put ice on my eye and sleep. If it is not better tomorrow, then he will give me the shot that I got when I was in America. Goodnight.

Friday, August 29, 1997 - Kawabe, Japan
Room 810
Went to the hospital with the grandmother of the pepper farming family today. Her husband has been in the hospital since July of 1995. Miyo is about 3'7" tall with a slight hunched back from years of doing farm work and sitting on the floor, like so many Japanese grandmothers. For the first year and a half, Miyo lived at the hospital, spending every night there, curling up on a small futon on the floor between his bed and the wall. The garbage can and a huge box of diapers blocked the light from the hall. Eventually her health was affected and the doctor told her she needed to go home. Now she comes to do his laundry and spends the night once a week on Friday, as before, curling up on the floor near the wall. She arrives in the morning, sits until lunch talking with the woman who is in the same room and who also is caring for her mother. After lunch, she starts with the laundry. Her husband does not understand anything. He lies on his back or side hunched up in a stiff fetal position playing with his sheets. Miyo speaks proudly about how her husband was never sick much and how hard he worked on the farm all his life. She smiles a little bit and looks at him saying "Isn't that so Ojiichan" (old man or grandpa). Sometimes he turns his head toward her voice in recognition, but not often.

The day was long and at times hard to deal with. The scenery hardly changed. All day Miyo sat next to the bed except for occasional trips to the washing machine or the boiler room where the towels and white undershirts were drying. At first, I didn't think she was too psyched to have me there, but as the day went on I changed my mind. I think I was probably a welcome change in her routine. Someone to have tea with and a chat. And definitely a conversation piece for the nurses. I was also around to help her reach the high drying lines in the boiler room. In the morning, the youngest brother of her husband came by to say hello. He was visibly shaken by his brother's condition. Miyo said that only occasionally does anyone from her house come with her because they are all so busy.

While I sat eating a cold bento lunch, the nurse used a special suction contraption that consisted of a glass jar connected to a small tube which was inserted into his mouth to clear the saliva and phlegm (can't remember how to spell). Twice a day the nurses would come and empty this jar. Occasionally her husband would raise his hand a little and moan. Or she would go over to his bed and gaze at him and tell him to be quiet, shaking her head saying that he does not understand anything. What really struck me was the strong sense of commitment and deep love that she had for him, I saw it when she would lean over the bed. I photographed all of this. I took a break mid-afternoon to go to a cafe and write a letter. Basically I needed a break from the monotony of sitting.

I photographed all of this sitting and I kept trying to get shots of the emotions, however small, as she would go to his bed and look at her husband. To me this is an important part of the family life. There were a few nurses that came and went. And once a doctor came, but he asked her to leave the room. I looked for interaction between the young and the old, but there was very little. A friend of mine told me that there is a shortage of nurses here, which is why so many patients have their families live at the hospital to help care for them.

I left Miyo as she was sitting on her futon ready for bed. She told me to be careful going home and I told her to sleep well.

Saturday, August 30, 1997 - Kawabe, Japan
Today I moved out of the apartment and into a homestay.

Sunday, August 31, 1997 - Kawabe, Japan
Clear Blue Rivers are for Swimming

Enough said. I spent Saturday night and Sunday with a family in the remotest part of Kawabe Machi. They own a flower farm and have two kids who are fun and rowdy and spoiled. They live next to this beautiful river in a beautiful valley surrounded by beautiful mountains. The town is out of some kind of fairy tale.

Next week:
I am going over all my film to date to see where I am. I still have not found a negative scanner.
I go to Tokyo on Thursday to go to the Foreign Press Club, have a meeting with my on site supervisor, and try to find a scanner. I think maybe I can use one at AP.