The Amazing Greening of Japan!

Tokyo Rooftops
Sprouting Rice and Vegetables!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

TOKYO--By all accounts, Tokyo is one of the world’s most extraordinary cities in terms of facilities and amenities that include more restaurants, more bars, more clubs, more department stores, more business centers, more subways and more commuter trains than any other city on the planet—to name just a few of the things that are more conspicuous.

Now, the city has undertaken a massive program to turn the huge urban area into an oasis of rooftop and open-field gardens, and it is well underway.

The urban gardens of Tokyo are not just for show. Altogether they include virtually all of the popular table vegetables as well as rice—still a major staple of the diet of most Japanese.

Tokyo’s Metropolitan Government has taken the lead in promoting this greening campaign by constructing a 770-square meter garden on the rooftop of its high-rise headquarters building in Shinjuku on the west side of town.

The city has launched a major program to increase the amount of green space in its 23 wards from the present 29 percent to 32 percent over the next seven years. This green space includes forests, rivers, rice paddies and gardens on office buildings.

A city ordinance requires that all new, expanded, or improved buildings in the city that have 3,000 square meters of space or more must cover at least 20 percent of their land and rooftops with plants, trees, turf or other foliage.

In 2006 the famed Isetan Department Store replaced the amusement rides it had on its rooftop with a garden—which not only attracts more visitors than the amusement center did, it also brought summertime rooftop temperatures down by 18 degrees.

In May of 2007 school children and young women planted a rice paddy on top of one of the signature Mori Building towers in Roppongi—known around the world as one of the city’s entertainment districts.

Another feature of this phenomenon has been the opening of membership gardens in open areas of the outlying wards. These gardens that include clubhouses where members can change into their work clothes, shower, eat, drink, exchange information and socialize.

One of the largest of these new communal gardens is located in Seijo, an upscale residential area in Setagaya Ward just 15 minutes from the core of Tokyo. The 500 square meter walled-in area, called Agris Seijo, is divided into 300 plots to accommodate members who pay annual fees of $1,120.

For an additional fee, staff members of the club take care of the individual gardens of members when go on vacation, or are away on business trips, and cannot tend their gardens themselves.

Suburban cities like Musashino have gotten into the act with garden centers on city property that also feature a variety of seasonal agricultural events that residents may attend free of charge.

Pasona, Inc., the well-known temporary staffing company, has inaugurated a training program for people who want to get an Agri-MBA. Classes are given three times a week at the company’s headquarters building in Otemachi, one of Tokyo’s premiere business centers. The course includes a 7-day training session on a working farm.

Some of the students say they are taking the course to get out of the business rat-race and make their living farming.

This new phenomenon, known as “hobby farming,” is itself becoming a big business in Japan, and it augurs well for the growing millions of people who feel—and are!—trapped by the prevailing economic system and are yearning for a saner, simpler life.

Japan’s Newest Export Infiltrating the World!

First it was TR Radios, then Motorcycles
Then Automobiles, Now its Washoku!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Japan kept itself isolated from the Western world from the late 1630s until the mid-1800s. When that exclusion policy was decreed by the Tokugawa shogunate it prohibited any Japanese who happened to be abroad at that time (and there were thousands) from ever returning home.

It also made it a capital offense for any more Japanese to leave the country. Except for a small company of Dutch traders kept under guard by samurai warriors on a man-made islet in Nagasaki Harbor, the decree also forbade the entry of foreigners into Japan.

But then in the early 1850s the United States sent a naval task force to Japan demanding that the country eliminate its isolation policy, and giving the government a deadline for meeting the demand.

The arrival of the Americans in Japan resulted in two civil wars, one that ended the Tokugawa Shogunate and the other that firmly established a new government in place.

The Japanese were determined that they would not allow their country to be colonized by Westerns—a fate that had befallen much of Asia. They sent the leaders of the two civil wars on several missions to the U.S. and to England, Germany, France and Italy to study their constitutional forms of government to see which one would be best for Japan.

After several years of research in Europe these extraordinary ex-samurai warriors determined that the only way they could protect Japan from being swallowed up by the West was to become a combined industrial-military power as quickly as possible, without being unduly hampered by human rights and other Western ideas.

Not only did the Japanese create an industrial and trading superpower in the next 15 years, they also built a powerful army and navy, and then set out to become a colonial power just like the Western countries.
Around 1915 a Japanese nationalist wrote a book entitled “The Coming War with the United States.” Talk about long-term planning!

Within ten years after the U.S. defeated Japan in 1945 the Japanese were well on their way back to superpower status. First came such tiny things as transistor radios, then came motorcycles, then came cars. Next came virtually everything Americans and Europeans used in their daily lives.

And then came sushi (raw fish!) and ramen, and udon, and soba and soy sauce and a stream of other Japanese foods that until the 1950s and beyond most Westerners wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole, much less a pair of chopsticks.

And then came animation, and comics and manga and digital games that have taken over much of the so-called entertainment industries worldwide.

Now, the Japanese, on a private as well as a government level (with the prime minister in the forefront of the effort), have gotten serious about exporting Japan’s food culture on a massive scale.

Given the smarts and skills of the Japanese—and the fundamental fact that traditional Japanese cuisine is healthier than typical Western fare—they will very likely succeed in this new effort.

This new export effort refers to washoku (wah-shoh-kuu), or Japanese food, as the soul of Japan’s culture. It is certainly an extraordinary manifestation of the best of Japanese culture.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 the country’s famous Admiral Yamamoto said he was afraid they had awakened a sleeping giant. I wonder if any American leader had any such misgivings in the early 1850s when Admiral Perry was sent to Edo (Tokyo) to force the Japanese to open their doors to the West.

Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente
_______________________________
Te see a list of the author’s 40-plus pioneer books on Japan, go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/, or key his full name into Amazon.com's book search window.

Japanese Scientists Take Tuna Fish-Farming to New Heights

Sushi Lovers Can Rest Easy!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

With the planet’s oceans becoming more and more polluted and “the fish in the sea” dwindling at a shocking rate because of over-fishing, a Japanese fishing consortium has teamed up with four Japanese universities to e cultivate bluefin tuna from eggs.

As the world’s most voracious devourers of bluefin tuna the Japanese have a vested interest in ensuring a steady supply of this amazing sea creature.

Maruha Group Inc., a major fishing consortium, began a research program in 1987 to cultivate tuna from eggs, but gave up after 10 years because progress was so slow.

Then scientists at Kinki University got into the act, and were able to develop techniques that made it possible for them to cultivate tuna from eggs to maturity on a commercial scale. The university spun off a start-up company called A-Marine Kindai to utilize the technology.

Spurred by this success, the Maruha consortium established a relationship with four other universities to scale up the technology for the mass cultivation of tuna in ocean fish preserves and in land-based water facilities.

The new Maruha project was inaugurated with 100 million bluefin tuna eggs. They will be raised until they weigh from 120 to 150 pounds.