Explore everyday life in Japan
For many people across Japan, April and May bring with them the annual planting of rice, which in Japanese is called Ta-ue: Ta (as in taco) U (as in coo) E (as in sway).
Ta is an abbreviated form of the word tanbo, which means rice paddy in Japanese, and Ue is the base form of the Japanese verb to plant. When combined, these words literally mean rice field planting.
Planting rice in Japan isn’t something that only farmers do. Many families have their own small tanbo (rice field) that they plant from year to year. This means that, for many people, April and May are very busy months. Hobby farmers like this, who grow rice for their family and relatives to eat, must get up early in the morning to prepare and sow their rice fields before work. Sons who live near enough to their family tanbo to return home and help with this work often do. As a result, their Saturdays and Sundays are generally lost until their fields have been planted.
Many elementary and junior high school students also participate in Ta-Ue at some point in their school life. It is very common for schools to coordinate rice planting activities with local farmers and families who have a tanbo near the school so that their students can learn how rice is grown from start to finish. Teaching students about how life has changed in Japan over the years and having them experience and imagine the burdens their ancestors must have borne in daily life is thought to help make students appreciate both the lives they now have access to as a result of technology and the food that is prepared for them on a daily basis.
For those who do not have a family tanbo but want to have an agricultural experience, many farming groups and agricultural centers offer Ta-Ue events that anyone can participate in. This means that if you come to Japan between the end of April and the end of May (depending on where in Japan you are), you may be able to dip your feet in some deep, squishy mud, plant some rice seedlings, ride on a rice planting tractor, and enjoy some very delicious salted rice balls for 1,000 円 or less.
Planting rice by hand isn’t quite for the faint of heart. As you step into the slippery, clay-like mud of the tanbo and sink in over your ankles, leeches can sometimes be seen slithering near your feet. Spiders often run across the surface of the tanbo’s water and sometimes, as one did to my son this year, run right up your legs. As you pull your feet out of the deep muck and try to move, you may lose your balance and fall down, which means your clothes will be soaking wet and you will be covered in mud. Sometimes, as you move slowly across the tanbo pulling four to five seedlings from the clump of sod in your hand and push them one knuckle deep into thetanbo’s soil, slightly foul gassy smells waft up from the deep holes that your feet leave behind you.
It is a very earthy experience, to be sure, and one that is good to bring a change of clothes and a pair of flip-flops to. And after you see how much energy and time it takes to plant one small field of rice by hand, you will truly be mesmerized by the efficiency and ingenuity of the Ta-Ue-Ki (rice planting tractor).
For more pictures of this event and another video of the Ta-Ue-Ki, please have a look at @kafkanarchy84’s Japan Picture Blog.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.