Category Archives: Photos

【News】Bright red, orange and yellow safflowers in morning haze (July 7, 2016) The busiest season for safflower farmers has begun in Takase area,Yamagata-shi. Yamagata Prefecture. The farmers pick the flowers in early morning when the thorns surrounding the flowers and the leaves are softened by the morning dew. This way, they don’t get the thorns in their fingers. The flowers are used to produce dye, and the picking season goes through until mid-July. There are safflower fields of approximately 4 hectares in total in Yamagata-shi, according to Agricultural Cooperative (JA) Yamagata.

On the first Sunday of June every year in Hioki-shi, Kagoshima Prefecture, there is an exciting rice planting festival called Seppetobe. Seppetobe means “leap as high as possible” in the Kagoshima local dialect. Young men in white costumes jump in a paddy field, which is covered with mud, to pray for the productiveness of the year. The young men from some groups according to the districts they live and compete how well a man from each group can carry a long bamboo rod from one corner to another for about 50 meters without tipping it over. A large figure of about 3 meters tall called deodon (meaning the great king … Continue reading →

Two months after the Kumamoto quakes, volunteers are still helping farmers in Nishihara-mura, Kumamoto Prefecture, the village hit by the intensity-7 major earthquake. So far (by June 13, 2016), a total of 1,354 volunteers came to the village from all over Japan through the support of the village’s volunteer center for agricultural recovery, each saying that s/he wants to do something for Kumamoto. Their help with the farm work is also helping the quake-hit farmers manage and recover post-quake trauma.