Showa, Men Had It Tough Too 136: Land Reclamation

This is the story of Tsugio (my father), who was born in a rural village in Kagoshima in the early Showa period and lived out his life there as a farmer until the age of 82.

Tsugio, an only son of a farming family, while attending a prefectural agricultural school, volunteered for the Army Youth Pilot Corps and joined a kamikaze unit as a maintenance soldier, but fortunately was demobilized, and devoted himself to the family business of farming. In Showa 29 (1954), with the economy improving partly thanks to the Korean War, the Tsugio family welcomed Miyoko (my mother) from the same village as a bride. The family's perception of a bride was old-fashioned, but that did not mean there were no joys for the newlyweds alone.

Before the marriage, I mentioned that in Tsugio's region, there was a trend toward clearing mountains to plant mandarin oranges. The wedding was in March. Soon after, rice field plowing began, and eventually, the cycle of rice cultivation—the most important of the year—began. In parallel with this, the development of the mandarin orange mountain was also underway.

For fruit tree cultivation, it is ideal to have a moderate slope to ensure sunlight, and the forest land owned by his father, Kichitaro (my grandfather), had good sun exposure. However, the scrub that originally grew there had to be cut down. Since this work would have required specialized tools, the farmers clearing the land together likely hired people who worked in forestry.

As for the trees that were cut down, those too large for them to carry themselves might have been taken by timber merchants. Around Showa 30 (1955), regardless of the price, they probably still sold. Trees that could be carried were likely cut into short pieces and used as firewood or agricultural materials along with the branches.

Even if the parts above the trunk could be processed that way, to plant new mandarin trees, the roots naturally had to be dealt with as well. That is where "land reclamation" comes in. They dug up the deep-reaching tree roots by hand.

I do not have the land registry or similar documents at hand, so it is frustrating that I cannot accurately describe the size, but it was not on the scale of one or two plots of a community garden rented out in the city. From what I, Fumi (me), saw as a child, it was so vast that it felt like "mandarin oranges were growing on the entire mountainside as far as the eye could see." To think that they cleared almost all of that by human power.

After digging up the tree roots, the sloping mountainside had to be rebuilt into terraced fields. Once the terraces were built, they were held in place with stone walls so the soil would not wash away. Therefore, when the mandarin orange mountain was fully grown, looking up from below, you could see stone walls between the trees, extending all the way to the top. It seems those stone walls were also built by hand. In a sense, it is mind-boggling how primitive that work was.

Women could not do heavy labor like the men. They were assigned relatively lighter tasks, such as clearing away the dug-up tree roots or leveling the holes left behind. Even if it was lighter, it was still manual labor with a hoe. They would bend their waists and look down while working the hoe tirelessly. Although she had recovered, Miyoko, who had been hospitalized for tuberculosis just a few years prior, found it to be grueling work.

The work itself was tough, but what was even harder for Miyoko, the bride, was that because her father-in-law Kichitaro and mother-in-law Haru (my grandmother) were both physically robust, she could not say she wanted to rest even when she was tired. Once the work started, they worked continuously, except for tea and lunch breaks.

Furthermore, both Kichitaro and Haru made frugality their motto based on their life experiences. The work relied basically on human power, and they did not use protective gear like cotton gloves or jikatabi (split-toe work shoes). They used bare hands, or at most, straw sandals they had woven themselves. Kichitaro and the others thought, "If your body gets dirty, you can just wash it, but gloves and jikatabi have to be mended or bought again, so it's a waste." Or perhaps, in rural farming villages around Showa 30 (1955), the concept of protecting one's hands and feet while working was still weak.

Tsugio and Miyoko worked every day, covered in dust and mud. Miyoko, who had been fair-skinned from working in a factory before marriage, quickly became tanned.

《Note》 The content of this section has been added to and revised from "38 Land Reclamation 1" and "39 Land Reclamation 2" in "The Showa That Had No Written Word," which chronicles Miyoko's life. Land reclamation is also discussed in "92 Reclamation of the Mandarin Mountain" in "The Meiji That Had No Written Word," which chronicles Kichitaro's life.