Food and the Heart

12

The role of history is only to clarify this process. After that, we should leave the decision about the future to the collective decision of the people. Suppose we lead our people astray by teaching them falsehoods without assessing their knowledge of history, which can be clarified by asking the right questions. Is there no one else to hold accountable? As anyone paying attention will soon discover, the occasions when people ate rice, other than the few ceremonial days enumerated above, were accompanied by some often important labor. One of the most well-known tradittion was the “yui,” a tradition that was followed every year in the village when all the people gathered to plant rice together, and a feast was held outdoors in honor of the rice paddy god. No matter how simplified the ritual was, rice was an essential part of it. Rice cakes and rice must also be provided to those working before house construction or on the day of retreat called fukikomori*. Making rice cakes for the topping out with millet or Japanese millet was unimaginable to them. Not only did the strenuous labor necessitate a gourmet meal, but it was also the 'hare' (festive day) of the fact that people from different families would gather outdoors to eat a festive meal with each other. On the days when people built lumberjack huts in the mountains and cut down large trees or on hunting days, which occurred only a few times a year, the lunch taken here was also a meal of the 'hare'. And perhaps the large-scale action of military camps has always been one of the most important opportunities to eat white rice. Aside from emergencies when provisions would be scarce in a siege, soldiers would never have had to endure eating anything other than rice when on an expedition. Thus, after a long period of using military force in the Middle Ages, the warrior class became the only class that must always be fed with rice. At first, the warrior class may have enforced the production and saving of rice just to prepare enough food for the troops, but later it became a habit and the peasant soldiers living in the villages could not change their custom of eating rice even when the normal day came when they were back to a cereal diet. The extremely inconvenient financial system in which rice was taxed became the principle, and as trade progressed, all the craftsmen who gathered in the castle town became commoners who lived on rice as a daily food, so this became the standard, and people came to think that a life without using white rice was desolate even on days other than the fixed day of hare. It was both a cause and a consequence of frequent government encouragement to cultivate new rice fields called shinden. Because of Japan's natural topography, rice production areas have tended to be unevenly distributed for a long time. Since the transportation of rice was the most difficult but unavoidable task, the upland farming areas in the mountains, where agricultural methods did not advance, had to suffer from the pressure of the exchange economy. Some may regard it as a mere continuation of the ancient system of collecting rice as a rice field tax, but the nature of the rice paid as a tax and the land tax on private rice fields are quite different. First, the tax rate on the former was much lower. If the burden on the people was required due to the increase of state affairs, it is doubtful whether that part was also collected from rice or unhulled rice. Even with such a large tax on rice fields, the management and transportation methods were not fixed in the provinces far from the capital, and most of the tax was not profitable for the Imperial Court because of the cost. It cannot be regarded in the same way that the owners of private land in each province used the income from the land on the spot in later periods. It can also be said that the reason why samurai improved their martial arts and started to fight for a living was because of the time when rice was abundant. In any case, the Sengoku Period led to the advancement of rice production, and furthermore, the sense of reverence and faith in rice, which had existed for a long time, was stimulated even more. And now, to the extent that it is painful for people to be restricted again, it has already been almost fully accepted. It cannot be denied that this is one of the characteristics of the new culture we have arrived at. If we are not aware of the extent to which the old beliefs about rice as the source of power guided us, we will probably not be able to predict and plan the next culture with a calm mind.

astray（形）誤った

falsehood（名）嘘

assess（動）評価する

enumerate（動）列挙する

in honor of......を祝って

retreat（名）引きこもること

millet（名）粟

Japanese millet......稗

unimaginable（形）想像できない、考えられない

strenuous（形）非常に骨の折れる

necessitate（動）必要とする

gourmet（名）グルメ、美食

lumberjack（名）木こり

provision（名）食糧

scarce（形）乏しい

siege（名）包囲攻撃

expedition（名）遠征

troop（名）軍隊、部隊

craftsman（名）職人

topography（名）地形

unevenly（副）不規則に

unavoidable （形）不可避の

upland（名）高台、高地

unhulled（形）外皮を除去していない

profitable（形）有益な

*fukikomori: The custom of putting iris and mugwort on the roof and retreating into the house on the night of May 5.