The away team: a visit to Matsu Zawa’s Farm with Suizu, Ikumasa, and Ross.

My tutor from University of Edinburgh traveled to Japan a few weeks back and I was fortunate to join him on a week-long tour of art, space and nature goodness. We went from the hills of Yamaguchi and Akiyoshida, to Aichi University of the Arts in Nagoya, visited a lush mountain farm called Fukuzu, and also had a visit to Megijima Island with Isao Suizu and Ikumasa Hayashi to talk with the locals about a project I will be involved in this summer — more on the Megijima project in a separate post.

Yamaguchi

There was a quick meet and greet and tour of Akiyoshidai International Artists’ Village, a beautiful facility that seemed more than a little under-utilized. Perhaps we came at a slow time of year, but it would be great to see this place, tucked beside the limestone hills, to be an active space for re-connection with art, humanity, and the natural environment.

Akiyoshidai International Artists’ Village

Also in and around Yamaguchi, was a visit to the Saikotei, a building which used to house a large traditional restaurant. The place was a high-class kind of joint to wine and dine in Japanese style and was frequented by dignitaries for a century or so… during which time they offered their philosophical prose in Japanese calligraphy…

Yamaguchi Saikotei

That prose now adorns the tops of the doorways, with thoughts ranging from:

“I will not lose my feeling of righteousness to anyone.”
- Japnese Army General

to

“That I exist here and now is the most amazing thing.”
- Japanese Prime Minister / Nobel Laureate

Quite a range of philosophies to consider over the years. Today the Saikotei it is open to visitors and events and will house artwork for an arts festival in Yamaguchi this summer.

Nagoya

We moved on to Nagoya, meeting with Eiji Watanabe, an amazingly cheeky artist with a playful spirit. Artists such as Eiji help reinforce my faith in art as a tool for doing something bigger than the individual. Some of his current work, which we saw on display at Kenji Taki Gallery in Nagoya, takes the images drawn by children and recreates them as solid, welded, metal three dimensional works.

Eiji Watanabe’s physical reproductions of children’s drawings.

Our hosts in Nagoya, Kouji and Takako Yamashita, were also a very interesting story, as they are building an artist residency in the middle of the city in a building they recently purchased.

Koji and Takako both live in the building, and are planning/building a workshop, rooftop garden, and terrace apartment rooms for visiting artists. There’s also a cafe on the bottom floor which is yet unused. My professor and I stayed a few nights here, as ‘test’ subjects I am grateful for the hospitality of Koji and Takako, and really for the hospitality shown to us in general.

Yamashita Artist Residency in Nagoya

The University at Aichi and Edinburgh College of Art, having just signed an agreement for collaboration and exchange, will be working together to create some projects on Megijima for the Setouchi International Triennale (one of japan’s biggest arts festivals). As a part of the exchange, I will be working with a small island community this summer, producing an (agri)cultural study of the people and their connection with nature of the island. The Final Straw documentary will also be screening some sneak-previews near the end of the summer on the island — again, more on this in the next post.

One of the many small agriculture plots on Megijima

Aichi University of Arts

Poster for the lecture at Aichi University of Arts… I think I need to give them something other than a passport photo!

During our visit to Aichi University of the Arts (in Nagoya), we met with the University President Koji Matsumura, and professors Yoko Terauchi and Naoyuki Terai. My tutor from Edinburgh, Ross McLean and I also had a small lecture at the University, with Ross speaking about the Art, Space & Nature program at Edinburgh, and me blabbering for far too long about my recent projects, and how everything comes down to this idea that Humans and Nature need to be more connected with nature and our sources of food.

Well, the last bit seemed to strike a chord with several students who I talked with afterwards. Hopefully some of these bright young minds can work with Suhee and I on the project this summer.

Perhaps the highlight of the visit was that President Matsumura gave us a rather amazing and enlightening lecture on the Horyuji Mural Paintings which are housed in a special museum building on the school’s campus. The original Horyuji paintings are 7th-centry secco-style paintings (dry fresco, I think?) which in an of themselves are a rarity in the world; after surviving to the modern day, they were burned by fire in the 1950s and were almost completely destroyed. The paintings at Aichi are reproductions which the University faculty and students spent 16 years re-creating using color plates of the originals. An amazing feat to bring these lost paintings back.

Natural Farming at an Art University

It’s small, and Professor Ishii Haruo warns me that it is ‘experimental’, but Aichi University of Art in Nagoya, Japan has a natural farm on campus. Professor Haruo, who teaches in the design department, initiated the natural farm several years ago as an experimental project, and today it is offered as a class each semester where students can enjoy time growing food, and using the interaction as a direct ecological study to have their art inspired by this connection with nature. Haruo san also runs a very active environmental study group which fuses art and ecology.

Ishii Haruo at the natural farm plot on the Aichi campus — not in production for the semester yet!

Hearing about what Haruo san was doing, as well as what Isao Suizu (Aichi environmental design professor) is coordinating on Megijima, fills me with new energy. The human-nature connection has become a central point in my study and work over the past few years and is the theme I will be working with this summer during the residency period in Japan… more details on that later.

For now, I am back to Seoul and putting all the pieces together to prepare The Final Straw. Watch for interviews coming online soon as we continue to transcribe, translate, and edit this material!

Fortunately, my schedule was a bit flexible, and even more fortunately, it was a most beautiful train ride from Awa-Ikeda in Shikoku’s central valley area, up the Yoshino River. The small mountain villages here open up in a kind of magical way, as you come out of tunnels and into these grand, forested valleys. It’s an experience you kind of get on the Shinkansen (bullet train) but, you’re always traveling way to fast to take anything in; here, things move a bit slower than a blistering 186 mph. After the mountain views, the train meanders its way down to the coastal city of Kochi — this is where I realized I wasn’t actually supposed to be in a coastal city on the South part of the island.

Well, on account of the error, I was treated to the whole ride over again in the opposite direction until reaching Kotohira. Now I am in the Zentsuji area, staying with a lovely couple near a farm which hosts a yearly “Art on the Rice Field” event. Seems kind of like the Japanese version of Burning Man. An entry and photos from this one are coming soon.

For now, here are some photos from the ride:

Brief stop at Anabuki Station on the way to the transfer at Awa-Ikeda. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Check out the vintage train hardware… (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Train conductor shortly after leaving Awa-Ikeda Station (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Highway over the Yoshino River, on the Awa-Ikeda to Kochi train route. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

One of the many mountain valleys on the Awa-Ikeda to Kochi train route. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Food is grown everywhere up here. One of the valleys on the Awa-Ikeda to Kochi train route. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

At Kochi Station, waiting for the train in the correct direction

View of the Yoshino River, on the Awa-Ikeda to Kochi train route. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Baseball field under a high-flying highway overpass. The Japanese sure don’t waste land resources (photo: P.M. Lydon)

One of the many mountain valleys on the Awa-Ikeda to Kochi train route. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

One of the many mountain valleys on the Awa-Ikeda to Kochi train route. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Okitsu-san’s Natural Farm on the Right, a conventional farm on the left (Photo: P.M. Lydon)

At the end of a week with Shikoku-based natural farmer Okitsu-san, my body is still smarting in places from the work of weeding — as a natural farm, this place has some major healthy weeds — but my mind is refreshed. The experience this week, which consisted of days in the field, and nights conversing with Okitsu-san over dinner, showed me much about the ‘truth’ behind natural farming. Perhaps even as much as the past year-and-a-half of research and interviews for The Final Straw documentary.

It’s funny, because the concepts which these farmers live by are so frustratingly simple, that it has been a difficult thing for the logical side of my mind to comprehend; everything always had to have some comlex series of reasons behind it, some logical truth that could be put into formula, or at least organized prose and thesis. But that’s not how natural farming works.

It’s more simple than any of that, and although this simplicity is the key to an amazing concept, it is also the issue behind our general lack of understanding. We don’t want to turn our neat and tidy system of categorical life management off, because it will confuse our world too much. For many, natural farming is a ‘simplicity’ overload.

Even the few small pieces of natural farming that you can view in a logical way seem again, far too simple. If we take the ‘distribution’ piece of natural farming, for instance, and place it against the system we know, we get something like this:

Food Distribution Systems: Modern Farming vs Natural Farming (illustration, P.M. Lydon)

And that’s being generous to modern farming. Again, maddening simplicity. It is absolutely absurd to think of what our food goes through before it gets put into our stomachs… and this graphic is just distribution, nothing to speak of chemical treatments, pesticides, engineered seed, etc…

Okitsu-san put it in words last week over breakfast, the main concept of why he is a natural farmer:

Do I grow plants to make money? (he laughs at the absurdity of this thought… no farmers in Japan make much money) The first thing, the most important thing for a farmer, is to make healthy plants and healthy people. That is the center. That is the only way.

I feel like this is the main difference between ‘our’ system — the one that most Americans and I grew up with — and his system. Of course, he must make a living, but his priority in life, his goal, is to make healthy food for people to eat. Our goal in the U.S. is typically to make profit first, then, well, maybe we can label something ‘organic’ if we can profit from it, and if the organic associations, cohorts, and related industries can also profit.

Whether food is healthy or good for people, whether it benefits people… or whether it drives them to heart attacks, cancer, or other illness, well, that’s not really of concern to the modern food industry. Really. This is reality for all of us, unless we grow our own food, or get it directly from a farmer we can trust — it’s worth noting here that a majority of natural farming customers actually visit the farm where their food is grown. If we think about what products are on the shelves of most modern grocery stores… at least 99.9% of it, even the ‘health’ food, is all either chemically-produced, or in some way ‘marginalized’ in quality in order to maximize profit, travel well, and come to you bright, shiny, and all year round.

This is the truth of how our system functions, and even if we want to eat healthy, most of us can’t, because there are not enough farmers like Okitsu-san out there…

Not yet, that is.

The Final Straw, our documentary on natural farming and the future of food continues filming this month, and then we jump into fundraising, awareness, and the post-production phase.

If this post touched on something you care about, you should pass it on to others who you care about, and also immediately sign up for The Final Straw Newsletter. Honestly, it will be well worth the price of free, and you’ll get the latest on our progress and events coming to you area.

I’ll leave you with some photos from Okitsu-san’s beautiful farm. It was a pleasure to spend the week here:

Patrick and Okitsu-san at his farm in Awa, Shikoku. (photo: Mrs. Okitsu)

Okitsu-san and his wife at their natural farm in Awa, Shikoku. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Mr. Okitsu’s Natural Farm in Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Mr. Okitsu’s Natural Farm in Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Flowers and bugs galore in one of the fields that is ‘on break’ at the natural farm. (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Sometimes it’s hard to spot the food from the weeds… (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Mr. Okitsu’s Natural Farm in Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Mr. Okitsu’s Natural Farm in Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Monthly farm class at Mr. Okitsu’s Natural Farm in Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan (photo: P.M. Lydon)

Last week, I was able to spend a great few days on farms outside of Tokyo with representatives from the “Shumei” organization, who maintain a network of natural agriculture farms throughout Japan — and the world for that matter.

We first visited farmer Osamu Yoshino in Katori City, Chiba. Yoshino was one of the first to use a community supported agriculture (CSA) model for selling naturally-farmed foods in Japan, but it didn’t start off so easily. But it wasn’t easy for him. Because he only grew foods “in season,” he had trouble finding a market year round. CSA pioneer Keiko Domae eventually helped him solve this problem by educating consumers about seasonal naturally-grown foods, bringing these consumers directly to the farm… only after consumers stood in the middle of the field, did they understand why naturally-produced food was so special.

The following day, met with a legitimate natural agriculture power trio, Fuminori, Taichi, and Daisuke Yamamoto, three generations running a fairly large (for Japan) 20+ acre natural agriculture farm together including fields which have been farmed with ‘no-till’ methods for over 20 years. I can’t really describe the fields with words right now, so I’ll let the photographs do some talking. Enjoy…

Yamamoto Farm in Inashiki, Japan

Momo blossoms at Yoshino natural agriculture farm in Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Osamu Yoshino at his natural agriculture farm in Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Spinach at Yoshino natural agriculture farm in Chiba Prefecture, Japan

A natural agriculture dinner at Yoshino farm in Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Patrick with Osamu Yoshino and Keiko Domae in Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Rice seedlings growing at Yamamoto Farm in Inashiki, Japan

A natural agriculture lunch at Yamamoto Farm in Inashiki, Japan

The group at Yamamoto natural agriculture farm in Inashiki, Japan

Fuminori Yamamoto and his son, Daisuke, at their natural no-till rice field in Inashiki, Japan

It was amazing, will add much to the documentary, and I am grateful for the support of Shumei and of Kazu and Eri Domae for driving me around and providing logistical support and interpretation, truly a great experience with great people who care so deeply about humanity and the natural world.

Next blog installment will take us through the island of Megijima, as well as Yamaguchi, and Nagoya… stay tuned

The lecture event included an overview of The Final Straw documentary project, a musical set by Pang, and keynote from South Korean natural farmer, Ryosok Hong. Turnout was more than we expected, with around 80 people showing up from a diverse range of backgrounds. Here are a few photos and the event poster (in Korean):

Next month I will be heading to Japan to spend a week traveling with the Art, Space & Nature Program Director from University of Edinburgh, and the wonderful folks at Aichi University of the Arts in Nagoya. We’ll be looking at the school’s farm, and also interfacing with the community where I will be in residence this summer to finish the film and also be given an opportunity to produce interactive, community-based artwork.

Natural Farming Lecture Concert in Seoul, South Korea

Tonight in Seoul we’re teaming up with Space Noah and Korean natural farmer, Ryosok Hong (홍려석) to produce a ‘lecture concert.’

Hmm, ‘lecture concert’ might need some explanation, it was a strange phrase to me when I first heard it used.

As lecture events tend to go here, at least the ones I’ve been associated with, they are rather festive little things with music, food, networking time, etc… it’s really more like a party with a lecture in the middle of it.

So tonight’s event — which will kick off our fundraising for the final leg of the Final Straw film production — will include performances by musician Pang (그냥빵), an introductory talk by Dr. Noah, the showing of some film footage, networking / mingling time, and of course, the keynote lecture by the inspiring natural farmer, Mr. Hong.

Wish us luck! Suhee and I will report back afterwords.

These walks are generally the more peaceful, meditative moments, as I walk alone, moving off the busy streets into an old neighborhood, or a mountainside path overlooking the city. I think they are well worth sharing, and hope that you all can each find the time to ‘take the alley’ in your own way during the busy daily lives we’re all engaged in.

The clamoring, clattering, mind-rattling city streets are invigorating for a spell, but the constant race wears on even the most hearty soul. So I dip down the alley, every now and then…

Opening to an alleyway in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

Man walks down an alley in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

Only a block or two from the main street, here your footsteps are the loudest sound. They echo off of the closely packed walls of old homes who have seen their share of just about everything, and who stand confident and proud on account of it.

Morning alley walk in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

In these alleys, the rumble of cars whizzing by is replaced by the sound of human life, the murmurs of old men, the tea kettle whistling, the wind whipping up under a metal sign which is loosely nailed to the wall; clank, clank, clank.

Simple details come into focus, as the mind ceases to grind like a factory it starts instead to flow freely and easily. Clarity is in this alley.

Buildings in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

Although the buildings here stand still — I’d be afraid I was in California if they were moving — they dance with these details, stacked neatly on top of each other as bricks and tiles meet wood, and wires gently sway above the pipes and shingles.

Tiled wall in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

Musical wall in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

From a technical planning view — or from Google Maps — it might seem the buildings were suffocatingly close, but it’s not so standing amidst them.

This neighborhood is light, airy, and warm — an amazing contrast to the busy open spaces of the city center, lined with towering buildings that block out all but the late evening light.

Here, the sun glows, reflects, and radiates.

Morning alley walk in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

Well… back on to the main street, and back to work.

See you next time!

Main street in the Pirun-dong neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea (photo: P.M. Lydon | 2013)

In between our editing tasks this week, Suhee and I installed a joint photo exhibition at Space Noah, and also had a few dozen of our handmade photo cards go on display as the ‘seasonal exhibit’ at Cafe Oui.

Our thought? Stand in a concrete and asphalt maze with a mouth-full ‘yellow smog’ for long enough, and the idea of ‘re-connecting’ with nature starts to sound pretty good Honestly though, I think our work lately really touches a deep need for people here in the world’s second largest metropolis.

Some images of the card display and of our small exhibition…

Patrick and Suhee’s “Nature Farming” photo cards on display at Cafe Oui in Seoul!

Patrick and Suhee’s “Nature Farming” photo cards on display at Cafe Oui in Seoul!

Fresh roasted coffee beans at Cafe Oui in Seoul, South Korea

Patrick and Suhee’s ‘People, Nature, City’ exhibition at Space Noah in Seoul, South Korea.

Patrick and Suhee’s ‘People, Nature, City’ exhibition at Space Noah in Seoul, South Korea.

Many thanks go out to the staff at Space Noah, and to our dear friend Ji Woo at Cafe Oui!

If you’re in Seoul, and would like to have a look, the work should be up at least through the end of March. Here’s the info:

Cafe Oui
329-1 Seokyo-dong, Mapo-gu
+82 2 338 0407
http://blog.naver.com/cafeoui

Space Noah
23, 16gil, Sejong Daero, Jung-gu
070-4200-2030
www.spacenoah.net