Welcome
to Fantasy Island. I can see the camera zooming in
right now: on the lawn stands Ricardo Montalban in his white
suit, next to him sidekick Tattoo, who’s just about
to announce: “Dee plane! Dee plane!” While I’d
probably skip the Friday night TV show, the island itself
had an undeniable mystique: a location so secluded no visitor
knows where he is, the perfect place to try out a wishful
reverie.
Early in my Japanese sojourn, I may have found such a place.
I certainly have no idea where I am. I know only that the
dark water we’ve crossed is Japan’s Inland Sea,
and that this island is one of the many vague, green shores
that vanish in and out of the mist. I’ve come with my
trip’s usual troupe of Shumei guides and interpreter—not
fantasy companions per se, but the scene is magic nonetheless.
On this spring day, hot pink rhododendrons peek out from
the soft forest and the red leaves of autumn still line wet
paths. This is a place where you pass through pleasures like
scanning the dial for a radio station: here the precise song
of birds, here the perfume of cherry blossoms, here nothing
but the pure silence you find only in the middle of the sea.
If Natural Agriculture has a single heart, this is it. And
it’s even more like Fantasy Island than I thought. Shumei
owns most of Kishima Island, making it a rather inimitable
ideal. But it’s a place for the dream to grow, a place
where Natural Agriculture can flourish unfettered by the mainland’s
reality of drifting pesticides and financial pressure. Its
lessons of perfection are taken by the farmers of Shumei,
like those departing on dee plane at the end of the show,
to put into practice in their imperfect world. A sort of dreamy
research center.
But the master of this island is no Ricardo Montalban; in
fact, when he slides up to the lunch table just after we arrive,
he appears more like a shy servant than the highly revered
teacher he’s supposed to be. He’s small and his
face is thin, with skin stretched over high, round cheekbones
and caved into hollows below. His ears are the red-brown color
of sausages, his leather hat so molded to his skull it could
never fit another person. Rather than pull up a chair to our
table, he stays seated at the one beside it and keeps his
conversation cautious and deferent. When he does talk, his
eyes blink.
Farmer energized by his fields
Out of the lunchroom and onto the land, Murota is like a
fish returned to water. Standing in the soil his voice starts
to flow, unfolding the concept of compost, layer by layer.
We walk to the second of many micro-fields, up a thin and
muddy path lined with short trees, and his voice becomes even
stronger. The slight rise obscures our destination, the foliage
erases the field we came from, and suddenly it is clear that
he’s not powered by just the fields. This wildness is
the thing that completes Murota—and his agriculture.
It wasn’t always like this. When Murota arrived decades
ago he wasn’t a farmer but a young man sent to help
with other work on the island. (Kishima also functions as
a Shumei children’s summer camp and a retreat for members.)
Natural Agriculture was in its nascence, and the residents
in charge were still figuring out how to make it work. Having
been professional, non-organic farmers, the only approach
they knew was “the more, the better,” and so they
set out to make as many fields as the island could hold.
But holding capacity is a matter of opinion. As they cut
down trees and plowed wild spaces for fields, the leaves and
weeds they relied on for compost became scarce. When the island
couldn’t produce enough organic matter to sustain itself,
they brought compost from the mainland, even that made with
manure—whatever it took to keep the fields going.
Now Murota had been apprenticing with the veteran farmers,
and gradually he noticed that something was wrong. It wasn’t
just the compromise that allowed the use of manure (a practice
verboten within Natural Agriculture), but the system’s
overall imbalance. The island’s forest was nearly gone
and the remaining pine trees were mysteriously sick, their
growth rings growing thinner every year. The seaweed around
the island was dwindling. The food production was impressive,
but the farmers had forgotten that that wasn’t their
only goal. Murota thought, ‘How could we be creating
harmony with nature if the nature is being obliterated?’
Seeing the farm extended to the world
When Murota took charge of the farm 20 years ago, he made
a fundamental change that has become the backbone of all Natural
Agriculture practice. Rather than viewing it as a system unto
itself, he saw his world—the fields, the farm, the island—as
one microcosm of a larger entity that is all-inclusive, yet
finite. Add something in, and the balance is jarred; take
something out, and the machine doesn’t run.
In 2003, his fields create a picture of abundance. Today
the cabbages are at their peak, and the rows are comfortably
lush. The heads have generous space between them, but each
one is so full and round that the row feels packed. It’s
that way everywhere: each piece of these 1.8 acres is at its
optimum, whether that means heavy, hearty, bushy, leafy, dense
or tall.
Murota credits this fecundity to the island’s renewed
natural balance, which allows the soil to be composted with
local ingredients. But as I jump to draw a conclusion about
fertility, Murota catches me. He raises a thick finger patiently
and repeats the cardinal rule of Natural Agriculture, the
concept upon which most Westerners stumble: Compost is not
used to supply nutrition, it is used to keep the ground moist
and protected to regulate its temperature so the soil can
feed itself.
Nature already has everything it needs, he reminds me, we
are just here to facilitate.
The most scientific process he employs is not very scientific.
To compost, Murota combines leaves and weeds in a container.
He covers them with pure water, then compresses the mass,
then repeats until the mixture is 40 percent organic matter,
60 percent water. Then he leaves it to rot.
Of course I ask how he knows when it’s done, and of
course he answers indirectly—unraveling the story a
little more, but in such a way I realize my question doesn’t
really apply.
“Hanjyuku is a word that means something like ‘half-boiled,””
he says, “like an egg. I use the compost mostly when
it’s hanjyuku.”
Using compost-in-process boosts benefits
To mix compost into soil it must be fully rotted, but he
rarely applies it that way. Most often he takes it when half-done
and lays it over the soil and around the plants. The composting
process is one of layers, he explains, and each of them is
useful. Imagine the duff in the forest: beneath a tree you
would find whole leaves, under them those half-rotted, and
under them those broken down completely. In each stage of
decomposition the leaves have varying levels of energy and
nutrients in different forms, all of which are important to
the plant’s environment. “Instead of waiting for
only the oldest stage,” he says, “why not put
it on sooner and take advantage of the whole process?”
The information sinks into my Western head as we admire the
yellow flowers of late radishes and the twirling young pea
vines, both sheltered under misty mesh tents. The humid air
gradually solidifies into a cool rain, adversity that yesterday
sent all parties running for the cover of umbrellas. But here
at the hilltop garden, the one visibly most mature and vibrant,
Murota has kneeled like a yogi before a row of chives and
nobody is going anywhere.
For a moment he strokes the chives as if they were a child’s
hair. Then he stretches his thick right hand over the soil
and gives us the next piece of this story: If you leave the
crop in the ground after its top is harvested, the three layers
can exist underground as well. The top layer is this year’s
roots, the second those of the last crop, and so on. Again,
the explanation is one of nature: Go to a wild mountain, where
this happens as a matter of course. Take a clump of soil in
your hand, pour in some water, and it will expand like a cotton
ball. Do the same with soil that has been left bare and cultivated
blindly, and it will crumble—there’s nothing to
hold it together.
“Real good soil is not just rotting,” he says,
“it’s fermenting.”
His left hand brushes the chives aside to reveal a skinny
brown mushroom growing at their base. “It’s like
yogurt. The life is not breaking down into nothing, but rather
that breaking down is producing something new. And the sign
of it is mushrooms, just like in a forest.”
Finding concrete proof for the American
The rain is our excuse for going inside, but it’s clear
to all that I still need something more, some combination
of explanation and proof. Next to the field is a concrete
house, and in it an improbably clean room; floors lined with
tatami mats and empty of furniture but for two low tables
and a single chair for the American woman.
On one table are three glass jars. Each is thick, clean and
closed tightly, each contains water and a 30-g. sample of
soil sealed inside six months before. What has happened inside
them belies their identical nature.
The jar with soil from Murota’s least-mature field
is a predictably grim mix of nearly clear water and an inch
of dense, monotone dirt caked on the bottom like old fish
food. The jar from the hilltop field of eggplants is a step
up: the water transparent but dirty, the lumpy soil maybe
two inches deep, ranging from green to brown and growing fuzz
on top. But the forest soil is a whole separate type of life,
a microbial cosmos unto itself. The water is such a deep,
thick brown you can’t see through it. The dirt inhabits
all six of the jar’s vertical inches and spreads out
in thick clumps of hairy dirt, between them furry areas like
the bottom of a pond. White filaments stream in and out of
view, connecting the various pieces.
Murota explains that whether you’re talking about compost
or roots, each step toward wildness adds a new level of complexity.
That complexity is what holds the soil together both literally
and figuratively. Each layer attracts different microorganisms
and contributes different nutrients, and in a perfect state,
the soil has all the pieces needed for absorbing nutrition—similar
to a whole food, which comes complete with the enzymes and
minerals it needs to be digested. When one piece is removed—like
a plant’s roots pulled after harvest—the composition
becomes incomplete and the natural process can’t possibly
function at full capacity.
Likewise, adding something to the system jerks it out of
balance. He pulls out a wordy Japanese technical journal and
flips to a University of California experiment comparing the
life cycles in two lab ponds, one with fertilizer added, one
pure water. The latter produced life slowly, peaking gradually
and petering out at the end of the chart. The fertilizer sample
spiked, then just as quickly plummeted as its rapid growth
depleted the pond’s oxygen.
But as my interpreter wades through explaining the concept,
I notice Murota is already on another topic. He looks deeply
into his cup of coffee, and to waiting attendees tilts his
head slightly and begins to talk. These jars and journals
are something for me to hold on to, but next to his voice
they feel compulsory, hollow. The real proof is outside, somewhere
between the slender chives and the wet brown mushroom hiding
beneath them.
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