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From a photo essay series by SGI President Daisaku Ikeda

The Waters of Life in Tohoku

photo "A pleasure boat headed slowly toward us across Lake Towada, its wake inscribing a proud V for victory on the water's surface." [Photo by Daisaku Ikeda]

A vast canvas of scintillating blues and greens stretched before my gaze: the azure sky, the emerald forest and the deep sapphire of the ancient waters of Lake Towada.

It was August 1994, 15 years since my last visit to Aomori Prefecture in Japan's Tohoku region. The previous year, Japan's rice crop had suffered the most serious cold-weather damage in almost a century, and Aomori was hit especially hard. Some even harkened back to the nearly forgotten famines that had wracked the area in earlier centuries. That made the sight of the flourishing rice fields near the lake all the more cause for joy.

The history of the Tohoku region--the northeastern part of Japan--is the tale of humanity's struggle with Nature.

In the past, no fish lived in Lake Towada. The story of the introduction of sockeye salmon to the lake by Sadayuki Wainai (1858-1922) is known throughout Japan. Realizing that the lives of local residents would be greatly improved if fish could be harvested from the immense body of water, Wainai engaged in a long succession of experiments before finally meeting with success. He endured criticism and abuse and exhausted his personal finances until, after two decades of uninterrupted endeavor, at last fish swam in the lake waters.

A "dead lake" created by a volcanic eruption was transformed through human effort into the waters of life.

Protecting the environment is not the same as leaving it completely untouched. In Japan's case, at least, the natural environment has been enormously enriched through human effort. If people of previous generations had not planted trees on the mountains, today's lush forests would not exist. A tree takes 50 or 100 years to mature; the person who plants it rarely sees it reach maturity. Japan is a green archipelago because those of former times had the foresight to diligently plant trees for their descendants, for future generations.

With Japan's mountainous terrain, much of the level land in use today was created through human effort--cleared, terraced and irrigated by redirecting the courses of streams and rivers. The Japanese people created through their hard work the arable land they needed for paddies to grow rice.

The Oirase River flows east from Lake Towada toward the ocean. The stretch of the river below its source is known as Oirase Gorge, and the greenery on both sides of the tumbling waters as I strolled along the bank with my friends was almost overpoweringly rich and vibrant.

The Sambongihara Plain near Lake Towada was also transformed into fertile agricultural land with water drawn from the Oirase River. Prior to that it had been a barren wasteland without a single tree. After five years of nearly superhuman effort by the Tsuto Nitobe family in the mid-19th century, the land produced an initial harvest of 45 bales of rice. When at last the Nitobes saw rice plants (ine) rising from the fields, they celebrated by naming one of their grandsons Inenosuke. The boy eventually grew up to be the famous educator and under-secretary-general of the League of Nations Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933).

It was through this kind of tireless effort and hard work that rice paddies were created throughout Japan, on both mountain slopes and level plains. Each and every paddy has a story. Each irrigation ditch represents the lifeblood of our ancestors.

In the summer, the paddies across Japan are filled with water, from which rise green rice shoots--the life-supporting sustenance of the Japanese people. These paddies are another form of the waters of life.

Nor do they only produce rice. The water in the paddies seeps down into the water table, feeding the rivers and helping avert ground sinkage. Evaporation from paddies cools the air. Rice paddies protect the natural environment and human health and are in many ways one of Japan's great treasures.

The Heart of a Society

Rice is life. Rice paddies are the waters of life.

One of the very first things for which I prayed after becoming president of the Soka Gakkai was a rich harvest. We cannot live without food. Valuing food means valuing life, valuing labor and human beings, and that is the very foundation of civilization--which is nothing other than a way of living that values life.

In addition to education, the professions most concerned with nurturing life are agriculture, forestry and aquaculture. How noble they are! At the same time, there are many other professions dedicated to protecting life, and those laboring toward that end are truly civilized people who deserve the highest honor and recognition.

On the other hand, a society that does not genuinely value food or the agricultural workers who produce it is barbaric and has little regard for human beings or life. It is only to be expected that such a society will be troubled in every respect.

When farming communities die, the heart of the nation dies.

Throughout history, the Tohoku region has consistently been subjected to oppression and exploitation by the central authorities. Even its way of speaking has been disdained, and in the past students were rebuked for speaking their own dialect, and forced to wear a placard around their necks as a humiliating form of punishment.

What an abomination! What is wrong with local forms of speech? They are the living language of the people of a particular region, their birthright, born from the land that gave them life. They are the expression of the spirit of love of home, an essential part of one's identity.

So-called outlying regions are not inferior in any way to the centers of power. Since sovereignty resides in the people, wherever they live is a center of power.

In May 2002, an All-China Youth Federation (ACYF) delegation came to Yamagata Prefecture in Tohoku after visiting many other areas of Japan. At first, local Soka Gakkai members were at a loss as to what sights they could show the members of the Chinese delegation, thinking their home region had nothing special to interest visitors. They finally decided to show the Chinese youth the ordinary farming communities of the area.

When they brought their visitors to a farm, they were surprised to see them suddenly become animated. It turned out that many of them were from farming communities in China. One of the delegation members was a popular singer in his homeland. "When I was a boy, I planted rice, too. In China, most fields are planted by hand--like this!" he exclaimed, vividly pantomiming the motions. Suddenly the entire group began to talk enthusiastically, and a discussion of Chinese and Japanese agricultural practices began on the earthen embankment running between the paddies.

The group also visited a cherry orchard at harvest time. The head of the ACYF delegation, viewing the cherries hanging from the trees like sparkling jewels, commented that it was his first time to see cherry trees. He expressed astonishment at their beauty, and he and the other members asked many questions about cherry cultivation.

It was an eye-opening experience for the Soka Gakkai youth who arranged the tour. One of them remarked: "I realized that agricultural products are also a kind of culture that can transcend national boundaries just like great works of music and art. Farmers communicate with people around the world through the foods they produce."

Life knows no boundaries; that is why farming communities, which are devoted to producing and nurturing life, are directly linked to the entire world.

I have called the 21st century the century of life. It is the green century, the century of water and earth. Farming regions like Tohoku are not the distant backwaters they are sometimes thought to be, but the very center of things, the cutting edge of our times.

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