The Dragon Deity and Japan’s Number One Rice
How a Dragon Kami gave us the best rice in Japan.
Kia ora Koutou, Tim Bunting, Kiwi Yamabushi here on the Japan you never knew you wanted to know.
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Tachiyazawa is the kind of place that would make Chandler say ‘could you be any more bucolic Japanese countryside’. This river valley in Shonai Town, Yamagata, is covered in rice fields and small family farms flanked either side by low-lying mountains, one of them Haguro-san, with two snow-capped behemoths at each end; Gassan, from where the Tachiyazawa River flows, and Chokai-san, the ‘Fuji of the north’1.
Tachiyazawa didn’t always look like this. The Tachiyazawa River was historically an extremely hard beast to tame, weaving its way down the valley like a writhing snake.
Or say, perhaps,
a dragon.
However, the might of this dragon was simply too much. The river burst its banks so often locals could never really get a good harvest. So, they did what any normal village struggling with a giant dragon would do:
They deified it.
To this day, countless monuments to the dragon deity lie all over the valley, a constant reminder of the power nature holds over us.
Some say this worshipping helped calm the dragon enough for a decent chance at growing rice. Others say it was the dams, weirs, and levees they built. For whatever reason, we should all be glad the dragon was tamed.
I mean, after all,
we all benefited from it.
Seriously.
Have you had Japanese rice? How about sake? Ever eaten sushi? I’m willing to bet that at least once in your life, more if you’ve ever eaten rice in Japan, the rice you had originated from a single grain found in a river valley in the middle of Shonai Town, Yamagata.
Tachiyazawa, to be precise.
In 1893, a fellow by the name of Abe Kameji from Koidenuma Shinden, Shonai Town, was passionately studying the cultivation of rice. 1893 was a particularly cold year, and crop damage due to the cold was rather severe. Abe was looking for varieties of rice capable of surviving the harshest of weather conditions in particular,
the sort of conditions a dragon might bring.
One day, Abe was visiting Kumagai Jinja, a shrine alongside the Tachiyazawa River. That was when he spotted three ears of rice in a nearby rice field seemingly able to withstand the cold.
Abe got permission and took seeds from this rice. In the next few years, he ran experiments to try and replicate growing the rice in different conditions. The first two years the rice didn’t grow well, with some of it growing too long and falling over. However, in 1896, after planting some of the seeds in colder water, there was but one ear that grew well.
Abe had pulled it off.
Abe had found the rice he wanted, and he named it partially after himself, Kame-no-o (Japanese link), which means ‘the turtle’s tail’.
Granted, as the experiments showed, Kame-no-o wasn’t that good. Good enough, but in terms of weathering storms? The tall and delicate grain isn’t the best. Plus, its resistance to bugs? Not good. And you know what? By 1970,
Kame-no-o died off.
Kame-no-o lost popularity so much they stopped growing it. But not before more rice could be bred from this one grain. Such as, I don’t know, Koshihikari,
Japan’s number one rice.
Koshihikari is so popular it’s grown in Australia, California, and even China, where Japan’s rice culture began, I don’t know, a few millennia ago. In other words,
we’ve gone full circle.
And not just Koshihikari, either. Other descendants of Kame-no-o were developed such as Sasanishiki, Koshihikari had direct children Hitomebori and Akitakomachi. Then there’s also (Yamagata’s finest) Haenuki, Tsuyahime, and more recently, Yukiwakamaru,
to say nothing of Yamagata’s sake producing prowess.
It wasn’t all bad news for Kame-no-o. Hearing from the chief brewer of Kiyoizumi that Sake produced from Kame-no-o really was the bee’s knees, Kusumi Norimichi of Kusumi Shuzo in Niigata sought to revive the legendary rice plant. And in 1980, Kusumi got 1500 Kame-no-o seeds from a seed bank and spent the next three years trying to get enough rice to brew sake from. Needless to say, they succeeded, a story that was even the basis of a manga and live-action tv series.
All this thanks was a bucolic Japanese countryside town. Oh, and few monuments to a dragon deity, of course.
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Kiwi Yamabushi: Tell Your Friends!
The place I explore in this video, Haguro-san’s Haguro Kodo, The Haguro Legacy Trail, begins in Tachiyazawa. If you’re thinking of spending a bit of time in and around the Dewa Sanzan, do check this place out! You’ll be pleasantly surprised where you end up!
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Ka kite ano.
Tim.
I like to refer to Fuji as ‘The Chokai of the South’.