In the Pines

I came across an article today in the Mainichi Shinbun with the headline, "Restaurant manager died from overwork, rules labor office" ( original Mainichi Shinbun article ). This poor guy was the manager of a Skylark restaurant, which is the Japanese equivalent of say, Denney's. In my opinion, the very existence of a term meaning "death from overwork"-- karoushi 過労死 in Japanese--calls into question the dominant enterprises of "modernization" and capitalism. Not that work itself is bad--I like work; it's a basic aspect of human life. The selling of one's labor however, to the profiteers of a restaurant for example, has the tendency to divorce humans from the non-commercial aspects of their work. Marxists, of course, have discussed this alienation for over a century now. Recently, here in Otaki I've been thinking about it more and more. It's a mixed bag, many villagers work jobs to earn money, but most families also maintain fields ...

Chizuko started it all. Our patch of weeds out back was no match for the garden she was imagining. So, several long hours later--time spent in the sun, pulling weeds--our house now boasts a modest garden. Luckily, Chizuko also pulled me away from my transcribing (the boring part of fieldwork) for a couple of adventures. From the banks of the river that flows through the Seto and Noguchi sections of the village we pulled stones, smoothed by silted waters tumbling from the slopes of Ontake-san. Deep in cedar forests we dug past rotting leaves and other litter to pull dark soil, wet and fragrant from recent rains, that would bring nourishment to our garden. At home, Chizuko and I spent the afternoon clearing the last of the weeds that clung stubbornly to the rocky soil. We placed the river stones in line s to demarcate our new garden, and also to create a small flower bed. Plants and flowers that have been suffering in small plastic pots for some time seemed happy to finally stre...