TRUE VALUES

Now that all the once-green rice fields have turned again to gold, they've also become individual stages for the ancient key event in Japanese society, as the whole families of each field come out to join in the harvesting of it, from the bouncy little kids to the bent grandparents, the grandmas cutting the stalks at the field edges to make room for the turns of the harvesters they use (the grandmas in mompei moving in expert fashion, having done this dozens of times over the years), the little kids jumping up and down with the rhythm of the starting harvester, then staying involved by keeping carefully out of the way (one little boy with a yellow baseball cap walked in awe through the ready field, his head barely showing above the tall golden stalks), the grandfather steering the harvester slowly and carefully around, the grandmother and the younger women following behind cutting corner-angle stalks and stacking them on the side for separate threshing, the father and the younger men lugging the big white bags of rice from harvester to truck, then at the end of another season tossing the chaff here and there onto the shorn field as the women form the rice straw into bundles, tied with rice-straw, for use in the kitchen garden...

It is clear to see how the rice field not only feeds the whole family, it is a force that holds them together, young and old, that plot of land embodying the common task whose harvest nourishes them collectively, all having a direct hand in creating the family sustenance. It is a source of pride for each one at every meal they take together...

And clear to see how great a loss it is when such true, shared values are absent from our lives.