The Greening of Japan #3 100works - The Modern Hyakusho

Japan once had a way of life embodied in the word hyakusho.

Originally, the word referred broadly to ordinary people of many different family names, but I have come to reinterpret it in a more contemporary way: as someone who does many kinds of work.

“100works — The Modern Hyakusho.”

This idea was first given to me by Kurosaki-san, the founder of Takigahara at the time, and it became one of the starting points for how I began to think about work and life.

I get bored easily. I have never been very good at doing just one thing forever.

So the concept felt like a perfect fit.

During the Edo period, around eighty percent of Japan’s population belonged to the hyakusho class. But being a hyakusho did not necessarily mean spending your entire life doing agricultural labor.

People cultivated fields, went into the mountains, repaired their homes, brewed sake, took part in festivals, traded goods, and handled all kinds of work within the community.

Before life and work were divided into the finely separated professions we know today, people carried many more roles at the same time.

And far more people once grew rice and vegetables than they do now.

Growing food and making the things necessary for everyday life are not, by nature, specialist skills reserved for a small group of professionals. If we learn how and gain experience little by little, I think many of us can bring those abilities back into our own lives.

We do not need to explain ourselves through a single profession or the name of a company.

There can be many things we want to do, and if something keeps calling us, perhaps we should try it.

Experiences that once seemed completely unrelated may eventually connect into a single line and become the key that opens a new door in life.

In my case, my current work includes growing fruit, making sake, maintaining temple gardens, interpreting, and working as a local guide.

Then there is the rest of life: farming at home, music, photography, embroidery, writing, reading, tea, cooking.

Seasonal work, year-round work, one-off jobs, work that builds everyday life, and hobbies.

I combine all of them to shape the rhythm of a day, a month, and a year.

Modern society has tended to reduce a person to a single occupation.

But perhaps we are now beginning to move in the opposite direction.

If technology reduces the amount of labor required for each individual job, one person may once again be able to hold several different livelihoods at the same time.

The smartphone in your hand can handle accounting, research, inventory, sales, weather data, crop analysis, and scheduling.

Work that once required several different specialists can increasingly be managed by a single person operating on a small scale.

High technology does not have to be a tool that only makes large corporations stronger.

Used differently, it can make small things stronger too.

And I think agriculture is one of the places where this could create a major shift.

But first, I want to separate two different things: farming as part of everyday life, and farming as a profession.

When I talk about farming in the context of Han-no Han-X or a partly self-sufficient life, I am not talking about large-scale mechanized agriculture.

I mean having a small field near your home, growing vegetables and fruit, and producing some of the food you eat yourself.

You do not need agricultural machinery worth millions of yen for that.

A hoe, a sickle, a shovel, and a watering can are enough to begin.

More than anything, part of the meaning lies in using your own body—touching the soil, feeling the seasons, and understanding how food actually grows.

Professional farming is different.

If you cultivate a certain amount of land, produce crops as commodities, ship them consistently, and make a living from them, you begin to need tractors, cultivators, brush cutters, transporters, sorting machines, cold storage, warehouses, and many other kinds of equipment.

The size of that initial investment becomes a serious barrier for new farmers.

And of course, for farmers already in the industry, investment in machinery and infrastructure, repair costs, fuel, fertilizer, other inputs, and labor costs all place pressure on the business.

Most agricultural machinery is not running all year.

Some machines are used only during plowing season. Others only during harvest. Some may operate for just a handful of days each year and spend the rest of their time sitting inside a shed.

The more the population declines, the fewer farmers there are, and the more sophisticated and expensive machinery becomes, the less sense it makes for every farm to own everything individually.

That is why I think professional agriculture needs to move from owning machinery to accessing machinery and agricultural work when it is needed.

A region could own the machines.

A cooperative could own them.

A private company could own them.

Several farmers could share ownership.

Rental, sharing, or contract work could all be part of the system.

For a long time, farming has carried the assumption that if you want to become a farmer, first you buy the machines.

But there should be another option.

Instead of buying the machine, buy the work you need done.

In other words, farmers could outsource the agricultural task itself.

Imagine entering a request:

“Please plow this field tomorrow between 4:00 and 7:00 in the morning.”

An autonomous tractor enters the field, completes the work, and by the time you arrive in the morning, it is already finished.

Mowing, spraying, transportation—the same principle could apply.

Request only the work you need, when you need it.

Then a new farmer would not have to begin by taking on tens of millions of yen in equipment and debt.

This is not some distant science-fiction future.

Online agricultural contracting services already exist. Machinery can already be rented by the hour. Driverless tractors operated under remote supervision are already beginning to be put into practical use.

These technologies and services currently exist separately.

The next step is simply to connect them.

The direction we should be moving toward is not one that removes human beings from agriculture.

I think it should be the opposite: a system that makes it easier for human beings to return to agriculture.

Let machines handle the parts that require driving the same route over and over again, carrying heavy loads, and exhausting the body through repetitive labor.

Then people can spend more of their time looking at plants, reading the soil, checking flavor, processing food, and handing what they have made to another person.

Within the entire process of agriculture, we can begin to separate the parts best left to machines from the parts that still depend on human senses.

As image recognition and precision application technologies continue to develop, it also becomes possible to stop spraying an entire field uniformly and instead apply only what is needed, exactly where it is needed.

High technology does not have to exist only to increase the amount of pesticides and fertilizer we use.

It can also become a tool for reducing them while continuing to farm.

The future is already very close.

In everyday life, there is meaning in using the body itself.

In professional agriculture, advanced machinery can be shared.

By combining those two ideas, I think the “modern hyakusho”—someone who moves between many different kinds of work and enjoys doing so—can become a realistic way of life.

And there is no reason to stop this idea of sharing with agricultural machinery.

Cars. Houses. Electricity. Processing facilities. Work. Skills. Time.

Every community contains resources that are sitting unused.

In the next chapter, I want to explore an idea for connecting them all:

Village OS.