Japan Sends City Workers Back To The Land

今年2月份，Kenji Oshima失业了，他原先在一家生产座椅安全带的工厂上班。随后，他申请加入了一项竞争非常激烈但是在他看来就业空间更加广泛的培训计划──务农。最近的一个早晨，现年35岁的Oshima来到了距离东京三个小时的一个村庄。他正在一片稻田周围挖掘一条灌溉渠，一边想着哪件工具更加有效，是锄头还是铁铲？Yuka Hayashi/The Wall Street Journal接受培训的人正在一个废弃的菜园子里清除杂草，以便对这块土地重新加以利用。Oshima先生说，比起他之前作为簿记员的工作，务农的生活确实很艰辛。但是他说，他想种田，从播种到发货，都靠自己的双手。他希望很快就能租下附近的田地，开始全心务农。随着全球金融危机将日本拖入二战以来最为糟糕的经济衰退时期，无论是蓝领还是白领，失业人口大幅增加，农业一时间成为一条颇有前途的新兴职业途径。某商业周刊杂志甚至打出“农业将会拯救日本” ('Agriculture Will Save Japan')的标题。东京一家新开的餐馆Farmer's Kitchen还以有机蔬菜供货商印有农民的海报来装饰自己的墙壁。看到农业成为为数不多的几个还能创造就业机会的行业之一，日本政府已经拨款1,000万美元安排900人参加农业林业和渔业相关的就业培训项目。2月份，日本的失业率达到4.4%，较上年同期的3.9%有所上升，但仍低于美国和欧洲的水平。部分经济学家预计未来几年，日本的失业率将升至创纪录的8%左右。政策制定者希望新近失业的年轻人将有助于重振日本逐渐减少的农业人口。目前，三分之二的农业人口都是65岁以上的老人。从日本人口的总体分布来看，只有6%从事农业，大多数还只是兼职，而三十年前，这个比重高达20%。政府经济学家日本央行前任副行长岩田一政(Kazumasa Iwata)表示，如果在未来几年还无法找到年轻人务农，那么日本的农业将会彻底消失。Oshima先生及其他八位年轻人，包括一位软件工程师和一位老师，是在击败110名竞争对手后才得以进入此项为期10天由政府出资的培训项目的，他们为此还提交了阐述为何热爱农业的激情四射的文章。然而，田地里的生活一点都不轻松。九名学员在仅有650人的山村Masutomi接受培训，他们住在一家废弃的小酒馆里，共用一个洗手间，房子里没有淋浴设施，更不用说冲水马桶了。由于连镜子也没有，其中一位学员在佩戴隐形眼镜的时候屡屡出现困难。当温度下降到零度以下的时候，他们只能挤在厨房仅有的一个煤油炉周围取暖。来自东京郊区的Mami Hinataze表示，“第一天来到这里的时候，我睡觉的时候全身发冷，醒来的时候还是全身发冷。”后来，她才知道，要想夜里睡得暖和，你得层层叠叠盖上六层被子才行。现年23岁的Hinataze女士之前在一家咖啡馆工作。其次就是繁重的劳作，比如搭建温室，从家禽养殖户那里收集鸡粪用作肥料等等。某天下午，这些学员展开了除草竞赛，谁的草垛最大谁就算赢。开始的时候，他们的热情还很高，但是很快，他们之间的对话不由地转到了附近的一处温泉上，大家都希望哪天能一起去泡泡温泉，缓解一下酸痛的肌肉。之前在一家网络零售店工作的Hironari Ota表示，“在这里，你一天到晚都是脏兮兮的，很累，我指精神上。”25岁的Ota先生家里在东京拥有一家当铺，他说，他仍然不大确定是否想全心务农，但是他喜欢这种不用跟钱打交道的工作。Ota先生说，“我真正向往的是那种一个人住在树林里的日子。”他说，他随身带着亨利•大卫•梭罗(Henry David Thoreau)的著作《瓦尔登湖》('Walden')，这本书讲的就是回归大自然的简单生活。尽管农业培训项目大受欢迎，政府也提供时间更长的一年农业实习期，许多年轻人由于无法适应农村生活，最后还是回到了大城市。去年，冈山辖区西部的农场主Fukiko Oshiro雇佣了来自大阪等城市的五名工人在她的苗圃和果园里工作，其中包括两个之前从事销售工作的人。她说，到目前为止，已经有三人离开了。Yuka Hayashi/The Wall Street Journal在干了一天的除草工作后，受训生晚上还要去学习分拣去年的豆子。Oshiro女士说，这些年轻人认为，想来便来想走便走并对这里施加影响是他们的权利。他们根本不知道我们为了教会他们付出了多大的努力。Oshiro女士表示，自今年年初以来，她经营的农场收到了无数由于经济衰退而失业的人群的简历，包括附近一家三菱汽车(Mitsubishi Motors Corp.)装配厂的失业工人。虽然Oshiro女士需要更多的工人扩大她的农场，但是她对这些申请者并没有抱太大的希望。49岁的Oshiro女士说，至少以前来到这里的人多少对务农还有点兴趣，而这些新的申请者只是因为别无出路才选择来到这里。Masutomi的学员很快就发现，农村生活可没有泡热水澡的时间。白天除草完毕，晚上还得筛选去年收割的豆子。他们的培训老师Yuichiro Oguro是一位年轻的本地农夫，他与大家分享了自己如何在一个小村庄一个传统价值观和过时习俗仍占主流的地方安定下来的经历。作为与政府企业和家庭合作的一家非赢利机构的雇员，Oguro先生还负责接待各种来自城市的团体，后者希望体验农村生活，时间从几小时到一年不等。Oguro先生曾经花了几年的时间骑着自行车环游世界。四年前，他来到Masutomi，和之前曾是救援队员的妻子一起开创有机农作物的事业。Oguro先生说，为了说服村民将他们的田地租给他，他可谓费尽心思，参加志愿消防队，出席当地葬礼，甚至陪同年长的男村民到“舞女酒吧”('hostess bars')消遣。Oguro先生表示，“你必须学会如何入乡随俗。”现年30岁的Oguro留着山羊胡子，一些学员称他是西雅图海军棒球队(Seattle Mariners)的外野手铃木一郎(Ichiro Suzuki)的翻版，只不过身形稍微瘦削了一些。Masutomi的学员很快领教了什么是小山村的生活。有天晚上11点过后，住在山谷对面的一位邻里看到他们的房子还有灯光。第二天早晨，他竟然颇费周折地驱车前来，只是为了告诉他们：晚上睡得好，白天干活才会有力气。Yuka Hayashi相关阅读日本政府预计2009财年经济将萎缩3.3% 2009-04-27日本财务大臣与谢野馨：经济仍面临下行风险 2009-04-27日本经济显露好转迹象 2009-04-23日本央行：经济形势显著恶化 2009-04-08日本将追加1,000亿美元经济刺激支出 2009-04-07


Kenji Oshima lost his job in February at a seat-belt factory. So he applied for a highly competitive job-training program in an area he felt had more potential: farming.The 35-year-old, dressed in his old factory uniform, spent a recent morning in a remote village three hours from Tokyo. He was digging an irrigation ditch around a rice paddy, contemplating which tool was more effective, a hoe or a shovel.'I know it's a hard life' compared with his former job as a bookkeeper, Mr. Oshima said. 'But I want to become a farmer and use my own hands to do everything, from sowing seeds to shipping boxes.' He hopes to soon rent land nearby to start farming full time.As the global financial crisis sinks Japan into its worst recession since World War II and hundreds of thousands of jobs are slashed in factories and offices, farming has emerged as a promising new career track. 'Agriculture Will Save Japan,' blared a headline for a business weekly magazine. Farmer's Kitchen, a popular new Tokyo restaurant, plasters its walls with posters of hunky farmers who supply the eatery with organic vegetables.Seeing agriculture as one of the few industries that could generate jobs right now, the government has earmarked $10 million to send 900 people to job-training programs in farming, forestry and fishing. Japan's unemployment rate was 4.4% in February, up from 3.9% a year earlier, but still lower than the U.S. or Europe. Some economists expect the figure to rise to a record 8% or so within the next couple of years.Policy makers are hoping newly unemployed young people will help revive Japan's dwindling farming population, where two in three full-time farmers are 65 or older. Of Japan's total population, 6% work in agriculture, most doing so only part time, down from about 20% three decades ago.'If they can't find young workers over the next several years, Japan's agriculture will disappear,' says Kazumasa Iwata, a government economist and former deputy governor of the Bank of Japan.Mr. Oshima and eight other young prospects, including a software engineer and a former teacher, snared spots in a 10-day state-funded program after beating out 110 other applicants and writing passionate essays about their interest in farming.But life in the sticks is no vacation. The nine trainees in Masutomi, a mountain village with 650 residents, were housed in an abandoned inn with a single bathroom with no shower or flush toilet. With no mirror in sight, one trainee struggled to put in his contact lenses. They huddled around a single kerosene heater in the kitchen when the temperature dipped below zero.'On my first day, I went to sleep feeling cold and woke up feeling cold,' said Mami Hinataze, a 23-year-old woman from a Tokyo suburb who worked at a cafe until recently. Later, Ms. Hinataze learned to use six layers of covers to keep warm at night.Then there was the grueling workload, which included setting up a greenhouse and collecting chicken droppings from a poultry farmer to use as fertilizer. One afternoon, the trainees tackled weed-picking with enthusiasm, competing to see who could dig up the largest clump. But soon, the conversation turned to a nearby hot spring they all wished they could visit to ease their achy muscles.'It's kind of tiring, I mean mentally, to get covered with dirt,' said Hironari Ota, a 25-year-old who used to work at an online retailer. Mr. Ota, the son of a Tokyo pawnshop owner, said he still wasn't sure he wanted to become a full-time farmer, but liked the idea of having a job that didn't require handling money.'What I really want is to go live in the woods by myself,' he said, revealing that he had brought with him a translated copy of Henry David Thoreau's book 'Walden,' about simple life in a wood cabin.Despite the popularity of the training programs and of the government's longer, one-year farm internships, many young people end up returning to cities, unable to adjust to life in the countryside. Last year, Fukiko Oshiro, a farmer in western Okayama prefecture, hired five workers from cities like Osaka, including a couple of former salesmen, to work at her nursery and fruit farm. She says she has already lost three of them.'These young people think it's their right to come and impose on us,' says Ms. Oshiro as she surveyed her busy farm stand recently. 'They have no idea how much work we put in to teach them.'Since the beginning of the year, says Ms. Oshiro, her farm has received a flood of resumes from people affected by the recession, including some let go from a nearby assembly plant of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. While Ms. Oshiro needs more workers for her expanding farm, she doesn't have high expectations for these applicants.'At least people who came before were interested in agriculture,' the 49-year-old says. 'These new applicants are coming because they have no other choice.'The Masutomi trainees soon discovered that farm life left no time for soaking in a hot tub. After the day of weed picking, they spent the evening around a kitchen table sorting out last year's crop of beans. Yuichiro Oguro, a young local farmer who served as their instructor, came to share his experience of settling in a small village where traditional values and old-fashioned customs still rule. As an employee of a nonprofit group that works with the government, corporations and families, Mr. Oguro also plays host to groups from cities coming to experience country life for anywhere from a few hours to a year.After spending several years traveling around the world by bicycle, Mr. Oguro says he came to Masutomi four years ago to join his wife, a former aid worker who started organic farming. To persuade villagers to rent their land to him, Mr. Oguro said he joined a volunteer fire squad, attended local funerals and wooed the village elders by accompanying them to 'hostess bars' where women entertain male customers.'You have to learn to fit in,' said Mr. Oguro, a goateed 30-year-old whom some trainees describe as a skinny version of Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners.The trainees soon had their first taste of a close-knit community. A neighbor living across the valley spotted a light in their house well past 11 p.m. He took the trouble of driving by the next morning to deliver a message: Farmers need a good night's sleep to stay strong.Yuka Hayashi