Fukuoka Quotes

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.

Before researchers become researches they should become philosophers.

Food and medicine are not two different things: the are the front and back of one body.

Food and medicine are not two different things: they are the front and back of one body. Chemically grown vegetables may be eaten for food, but they cannot be used as medicine.

But intending to understand ten things, you actually do not understand even one. If you know a hundred flowers you do not “know” a single one.

I wonder how it is that people's philosophies have come to spin faster than the changing seasons.

Modern research divides nature into tiny pieces and conducts tests that conform neither with natural law nor with practical experience. The results are arranged for the convenience of research, not according to the needs of the farmer.

In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. If each person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 1/4 acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land.

bukannya teknik bertanam yang merupakan faktor yang paling penting, melainkan lebih kepada pikiran petaninya.

When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do.

If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.

Kebudayaan yang benar dilahirkan di alam, sederhana, rendah hati, dan murni

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced.

At first people ate simply because they were alive and because food was tasty. Modern people have come to think that if they do not prepare food with elaborate seasonings, the meal will be tasteless. If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.

I believe that even 'returning-to-nature' and anti pollution activities, no matter how commendable, are not moving toward a genuine solution if they are carried out solely in reaction to the over development of the present age.

I believe that if one fathoms deeply one's own neighborhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of worlds will be revealed.

Until there is a reversal of the sense of values which cares more for size and appearance than for quality, there will be no solving the problem of food pollution.

Wajah alam merupakan sesuatu yang tidak dapat dikenal

Just to live here and now—this is the true basis of human life.

We can never know the answers to great spiritual questions, but it's all right not to understand. We have been born and are living on the earth to face directly the reality of living.

People think they understand things because they become familiar with them. This is only superficial knowledge. It is the knowledge of the astronomer who knows the names of the stars, the botanist who knows the classification of the leaves and flowers, the artist who knows the aesthetics of green and red. This is not to know nature itself- the earth and sky, green and red. Astronomer, botanist, and artist have done no more than grasp impressions and interpret them, each within the vault of his own mind. The more involved they become with the activity of the intellect, the more they set themselves apart and the more difficult it becomes to live naturally.

Fast rather than slow, more rather than less--this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse. It has only served to separate man from nature. Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness. Agriculture must change from large mechanical operations to small farms attached only to life itself. Material life and diet should be given a simple place. If this is done, work becomes pleasant, and spiritual breathing space becomes plentiful.

If nature is left to itself, fertility increases. Organic remains of plants and animals accumulate and are decomposed on the surface by bacteria and fungi. With the movement of rainwater, the nutrients are taken deep into the soil to become food for microorganisms, earthworms, and other small animals. Plant roots reach to the lower soil strata and draw the nutrients back up to the surface.

Kenyataanya ilmu diet barat menciptakan masalah-masalah yang jauh lebih banyak daripada memecahkannya

Orang sekarang ini makan dengan pikiran mereka, tidak dengan tubuh mereka

The heart that loves the wicked ego creates the hated enemy.

Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything, and every action is a futile, meaningless effort.

In nature's cyclical rhythms, there are no grounds for the discriminatory view that underlies Darwin's view of superiority and inferiority that deems single-celled organisms as lower, and more complicated life forms as higher. It would be more appropriate to say we are all one continuous life-form.

Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs. Lovers were whispering to each other, businessmen were poring over spread sheets, college kids were planning their next ski trip and discussing the new Police album. We could have been in any city in Japan. Transplant this coffee shop scene to Yokohama or Fukuoka and nothing would seem out of place. In spite of which -- or, rather, all the more because -- here I was, sitting in this coffee shop, drinking my coffee, feeling a desperate loneliness. I alone was the outsider. I had no place here. Of course, by the same token, I couldn't really say I belonged to Tokyo and its coffee shops. But I had never felt this loneliness there. I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself.

Speaking biologically, fruit in a slightly shriveled state is holding its respiration and energy consumption down to the lowest possible level. It is like a person in meditation: his metabolism, respiration, and calorie consumption reach an extremely low level. Even if he fasts, the energy within the body will be conserved. In the same way, when mandarin oranges grow wrinkled, when fruit shrivels, when vegetables wilt, they are in the state that will preserve their food value for the longest possible time.

Jika kita mengelami krisis bahan makanan bukanlah disebabkan oleh daya produktifitas alam yang tidak mencukupi, melainkan oleh keinginan manusia yang berlebih-lebihan

Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament. Fast rather than slow, more rather than less—this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse.

Tujuan akhir bertani bukanlah penanaman tanaman tetapi pengembangan dan penyempurnaan keadaan manusia

Nature does not change, although the way of viewing nature invariably changes from age to age.

If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature's productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.

Non c'è nessuno così grande come chi non cerca di realizzare niente.

I had a dream about you last night. In this dream we were walking down the beautiful Japanese streets of Florida. Fukuoka is nice in the summer.

[Man] sees the morning as the beginning of a new day; he takes germination as the start in the life of a plant, and withering as its end. But this is nothing more than biased judgment on his part. Nature is one. There is no starting point or destination, only an unending flux, a continuous metamorphosis of all things. —Masanobu Fukuoka, THE NATURAL WAY OF FARMING

Ketika untuk pertama kalinya saya berhasil menanam padi dengan metoda tanpa pengolahan, saya merasa benar-benar puas seperti apa yang dirasakan Colombus ketika ia menemukan benua Amerika

In olden times there were warriors, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants. Agriculture was said to be closer to the source of things than trade or manufacturing, and the farmer was said to be "the cupbearer of the gods." He was always able to get by somehow or other and have enough to eat.

Infinite Jest (I). B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. Judith Fukuoka-Hearn; 16/35 mm.; 90(?) minutes; black and white; silent. Incandenza's unfinished and unseen first attempt at commercial entertainment. UNRELEASED

Why do you have to develop? If economic growth rises from 5% to 10%, is happiness going to double? What's wrong with a growth rate of 0%? Isn't this a rather stable kind of economics? Could there be anything better than living simply and taking it easy?

It doesn’t matter how the harvest will come out”, says Masanobu Fukuoka. “Just sow seeds and care tenderly for the plants and soil. You have joy. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create. Doctors should first determine at the fundamental level what it is that human beings depend on for life.

Observe Nature thoughtfully rather than labour thoughtlessly” from “One Straw Revolution

Human life is not sustained by its own power. Nature gives birth to human beings and keeps them alive. This is the relation in which people stand to nature. People do not create food, nature bestows it upon us.

Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create.Doctors should first determine at the fundamental level what it is that human beings depend on for life... Modern scientific agriculture, on the other hand, has no such vision. Research wanders about aimlessly, each researcher seeing just one part of the infinite array of natural factors which affect harvest yields. Even though it is the same quarter acre, the farmer must grow his crops differently each year in accordance with variations in weather, insect populations, the condition of the soil, and many other natural factors. Nature is everywhere in perpetual motion; conditions are never exactly the same in any two years. Modern research divides nature into tiny pieces and conducts tests that conform neither with natural law nor with practical experiences. The results are arranged for the convenience of research, not according to the needs of the farmer.

My idea is entirely different. I think we should mix all the species together and scatter them worldwide, completely doing away with their uneven distribution. This would give nature a full palette to work with as it establishes a new balance given the current conditions. I call this the Second Genesis.

Originally human beings had no purpose. Now, dreaming up some purpose or other, they struggle away trying to find the meaning of life. It is a one-man wrestling match. There is no purpose one has to think about, or go out in search of. You would do well to ask the children whether or not a life without purpose is meaningless.

To be a ramen writer of Kamimura's stature, you need to live in a ramen town, and there is unquestionably no town in Japan more dedicated to ramen than Fukuoka. This city of 1.5 million along the northern coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, is home to two thousand ramen shops, representing Japan's densest concentration of noodle-soup emporiums. While bowls of ramen are like snowflakes in Japan, Fukuoka is known as the cradle of tonkotsu, a pork-bone broth made milky white by the deposits of fat and collagen extracted during days of aggressive boiling. It is not simply a specialty of the city, it is the city, a distillation of all its qualities and calluses. Indeed, tell any Japanese that you've been to Fukuoka and invariably the first question will be: "How was the tonkotsu?

The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something. Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be done. We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a "movement" not to bring anything about.

Più la gente fa, più la società si sviluppa, più aumentano i problemi. La crescente devastazione della natura, l’esaurimento delle risorse, l’ansia dello spirito umano, tutte queste cose sono state provocate e diffuse dal tentativo dell’umanità di realizzare qualcosa. In origine non c’era nessuna ragione per progredire e non c’era nulla che dovesse essere fatto. Siamo arrivati al punto in cui non abbiamo altra via che portare avanti un movimento che non porti avanti niente.

I call this the money-sucking octopus economy. [...] Everything is pulled to the center with these eight legs. Although this action is carried out under the name of stimulating the regional economy of outlying areas, or maintaining regional culture, the wealth eventually accumulates in the center. [...] Money attracts more money, and it goes on and on. And what is this wealth being used for? It is used for establishing more centralized authority and strengthening armaments--more fuel for the gut of the octopus.

A natural person can achieve right diet because his instinct is in proper working order. He is satisfied with simple food; it is nutritious, tastes good, and is useful daily medicine. Food and the human spirit are united. Modern people have lost their clear instinct and consequently have become unable to gather and enjoy the seven herbs of spring. They go out seeking a variety of flavors. Their diet becomes disordered, the gaps between likes and dislikes widens, and their instinct becomes more and more bewildered. At this point people begin to apply strong seasonings to their food and to use elaborate cooking techniques, further deepening the confusion. Food and the human spirit have become estranged.

Fukuoka, more than any other city in Japan, is responsible for ramen's rocket-ship trajectory, and the ensuing shift in Japan's cultural identity abroad. Between Hide-Chan, Ichiran, and Ippudo- three of the biggest ramen chains in the world- they've brought the soup to corners of the globe that still thought ramen meant a bag of dried noodles and a dehydrated spice packet. But while Ichiran and Ippudo are purveyors of classic tonkotsu, undoubtedly the defining ramen of the modern era, Hideto has a decidedly different belief about ramen and its mutability. "There are no boundaries for ramen, no rules," he says. "It's all freestyle." As we talk at his original Hide-Chan location in the Kego area of Fukuoka, a new bowl arrives on the table, a prototype for his borderless ramen philosophy. A coffee filter is filled with katsuobushi, smoked skipjack tuna flakes, and balanced over a bowl with a pair of chopsticks. Hideto pours chicken stock through the filter, which soaks up the katsuobushi and emerges into the bowl as clear as a consommé. He adds rice noodles and sawtooth coriander then slides it over to me. Compared with other Hide-Chan creations, though, this one shows remarkable restraint. While I sip the soup, Hideto pulls out his cell phone and plays a video of him layering hot pork cheeks and cold noodles into a hollowed-out porcelain skull, then dumping a cocktail shaker filled with chili oil, shrimp oil, truffle oil, and dashi over the top. Other creations include spicy arrabbiata ramen with pancetta and roasted tomatoes, foie gras ramen with orange jam and blueberry miso, and black ramen made with bamboo ash dipped into a mix of miso and onions caramelized for forty-five days.

Irie serves me three ramens, including a bowl made with a rich dashi and head-on shrimp and another studded with spicy ground pork and wilted spinach and lashed with chili oil. Both are exceptionally delicious, sophisticated creations, but it's his interpretation of tonkotsu that leaves me muttering softly to myself. The noodles are firm and chewy, the roast pork is striped with soft deposits of warm fat, and the toppings- white curls of shredded spring onion, chewy strips of bamboo, a perfect square of toasted seaweed- are skillfully applied. Here it is the combination of tare, the culmination of years of careful tinkering, and broth, made from whole pig heads and knots of ginger, that defies the laws of tonkotsu: a soup with the savory, meaty intensity of a broth made from a thousand pigs that's light enough to leave you wanting more. And more. And more.

If you look inside "health food" stores these days you will find a bewildering assortment of fresh foods, packaged foods, vitamins, and dietary supplements. In the literature many different types of diets are presented as being "natural," nutritious, and the best for health. If someone says it is healthful to boil foods together, there is someone else who says foods boiled together are only good for making people sick. Some emphasize the essential value of salt in the diet, others say that too much salt causes disease. If there is someone who shuns fruit as yin and food for monkeys, there is someone else who says fruit and vegetables are the very best foods for providing longevity and a happy disposition. At various times and in various circumstances all of these opinions could be said to be correct, and so people come to be confused. Or rather, to a confused person, all of these theories become material for creating greater confusion.

Kamimura has been whispering all week of a sacred twenty-four-hour ramen spot located on a two-lane highway in Kurume where truckers go for the taste of true ramen. The shop is massive by ramen standards, big enough to fit a few trucks along with those drivers, and in the midafternoon a loose assortment of castaways and road warriors sit slurping their noodles. Near the entrance a thick, sweaty cauldron boils so aggressively that a haze of pork fat hangs over the kitchen like waterfall mist. While few are audacious enough to claim ramen is healthy, tonkotsu enthusiasts love to point out that the collagen in pork bones is great for the skin. "Look at their faces!" says Kamimura. "They're almost seventy years old and not a wrinkle! That's the collagen. Where there is tonkotsu, there is rarely a wrinkle." He's right: the woman wears a faded purple bandana and sad, sunken eyes, but even then she doesn't look a day over fifty. She's stirring a massive cauldron of broth, and I ask her how long it's been simmering for. "Sixty years," she says flatly. This isn't hyperbole, not exactly. Kurume treats tonkotsu like a French country baker treats a sourdough starter- feeding it, regenerating, keeping some small fraction of the original soup alive in perpetuity. Old bones out, new bones in, but the base never changes. The mother of all ramen. Maruboshi Ramen opened in 1958, and you can taste every one of those years in the simple bowl they serve. There is no fancy tare, no double broth, no secret spice or unexpected toppings: just pork bones, noodles, and three generations of constant simmering. The flavor is pig in its purest form, a milky broth with no aromatics or condiments to mitigate the purity of its porcine essence.

In theory, toppings can include almost anything, but 95 percent of the ramen you consume in Japan will be topped with chashu, Chinese-style roasted pork. In a perfect world, that means luscious slices of marinated belly or shoulder, carefully basted over a low temperature until the fat has rendered and the meat collapses with a hard stare. Beyond the pork, the only other sure bet in a bowl of ramen is negi, thinly sliced green onion, little islands of allium sting in a sea of richness. Pickled bamboo shoots (menma), sheets of nori, bean sprouts, fish cake, raw garlic, and soy-soaked eggs are common constituents, but of course there is a whole world of outlier ingredients that make it into more esoteric bowls, which we'll get into later. While shape and size will vary depending on region and style, ramen noodles all share one thing in common: alkaline salts. Called kansui in Japanese, alkaline salts are what give the noodles a yellow tint and allow them to stand up to the blistering heat of the soup without degrading into a gummy mass. In fact, in the sprawling ecosystem of noodle soups, it may be the alkaline noodle alone that unites the ramen universe: "If it doesn't have kansui, it's not ramen," Kamimura says. Noodles and toppings are paramount in the ramen formula, but the broth is undoubtedly the soul of the bowl, there to unite the disparate tastes and textures at work in the dish. This is where a ramen chef makes his name. Broth can be made from an encyclopedia of flora and fauna: chicken, pork, fish, mushrooms, root vegetables, herbs, spices. Ramen broth isn't about nuance; it's about impact, which is why making most soup involves high heat, long cooking times, and giant heaps of chicken bones, pork bones, or both. Tare is the flavor base that anchors each bowl, that special potion- usually just an ounce or two of concentrated liquid- that bends ramen into one camp or another. In Sapporo, tare is made with miso. In Tokyo, soy sauce takes the lead. At enterprising ramen joints, you'll find tare made with up to two dozen ingredients, an apothecary's stash of dried fish and fungus and esoteric add-ons. The objective of tare is essentially the core objective of Japanese food itself: to pack as much umami as possible into every bite.

Recently Professor Tsuno of Ehime University wrote a lengthy book on the relationship of plant metabolism to rice harvests. This professor often comes to my field, digs down a few feet to check the soil, brings students along to measure the angle of sunlight and shade and whatnot, and takes plant specimens back to the lab for analysis. I often ask him, "When you go back, are you going to try non-cultivation direct seeding?" He laughingly answers, "No, I'll leave the applications to you. I'm going to stick to research." So that is how it is. You study the function of the plant's metabolism and its ability to absorb nutrients from the soil, write a book, and get a doctorate in agricultural science. But do not ask if your theory of assimilation is going to be relevant to the yield.

Something born from human pride and the quest for pleasure cannot be considered true culture.

Food is life, and life must not step away from nature.

The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The

Fue Fukuoka, visitante recurrente del piso, quien sugirió que nos apuntáramos a un curso de algo, o a una clase, para evitar la espiral de decadencia y drogadicción a la que acaba entregándose todo informático que trabaja desde casa.

February 8: Marilyn and Joe visit Fukuoka, Japan’s oldest city, and tour an ancient castle. She also visits the U.S. base at Gannosu.

Getting into the club’s tax information gave me Yukiko’s last name: Nohara. From there, I was able to learn a reasonable amount. She was twenty-seven years old, born in Fukuoka, educated at Waseda University. She lived in an apartment building on Kotto-dori in Minami-Aoyama. No arrests. No debt. Nothing remarkable. The club was more interesting, and more opaque. It was owned by a succession of offshore corporations. If there were any individual names tied to its ownership, they existed only on certificates of incorporation in someone’s vault, not on computers, where I might have gotten to them. Whoever owned the club didn’t want the world to know of the association. In itself, this wasn’t damning. Cash businesses are always mobbed up.

The foods that are nearby are best for human beings, and things that he has to struggle to obtain turn out to be the least beneficial of all.

When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself.

I do not particularly like the word "work.” Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, and the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time.

A natural person can achieve right diet because his instinct is in proper working order. He is satisfied with simple food; it is nutritious, tastes good, and is useful daily medicine. Food and the human spirit are united.

I have often said that value does not lie in material goods themselves, but when people create the conditions that make them seem necessary, their value increases. The capitalist system is based on the notion of ever-increasing production and consumption of material goods, and therefore, in the modern economy, people's value or worth comes to be determined by their possessions. But if people create conditions and environments that do not make those things necessary, the things, no matter what they are, become valueless. Cars, for example, are not considered to be of value by people who are not in a hurry.

I believe that a revolution can begin from this one strand of straw. Seen at a glance, this rice straw may appear light and insignificant. Hardly anyone would believe that it could start a revolution. Nevertheless, I have come to realize the weight and power of this straw.

proceeds from the conviction that if the individual temporarily abandons human will and so allows himself to be guided by nature,

morning

People do sometimes sense the sacredness of nature, such as when they look closely at a flower, climb high peaks, or journey deep into the mountain. Such aesthetic sense, love, receptivity, and understanding are people's most basic instincts - their true nature. These days, however, human are flying in a completely different direction to some unknown destination, and they seem to be doing it as rapidly as possible.

We must realize that both in the past and today, there is only one 'sustainable' course available to us. We must find our way back to true nature. We must set ourselves to the task of revitalizing the earth. Regreening the earth, sowing seeds in the desert - that is the path society must follow.

Nature is one body. We can say that while human beings and insects are part of nature, they also represent nature as a whole. And if that is so, when we harm plants, microorganisms, and insects through large-scale conventional agriculture (to just use one example), we are harming humanity as well.

One question I have about this theory (*Darwin) is: What basis was used to determine which species are higher or lower, and which are strong or weak? To decide that the phenomenon of the survival of the fittest is the providence of nature and that people are the highest, most evolved species seems to reflect more the strongman logic of human beings than the true state of nature. No one can say which species is the strongest because all living things depend on one another to survive (...)

It is true that all forms of life, by necessity and by natural design, consume one another to live but they do not intentionally bring about another's extinction, systematically deprive other species of their source of food, or create factions and wars. They same cannot be said for human beings.

The destruction of nature will lead to the destruction of the human race, but many people seem to be convinced that even if humans should disappear, they will be brought to life again by the hand of their god. This idea, however, is nothing more than fantasy. The human race will not be born again. When the people on the earth have died out, there will be no God or Buddha to rescue them.

In nature's cyclical rhythms, there are no ground for the discriminatory view that underlies Darwin's view of superiority and inferiority that deems some organisms as lower, and others as higher. It would be more appropriate to say we are all one continuous life-form.

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. —Masanobu Fukuoka

Water undergoes countless changes but water is still water. In the same way, although the conscious mind appears to undergo changes, the original unmoving mind does not change.

I'm so tired of them washing me, or not washing me properly. The grains of rice tend to get stuck between my wooden planks. But when Chef Jiro Sakamoto does it, it's always different. He gives me proper care and attention, pays heed to the details of my grooves and curves. Maybe I remind him of a loved one in Fukuoka, a woman he used to caress. The restaurant, our restaurant, is getting quieter now that we're well into our years, floundering in an ocean of its own.

There is no need to trouble ourselves trying to figure out the purpose or the precise meaning of life. Instead we should just accept our gift, and do so with gratitude.

Núi sông cỏ cây đều là Phật.

Chữa lành đất đai cũng là chữa lành linh hồn con người

True culture is born within nature, and is simple, humble, and pure. Lacking true culture, humanity will perish.

Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness.

Compared with plants which ripen naturally, vegetables and fruits grown out-of-season under necessarily unnatural conditions contain few vitamins and minerals.

Food and medicine are not two different things: they are the front and back of one body.

As for the consumer, the common belief has been that natural food should be expensive. If it is not expensive, people suspect that it is not natural food. One retailer remarked to me that no one would buy natural produce unless it is priced high. I still feel that natural food should be sold more cheaply than any other. Several years ago I was asked to send the honey gathered in the citrus orchard and the eggs laid by the hens on the mountain to a natural food store in Tokyo. When I found out that the merchant was selling them at extravagant prices, I was furious. I knew that a merchant who would take advantage of his customers in that way would also mix my rice with other rice to increase the weight, and that it, too, would reach the consumer at an unfair price. I immediately stopped all shipments to that store. If a high price is charged for natural food, it means that the merchant is taking excessive profits. Furthermore, if natural foods are expensive, they become luxury foods and only rich people are able to afford them. If natural food is to become widely popular, it must be available locally at a reasonable price. If the consumer will only adjust to the idea that low prices do not mean that the food is not natural, then everyone will begin thinking in the right direction.

Em 735,  houve um grande surto de varíola em Kyushu, aparentemente advindo da Coreia via Fukuoka, chegando a matar inclusive alguns membros da família Fujiwara. Somente em Nara, no ano de 737, há relatos de que houve mais de 300 mil mortes [22]. Muitos da época consideraram a doença como uma manifestação vingativa dos deuses, em forma de onryô [23].

Nature is one body. We can say that while human beings and insects are part of nature, they also represent nature as a whole. And if that is so, when we harm plants, microorganisms, and insects through large-scale conventional agriculture, we are harming humanity as well.

Once you enter into nature and participate from the inside instead of as a visitor from the outside ... then we will intuitively know how to make a living in the world, how to feed ourselves and give ourselves shelter in a way which also allows other forms of life to live.

Forces beyond my control have taken everything away from me except my freedom to choose how to respond. —Ray Thorpe, Fukuoka #17, Japan, February 1944–September 1945

I contadini dappertutto nel mondo sono fondamentalmente gli stessi. Lasciateci dire che la chiave per la pace si trova vicino alla terra.