After I graduated the middle school in Uwa-cho, I got a job in social welfare. When I was twenty, I decided I was going to stop being a wage slave and start working for myself when I hit thirty. But I reached that age, and I couldn’t find anything good for me. I wasn’t really into the family business, which was growing rice. But I’d been pulled into helping out on the farm ever since I was a kid, so I knew the basics. When I turned thirty-six, I finally had to decide which road I was going to take in life, and I sat down and had a serious talk with my dad for the first time. I took a long, cool look at the place I was born and raised in, the situation there, the land there, and the work that was to be had. When the talk wound round to our family business of growing rice, it dawned on me that there was nothing else for me. My father was willing to help me out, and so I took over the family business.

When I was younger, there was a period in my life when I spent most of my time online. I picked up a lot of skills in information-gathering and making networks, and I use these skills to pull together the latest techniques in cultivation. I put these techniques to work in my own rice growing, and I share them with the guys. The whole thing about rice farming is stable production and stable supply, without leaving yourself at the mercy of the weather. To manage that, the first thing you have to do is look at rice plants from the biological angle. You have do the math—understand the total data about the ground you’re growing your rice on, and let the numbers lead you to the right answer. You have to have a dialog with your rice plants, and the data’s a part of that, of course. When any problem comes up, I just get online, get in touch with my friends, and search out the best answer. I grow wheat and soya beans as well as rice, but the thing is, if the ground’s good for rice, it’ll be good for wheat and soya beans as well. There’s a complex relationship between soil and crops, and I’m researching that all the time with my online friends—the nationwide agri-brain.