It turns out growing the sunflowers was not their idea. For that matter neither was drying the sunflowers. The sunflowers were being grown because the local chonaikai had instructed every household with a vegetable patch to grow sunflowers. (Rather similar to the Chinese Great Leap forward where every household had to provide metal for the smelters...) Whether or not people actually wanted to grow sunflowers wasn't part of the equation.
Any anthropology 101 book of Japan will talk about chonaikai - neighbourhood associations which blur the lines between government and civil society. They are sometimes placed in the civil society basket, as joining is voluntary. But in rural places it's not very easy not to be members.
I probed a little deeper...
Q. Why do they want you to grow sunflowers....
A. "to give them to the local school"
Q. I see... And what will the school do with them...
A. "hmmm we're not exactly sure.... maybe make sunflower oil."
Q. Oh... to use in school lunches...
A. "hmm not really sure, maybe but maybe they'll sell it.... we always buy canola oil because sunflower oil is a lot more expensive."
Q. Oh.. OK... so you got a note from the school asking you to grow....?
A. "No we were just instructed by the chonaikai."
Q. So did they actually ask you?
A. No, we just got the instruction.
Q. And you didn't ask why...
A. a vague answer that could have implied they didn't but didn't get an answer, or that they didn't because it didn't matter what the answer was.
Hiro's father was quite stressed about whether they were doing it properly.... No instructions on how to grow, or how to dry, or how to hand in. Just an instruction to grow, dry and hand in..
Hiro's mother was taking it less seriously - "if they don't tell is, they can get what they get".
Q So I guess the school kids aren't going to write you all thank you notes...
A. I don't think so.
Compared with this, grasspicking day doesn't seem so extreme after all...
Just a spot of courtesy - asking, explaining, thanking, would make all the difference...
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| Sunflowers drying |
5 comments:
So what would the neighbourhood association do if you sent them two of the sorriest, saddest-looking sunflowers ever? Just two. Puny and wilted. Would that suffice? :D
I don't know what the school will do with the flowers, but at least they provided a funny story for your blog! ^^
At least it wasn't gangs of thugs demanding the plant poppies! Or a certain kind of green leafed plant... The school kids aren't going to be experimenting with smoking the seeds, right?
I wondered what the result would be of passive resistance - pulling half the seeds out, supplying too few, planting a variety that doesn't have much in the way of usable seeds...
PIL weren't prepared to go down that track... Mura hachibu (http://junana.com/CDP/corpus/GLOSSARY5.html) has a powerful legacy I guess. Maybe they are just better citizens than I am...
I suggested that next time the should ask for an instruction list of what to do and how... They thought that reasonable, though having done it for one year, they'll probably just go with the flow next year...
The chonaikai don't need to be thugs - people comply without being beaten up!
Mura Hachibu
Now trying to make that a hyperlink
Mura hachibu
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