One Day the Shadow Passed Read online

  “Have faith, Pilgrim! People can always change!”

  Many years later, long after my second visit to Shikoku Island, I was driving through the Oxfordshire countryside when I passed a turn-off to an old abandoned farm. A newly painted sign had been erected that pointed down the drive and on it was some writing that included a large and conspicuous Japanese character.

  I was intrigued. I had never before seen a single word of Japanese written anywhere in the English countryside. I pulled the car over a little way further down the road and then walked back up to the turn-off so that I could take a closer look. There, to my utter amazement, I read the following words:

  “Do-nothing farming practised here. No plough. No pesticides. No chemicals. Come and try our tasty food!”

  I could scarcely believe my eyes. I put my hand on the gate and looked up the track. It disappeared over the brow of the hill. Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence? Although I had never been able to return to the farm in Fumimoto I still regularly exchanged letters with my dear friend the farmer and learnt with joy of his and his family’s happy life, but he had never mentioned anything like this.

  I breathed in decisively and pushed the gate open. I tramped along the gravel road for a few minutes until it took me over the hill and down into a collection of wooden farm buildings. I remembered these farm buildings from years before. I had passed them on several occasions on my long, weekend walks. But then they had been a collection of broken-down shacks, whereas now they appeared to be in complete working order and showed every sign of life. The roof of the farmhouse was new and the window frames and doors on all the buildings looked as though they had all just been freshly painted. Even the fences seemed to have been recently mended.

  This was all very strange, for this part of Oxfordshire was no longer farming country, or rather the ever-expanding commercial operations had put an end to such small-scale farms.

  I walked through the big iron gate into the farmyard, shutting it behind me, and when I saw chickens wandering free, pecking amongst the vegetable patch next to the main house, a smile of recognition began to cross my face.

  Just then a young man came striding out of the barn. He looked surprised to see me. He had sandy-coloured hair and broad shoulders and he was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves.

  I spoke quickly.

  “Hello! Sorry to bother you – I just wanted to see what your sign meant.”

  The young man smiled in return.

  “It’s no bother at all. We encourage visitors here. Please look around.”

  We talked and I told him that I was one of the teachers in the school not so far away. He knew the school. Some of his friends’ children went there. As he spoke, I could not help looking around: could this young man really be practising the same farming methods as my old friend in Japan? Was it really conceivable that word had travelled this far – travelled in fact all the way round the world and right into my own back yard?

  He offered to give me a quick tour and I accepted his offer readily. He clearly assumed that I would be deeply sceptical about his practices for as we went about the place he began to explain what he was doing, but he chose his words with great care, as if he expected me to be suspicious of these strange new ideas that so ran against the grain of modern life.

  I asked him where he had learned his natural method. He replied that he had travelled to Japan and learnt it at the foot of a very wise man who had originated it there on his family farm. He clearly treasured his memories of this very wise man because when he talked about him he spoke in the most reverential way.

  He then explained that, three years ago, he had brought back to England all he had learned and that now he had four other people working with him on the farm and they were entirely self-sufficient and the harvests were the best for miles around.

  He led me proudly through the farmhouse and out onto the veranda that had a view of the fields down below. He talked to me about the pests and earthworms and about the ancient richness of the undisturbed soil. He was explaining the finer points of the natural method to me, but I couldn’t hear him any more, I was staring in wonder at the fields before me and the tears were rolling down my cheeks. The young man noticed and abruptly stopped mid-sentence.

  “Er, are you all right?”

  I wiped my eyes and smiled.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s a long story. I’m fine. In fact I am much better than fine. I think I’m the happiest I have ever been.”

  When I think today that the farmer, trusting only in his own judgement and courage, dared to follow his insight that mankind knows nothing and turned his back on all the supposed advances of the modern world, and by so doing transformed a barren hillside into the most successful farm in all Japan, I am convinced that human life does not have to be without meaning.

  And when I remind myself of the humiliation that the farmer suffered at the hands of his neighbours, the setbacks that he endured at every turn, the risks that he took and the sacrifices that he made to bring about this transformation, I am overcome with awe for this simple farmer who trusted only that if he followed his heart, nature would reward his faith.

  To the memory of Masanobu Fukuoka 1913-2008

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