Japan A World Of Water: The Story Of Rice

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Japan - A World Of Water The Story Of Rice

• By Leith

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WHAT IS RICE?

• The Plant
• Planting And Harvesting
• Modern Changes In The Rice Paddies And What They
  Mean To The Frogs

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The Plant

• Rice is a plant that has to be grown carefully.
• Japanese people use rice as food, and as material
  to make many things, including paper and clothes.

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Planting And Harvesting

• Rice is planted in the spring in a water-filled
  rice paddy.
• The stages of growing rice are sowing seeds,
  planting in the paddy, growing, and harvesting.
• These stages are very important to Japanese
  people.

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Rice Paddy - Winter To Early Spring
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Planting Rice
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Flooding The Rice Paddy
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Harvesting

• After the rice is harvested, its leaves are dried
  to make
• straw (wara). The wara is used to make many
  things, including rope!

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Modern Changes In The Rice Paddies And What They
Mean To The Frogs

• In the past, aze dikes were built using mud.
  Now, most dikes are built by putting plastic over
  the old dike, which saves time and money.
• The Schlegels green tree frogs are reaching
  extinction, because the plastic is preventing
  them from laying their eggs in the mud of the
  natural dikes.

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THE HISTORY OF RICE IN JAPAN

• Yayoi Period (400 BC)
• Edo Period
• (1500 1858 AD)

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Yayoi Period (400 BC)

• Two thousand years ago, Japanese people began to
  cultivate rice.
• They needed to use special irrigation dikes to
  water the rice.
• They also made tools from wood and metal to
  cultivate the rice, and made pottery from clay to
  store the rice.

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Edo Period (1500 1858 AD)

• By 1500, the shoguns had taken over.
• Tokugawa Iyeyasu founded Edo (Tokyo), and made
  the military government called the bakufu.
• The economy made by the bakufu was based on rice.
  One koku of rice was enough to feed an adult for
  a year.
• A samurai was paid 5000 koku of rice every year,
  which fed his enormous amount of peasants, and
  also him and his family.

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Measuring And Storing The Rice

• Boats brought the rice to one of the storage
  granaries shown in the map of Asakusa.
• The rice was then measured by this tool.

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HOW PEOPLE VALUE RICE TODAY

• Rice As Food
• Materials
• Tasty Recipes
• Scientific Research

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Rice As Food

• This is a rice sellers house in the Edo period.
• There are thirty-three kinds of rice.
• Japanese people eat rice at the end of every
  meal. (It is very rude to leave any rice in your
  bowl.)
• This is a rice sellers store in Tokyo today.

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Materials

• Rice can be made into many things, including
  washi paper.
• You can fold washi paper to make many things.

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Tasty Recipes

• One tasty recipe is a rice ball (o-nigiri).
• To make one, you have to put fish or
  vegetables into a ball of sticky rice. Then, you
  wrap the ball in seaweed.
• Another tasty recipe is spiced rice. You have to
  cook rice in spiced water to make it.

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Scientific Research

• Scientists are trying to find out which variety
  of rice grows best in the light available by
  changing the genes of the rice.
• When they have made adjustments to the right type
  of rice, it will be grown and marketed.

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Credits

• Photographs
• Leith
• Deborah
• Photographs taken in
• Koishekawa Korakuen
• Edo Tokyo Museum
• Tokyo National Museum
• Fukagawa Edo Museum
• Title
• A World Of Water -
• Mitsuhiko Imamori
• Rice Research
• http//home.worldcom.ch/negenter
• Frog Article
• K. Short, Daily Yomiuri, April 19, 2005