On Saturday October 2, 2021, a rice harvesting event was held in collaboration with the local community at the Kawarayama district, which is about 5 minutes by car from the Hakunsaroku Campus. Four second-year ICT students, Afaf, Katsukata, Kudaka, and Honda, joined this event. There were also participants from Kanazawa Institute of Technology’s Gakuyu-kai and the Department of Management Systems, and local people of the community for a total of more than 40 people.

Participants were divided into two groups: one group built the “hasa” to hang the harvested rice plants and the other did the actual harvesting of the rice. Both groups started work at 9 am. The four ICT students joined the latter harvesting group and worked with the local people and KIT students and harvested about 760 square meters of rice patties (about the size of two 25 meter swimming pools). The weather was sunny and hot. However, the students worked efficiently after learning the traditional rice harvesting techniques: “one-hand shear”, where you cut four clumps of rice plants at once, “Shu-soku”, the act of lining up three “one-hand sheared” bundles into a “ichiwa” to be tied together, and “kessoku”, the act of tying them together with hemp string.

Here are the comments from the students.

“I learned how hard farming is without machines and feel grateful that I am able to eat the rice that farmers grow.”
“I was impressed at the old techniques. There were reasons to what order and how high you cut the rice and they all made sense.”
“It made me wonder how many people you need to be a farmer.”
“It was hard work, but I was happy that the local people were kind to us.”
“I felt a sense of accomplishment finishing something together.”
“Lunch and ice cream were delicious after the hard work.”

Nowadays, this method of harvesting rice by hand is not used anymore. However, students were able to experience old fashion farming methods and collaborate with the local community and KIT students. It was a satisfactory event for everyone.