8 AMAM.OBERLIN.EDU RICE FIELDS The mountainous terrain of Japan leaves only about one fourth of its total land available for agriculture, and the majority of that land was used for rice cultivation in the Edo period. Great productivity was possible due to the temperate climate and frequent rainfall and snowmelt. Traditional wet-field, or paddy-field, rice cultivation uses a flooded field surrounded by earth berms to keep in the water. Rice can grow there, but fewer weeds, and the water attracted insects that in turn attracted frogs and fish, which attracted other species, creating a complex ecosystem. Paddy-field agriculture was a sophisticated system that required community cooperation (結 yui), to manage irrigation. It was also very labor intensive, andmost of this labor in Japan was done by people, not animals. The adaptability of human labor, combined with the variability of the size and shape of a rice paddy, allowed farmers to fit fields in anywhere with access to water, maximizing the use of available land. This flexibility is seen in these three prints. UtagawaHiroshige I 初代目歌川広重 (Japanese, 1797–1858) Mirror StandMountain and theMoonReflected in theRice Fields at Sarashina inShinano Province, no. 25 fromthe series Pictures of Famous Places in the Sixty-oddProvinces, 1853. Color woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper MaryA. AinsworthBequest, 1950.1280 The terraced rice fields at Sarashina were famously beautiful, resembling glistening steps climbing the side of a mountain. They were built not only to maximize arable land, but also to take advantage of the snowmelt that cascaded down the mountainside. Gravity didmost of the irrigation work. The water was caught in a holding basin and then released as needed to fill the paddies below. The StoneYakushi Temple at Ishiyakushi (detail)
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