158 Terada, Yokohari, and Amemiya
present-day Japanese social system does not presume extended leave from work.
For a moment, setting aside the fact that a very radical restructuring of society
would be necessary to actually implement such a system, even if an extended leave
system were hypothetically to be established, it is unlikely that Japanese people,
who up to this point have placed greater emphasis on the work side of the equation,
could easily switch to enjoying the new life that they had gained. Is it, then, simply
a matter of familiarity? Will people just get used to this new balance over time? It
is probably not that simple. More fundamentally, it remains questionable whether
the approach of drawing a rigorous distinction between work and life would be
achievable given Japanese cultural and historical background.
Shuichi Kito, a Japanese sociologist, analyzed the livelihoods in Japanese
villages that were observed prior to the rapid economic growth period and identified
the existence of “play-work (Asobi-Shigoto)” in which livelihood and play were
indivisibly intertwined (Kito 1996). Kito categorized economic activities such as
rice cultivation and hunting that were performed to secure food on a daily basis as
“livelihood” and cultural and playful activities as its opposite, “play”. However,
human activities cannot be so rigorously divided into these two categories. Rather,
they can be considered play-work, in which work and play are indivisibly intertwined
and which lies somewhere on the spectrum between the two extremes of livelihood
and play. For example, when children collect wild plants or mushrooms or catch
fish in the river, these activities comprise a substantial element of play. At the same
time, insofar as the harvest or yield obtained through these activities ends up on the
dinner table, they are meaningful in terms of livelihood. Similarly, rice cultivation
and hunting are not exclusively economic activities. They undoubtedly comprise
elements that could be classified as play—for example, ceremonial meaning. Kito
argued that it is in this play-work in which livelihood and play are indivisibly
intertwined that the richness of human activity can be found and that the idea of
play-work should be utilized in modern society as a type of work theory (Kito 1996).
In the context of modern Japan, in which industries are starting to shrink, it
can be said that new socioeconomic opportunities lie in escaping the large-scale
industrial system and returning to a more balanced holistic system that incorporates
a personal sense of embodied living. In a time such as the present, in which we
need to escape the existing value system, play can be said to be a wellspring of the
creative ability required to achieve this transformation. We would argue that play-
work in which play and work are indivisibly intertwined will once again be valued
as one of the new styles of working. This is the result of, on the one hand, regret
regarding the fact that play and work have become antithetical concepts akin to
“freedom” and “obligation” as a result of the declining sense of community and
permeation of capitalism in society and, at the same time, a search and challenge
to find a new path to indivisibly mix work and play in the modern context.
How then does the shift to play-work link to questions of urban agriculture?
As we have suggested, a new value system regarding work aimed at nurturing
“independent individuals” rather than “company men (or women)” is gradually
permeating in Japanese society. As an idea aligned with these ways of thinking, in
recent years in Japan, the concept of “half-farmer-half-X”, developed by a Japanese