k a w a g o e

The Wealth ofNature:
Agricultural
Prosperity inKawagoe

f a r m i n g

The foundation of Japan’s modern agriculture was laid in Kawagoe in the Edo period(1603–1868).
The fields of the Musashino Plateau and therich rice paddies along the Arakawa andIrumagawa Rivers are the treasures of ourhometown.
View of Kawagoe City from near Uwado Ryokuchi Green Space

Enjoying the blessings of abundance in Kawagoe, one ofthe cities with the most farmland in the prefecture

Scenery around Shimomatsubara

Leaves and other materials are turned into compost over the course of abouta year.

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It is generally flat from the center to the west of the Kanto
Plain, with rice paddies along the Irumagawa River in theeast and cultivated fields in the southwest.
During the Edo period, the wild Musashino Plateau was covered with a layer of Kanto loam, a red soil that was difficult
to farm due to its low nutrient content and poor drainage.
From 1694 to 1696, Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, the lord of thedomain, began to develop new rice paddies in Santome, anda new village called Santome Shinden was established. The
original layout of the land developed by Yoshiyasu can still
be seen today in Santome Shinden. It consists of around fivehectares of house lots, farmland, and flatland forests divided
into long rectangular strips 72 meters wide and roughly 675
meters deep. The flat land forests stop soil from flying off instrong winds, and its fallen leaves, mainly from deciduous
broad-leaved trees such as oak, are used as compost, enabling circular agriculture with a low environmental impact.
In 2017, the environmentally friendly agriculture practiced
in the Santome area was recognized as a Japanese agricultural heritage under the name “Musashino Leaf Compost
Farming Method.” Today, sweet potatoes, spinach, taro, turnips, carrots, daikon, burdock, and other crops are grown inthe area, making it one of the leading open-field production
areas in Japan.
Rice paddies, on the other hand, are spread over a wide areaof the city from the west to north. This includes the Kasumigaseki and Kasumigaseki Kita areas and the Naguwashi andYamada areas in the Koazegawa River and Irumagawa Riverbasins.

Preparing spinach for shippingorn field

High-yield agriculturalproducts in KawagoeIn the early modern period, ten merchant houses establishedin Kawagoe used local crops to produce products including
soy sauce, confectioneries, and miso. In addition, as early asaround 1653, they made somen noodles from wheat, which
was widely grown in those days.
The area has also been blessed with a rich natural environment. Fireflies flew around here until the early 1960s, and thepresence of fairy shrimp, which can only be found inwell-maintained paddy fields, and Ricciocarpos natans, aplant designated as a near-threatened species, have been confirmed.

Tomatoes

Chinese cabbage
Potatoes

TaroGreenonion

One of Saitama Prefecture’s largest farm areas: Current
state of agriculture and future challenges
Currently, there are 1,250 farming households and a cultivated area of 3,230 hectares (1,890 hectares of rice paddies and
1, 0 hectares of fields in the city of Kawagoe, making it
one of the largest farm areas in the prefecture. The estimatedagricultural output is approximately 7 billion yen, with veg-Spinach

DaikonPaddyrice

Sweet potatoes

105k a w a g o eetables accounting for .6 billion yen, followed by rice, flowers, tubers, and fruits. Kawagoe’s vegetables are highly valued for their quality, with chefs from restaurants in Tokyo
coming to purchase them directly from farmers. Farming
entities are dominated by rice farmers (917 entities) followedby vegetable farmers (427 entities) (see note).
While an increasing number of farmers in Kawagoe arestruggling with succession problems, there are still many

K aw a g o e te a

Products made from local produce

who have been in business for more than a dozen generations, and the number of new farmers is also increasing.
Note: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, “Graphs andStatistics on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Kawagoe City, Saitama Prefecture)” *Cultivated land area is from the 2021 Area Survey,
total households from the 2020 Census, and all other data from the2020 Census of Agriculture and Forestry.

Expanding Farmer Network: Connecting with Producers
at Markets
Kawagoe fruit and vegetables market (circa 1904)

Farmers’ market (2019)106

f a r m i n g

At farmers’ markets, consumers can purchase fresh local
vegetables directly from the growers. There are also more
opportunities for producers, restaurant owners, and food
manufacturers to connect with each other, leading to many
food-related collaborations, such as the development of special menus and sweets. Producers are also actively pursuing
the so-called “sixth-order industry” (where primary industries such as agriculture and fisheries are involved in the secondary industry of food processing and the tertiary industryof distribution and sales) with products such as jams anddressings. Agricultural products produced in Kawagoe areenriching our diet and helping to realize environmentallyfriendly local production for local consumption.
The JA Cooperatives Direct Store Agresh Kawagoe, whichsells local vegetables, cut flowers, and other fresh agricultural products delivered daily from local farmers, is popularamong locals and tourists alike.

According to a monument at Nakain Temple on the history of Kawagoe Tea, the uddhist priest nnin brought tea
plant seeds from Kyoto when he built a temple here in 830
and began to grow them on the temple grounds. TheKawagoe clan enjoyed drinking tea since the Kamakura
period (1185–1333), leading to the spread of tea cultivation and production methods. In 1211, Eisai (1141–1215),
the founder of the in ai sect of en uddhism, wrote
Japan’s first book on tea, in which he recorded its medicinal uses. A textbook from the period of the Northern andSouthern Courts (1336–1392) mentioned “MusashiKawagoe” as a tea production area.
In the mid-Edo period, sencha (steamed green leaf tea)from Uji became popular in
Edo (present-day Tokyo),and Kawagoe tea, the rootof the famed Sayama tea,
was revived in the Sayama
area in 1819. Tea cultivaTakabayashi tea processing machinetion rapidly expanded inMonument at Nakain
Templethe area from the Sayama Hills to the Kaji Hills. Sayama’s Uji-style production process was established and tea
production flourished.
In 1884, Takabayashi Kenzo, a physician from present-day Hidaka City, invented tea processing machines
for roasting, steaming, and rolling. In 1898, he perfected
the Takabayashi tea-leaf rubbing machine, which brought
about a major innovation in Japan’s modern tea processing technology.

Hidaka ity oard of ducationSw e e t p o t a t o
In the Edo period, sweet potatoes produced in Kawagoe
domain and adjacent villages were called “Kawagoe potatoes.” In response to the Kyoho Famine that affected
western Japan in 1732, Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune
ordered Aoki Konyo to cultivate sweet potatoes. After
Konyo’s trial cultivation, sweet potatoes spread throughout the Kanto region.
In 1751, Yoshida Yaemon sent for 200 seed potatoes fromShiizu Village (present-day Ichihara City, Chiba Prefecture), a leading sweet potato cultivation area at the time,and began growing them in the Kawagoe area. This was
the beginning of the “Kawagoe potato,” and sweet potato
cultivation subsequently spread to neighboring villages.
The sweet potato became a subsistence crop for farmers
and a hardy crop in case of famine.
Yaki-imo (baked sweet potato) shops appeared in Edo in
the 1790s and yaki-imo quickly became popular. Thiswas because yaki-imo was one of the few sweet foods
available to the common people, and it was inexpensive
and easy to obtain. Sweet potatoes produced in theKawagoe area were valued for yaki-imo as “the realthing” because Kawagoe was relatively close to Edo andtransportation by boat on the Shingashigawa River wasconvenient.
In 1866, Akazawa Nihei from Imafuku in Kawagoe, began researching sweet potato cultivation methods. y theMeiji period (1868–1912), he had established a methodthat more than doubled the harvest.
Today, both Japanese and Western sweets made withsweet potatoes are popular in Kawagoe and many kinds
are sold throughout the city.

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He runs Eda Poultry Farm in theYoshino district. He is wellversed in livestock farming in theYoshino area and has succeededin producing specialty eggs byimproving the rearing environment and formulating more nutritious feed based on his own research. In the past, he served asvice president of the Kawagoe
City Livestock Industry Promotion Council.

A long-established farm that grows sweet potatoes, a specialty of Kawagoe“In 1954, just after the war, leisure was still almost nonexistent,” says Sakamoto Hiroyuki. “It was at that time that myfather started a sweet potato harvesting experience inKawagoe. It gradually spread by word of mouth, and around1960, it was drawing attention as kind of hands-on tourism
in Kawagoe.”Eda Katsuo
Eda Poultry Farm
The “specialty eggs” produced by chickens raised on a diet of an original feed
blend are extremely popular and often sell out quickly due to their delicious taste.
Successfully producing high quality eggs by adding value“I was a company man before I started my poultry farm. My
father was in the poultry farming business on the side at thetime, so when I got married, I quit the company and started
Eda Poultry Farm with my wife. This year marks 50 years
since then.”Originally, there were about 30 poultry farms in the Yoshinoarea, but the number has dwindled over the years to only Eda
Poultry Farm today.
“About 20 years after we started our poultry farming business,” says Eda, “large corporate poultry farms that could
raise millions of chickens began to dominate the market. At
that time, we wondered how a local poultry farm like ours
could compete with them. We decided to sell our eggs directly rather than through wholesalers.”
However, when they first started selling eggs on their own,
they also faced the challenge of figuring out how to get more
people to buy them.
“We carefully reviewed everything, starting with our feed,
and came up with the idea of selling ‘specialty eggs’ (eggsthat contain high levels of specific nutrients or have othervalues sought by consumers, such as being particular aboutbreeding methods or feed ingredients). At that time, there
were no poultry farms producing specialty eggs; the mainstream approach was to ship out as many eggs as possible.

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ut I decided to compete on the quality of our eggs.
Eda Poultry Farm has many repeat customers, mainly fromthe local Kawagoe area, who come to the farm for these specialty eggs. Eda Poultry Farm’s eggs have a rich yolk and fullflavor. They are highly sought after by many restaurants, including those in the city, and they are popular as safe andfresh local eggs.
Currently, the poultry business is being run primarily by
Eda’s son, and Eda says, “We would like to increase our sales
volume of eggs while keeping things the way they are.”
As a farmer, Eda has high hopes for Kawagoe’s future, saying, “I hope that more people will take over farming and thatthe environment will allow livestock farmers to stay in business in the future.”

When the leaves turn yellow, it’s time to harvest.

While growing sweet potatoes to ship to the market, the farmoffered a sweet potato harvesting experience. This caught
the eye of a kindergarten teacher, who thought that it would
be a good educational experience for the children. Around1965, digging for sweet potatoes became one of Kawagoe’s
main agricultural experiences.
Many customers still come seeking not only the experiencebut also the delicious sweet potatoes themselves. Sakamotodelivers his carefully grown sweet potatoes to many people
through the sweet potato harvesting experience, direct sales,and long-distance shipping.
In addition, until the late 1960s/early 1970s, there were twovarieties of sweet potatoes grown in Kawagoe the enikovariety and the eni-Aka variety. As time passed, however,new varieties appeared.
In the late 1970s early 1980s, the high-yield eni A uma
variety was introduced, and in the Heisei era (1989–2019),
varieties such as Silk Sweet and eni Haruka, which have adelicate sweetness, increased.”
People in agriculture must constantly adopt and study different techniques in response to changing times and environments.
“Despite the challenges such as the impact of soaring production costs, we will continue to do our best in Kawagoe
while responding to the needs of the times,” said Sakamoto.

Sakamoto Hiroyuki
Sakamoto Farm
Sweet potatoes, which prefer acidic soil, were a crop suited to the land in Kawagoe. Sakamoto
Farm supports agriculture in Kawagoe by adapting to the needs of the times.

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p ro f il e

We provide eggs that you can tellare delicious just by theirappearance.

He is the son of Sakamoto Nagaharu, who started potato harvesting tourism in 1954. He took overthe pick-your-own potatoes farmfrom his father and now runs
Sakamoto Farm. He was a member of the Kawagoe City Agricultural Committee, and in 2008, hefounded the Kawagoe Imo Kenkyukai, a group of farmers who
run tourist farms in the city, andserved as its president.

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