Tokyo Green Space reports on downtown Tokyo rice farm

Photo by Jared Braiterman, PhD

Ginza rice farm

By Jared Braiterman, PhD.
Tokyo Green Space examines the potential for micro-green spaces to transform the world’s largest city into an urban forest that supports bio-diversity, the environment and human community.

Excerpt:

On a side street in Ginza, I noticed a rice farm and met Ginza Farm’s CEO Iimura Kazuki and his assistant who were tending the rice and two cute ducklings. Shop clerks and construction clerks stopped by to admire the rice in its mid-summer glory.

The rice farm occupies an empty lot. At the end of the afternoon Iimura-san was draining the rice paddy, and his assistant was collecting the ducklings to take back to the office for the evening. On the left is a beautiful table and benches, on the back and right side a huge photo mural of rural Japanese rice farms, and in front a bamboo fence, some live bamboo, vines, a black pine, and a few cucumber plants.

Link to Ginza rice farm here.

Also see Jared’s followup, Interview with Iimura Kazuki at Ginza Farm

Excerpt:

Iimura-san told me that he is very interested in urban farming in Japan and worldwide. His background has given him unique skills for pulling off something that at first seems impossible: creating a ground level rice farm in one of Tokyo’s most expensive neighborhoods.

How did Iimura-san secure a site that is on a small side street west and north of the intersection of Chuo Dori and Yanagi Dori (not far from the twisty De Beers building)? Using connections with tax accountants and attorneys, he located the plot and spent six months negotiating with the landlord. Although I do not know the details, apparently lending land between demolition and construction confers some significant tax advantages, yet still it took a long process of negotiation.

See the interview on this page.

Tokyo Green Space has some wonderful urban greening stories. For example, see the Ginza Honey Bee Project here.