They've been growing rice in central Japan for three thousand years.
It's always been a pretty complicated business and remains so to this day.
Seeds will only germinate properly if they've been sitting for many months in a sunlit pool of water at least five centimeters deep, but the stalks can only be harvested when the water has been drained, and they've been able to dry out for a few weeks.
All this makes for an unholy degree of complication.
It means that rice generally has to be grown in terraces facing the sun, with water flowing down the hillside through a well-managed network of sluices and dikes.
There has to be an upper terrace that functions as a reservoir or holding pond, and an extremely detailed agreement between all the farmers as to when their particular terrace will be ready to receive or be drained of water.
The whole community needs a firm grasp of hydrodynamics, a law-abiding nature, and a highly punctual and disciplined outlook.
When trying to understand the particularities of the Japanese character, sociologists in the twentieth century focused in on what has famously come to be known as the rice theory, which states that a nation whose diet has for centuries depended on rice will develop many of the qualities that are necessary for its successful cultivation.
These sociologists propose that the Japanese are the way they are, thorough, collaborative, precise, traditional, focused on the we rather than the I, principally because of the virtues a majority of them had to exercise to bring in the harvest.
The rice terraces of places like Maruyama, Senmaida molded the national character.
