Fukuoka: Early Life

 

At the age of 25, Mr Fukuoka was working for the Yokohama Customs Bureau in the Plant Inspection Division. Yokohama was a major port in Japan, and his main job was to inspect in-coming and out-going plants for disease-carrying insects. He enjoyed a lot of free time, which he spent in a laboratory pursuing his main interest of plant pathology. This hobby demanded long periods of sustained concentration, and Mr Fukuoka would often fall unconscious from the effort. This intensity of work, coupled with an active social night life, resulted in an attack of acute pneumonia. He was admitted to hospital, and installed in a freezing cold and lonely room at the top of the building, away from the action of the hospital. Here Mr Fukuoka became very lonely and discouraged. This unhappiness progressed into a full depression, and he developed a consuming fear of death. After a while he was released from hospital, but the depression stayed with him. He now thought that his previous enjoyment of life was shallow. He was in an agony of doubt about the nature of life and death. He could not sleep, nor could he work. One night, when he was wandering above the harbor, he collapsed in a state of exhaustion. He lay against the trunk of a tree, neither asleep nor awake, until dawn. As the morning began to draw light, a breeze blew up, and the morning mist began to disappear. Suddenly a night heron appeared, gave a sharp cry, and flew away into the distance. He could hear the flapping of its wings. And at that moment, all the troubles and doubts disappeared from his mind. He came to a supreme realization about the nature of existence. In his own words:

"In an instant all my doubts and the gloomy mist of my confusion vanished. Everything I had held in firm conviction, everything upon which I had ordinarily relied was swept away with the wind. I felt that I understood just one thing. Without my thinking about them, words came to my mouth: 'In this world there is nothing at all...' I felt that I understood nothing."

What Fukuoka meant when he said "I felt that I understood nothing," is that he had understood the insufficiency of human knowledge. This is the ground spring of Fukuoka's philosophy, and the first principle of Natural Farming.