Early spring still brought cold winds to the mountain village.
Depopulation had hollowed the place out, and Koichi was the only one left who continued working the fields. He tilled the soil he had once tended alongside his grandfather. Two years had passed since his grandfather’s death, and though no one else had returned to the village, Koichi alone still believed there was meaning left in “the soil.”
One day, while organizing an old shelf in the barn, he found a small notebook. Its leather cover was stained with earth, and his grandfather’s name was engraved on it.
Flipping through the pages, Koichi found a line written near the end:
“The earth holds memories. Listen not with your ears, but with your heart.”
Koichi paused at those words.
He recalled how his grandfather would often place a hand on the soil. He never explained it, only smiled and said, “The earth will tell you.” As a child, Koichi had assumed it was just a metaphor.
But from that day on, he began deliberately touching the soil.
Before sowing seeds, after harvest, or even when nothing was happening, he would quietly sink his hand into the earth and close his eyes.
At first, he felt nothing.
But one day, from deep within the freshly turned soil, something strange washed into him.
—Warmth. Murmurs. Human voices. Laughter. Weeping.
Not images. Not sounds. But something that poured directly into his heart.
They were scenes from when his grandfather was young—the voices of villagers planting rice together, the pattering footsteps of children running around, the beginnings and endings of someone’s love.
“…Is this the ‘memory of the earth’…?”
Koichi became certain. This field didn’t belong only to his grandfather. It was a vessel that had carried the lives and feelings of people across generations.
Soon, Koichi began to sense something else.
He could tell what the soil wanted.
What this place needed now—water, nutrients, or perhaps a different crop altogether. As if the earth itself had found words.
In the notebook, Koichi found a record of the last crop his grandfather had tried to grow.
It was a local leafy vegetable called katami-na, a variety that survived only in their village. Highly nutritious and cold-resistant, but difficult to cultivate—no one grew it anymore.
“I feel like the soil is asking for this.”
Koichi searched for the seeds and planted them in a corner of the field.
For the first week, nothing happened.
But on a rainy day, a small sprout poked through the soil—tiny, trembling.
Seeing it, an elderly woman from the village came to the field.
“…Is that katami-na? How nostalgic. We used to make boiled dishes with it for the spring festival.”
That was the beginning.
Gradually, young people who had once left the village began returning, prompted by Koichi’s posts on social media.
“I want to start something here again.”
“I want my kids to feel the texture of real soil.”
Before he knew it, the katami-na patch had become a gathering place.
By autumn, the lush harvest of katami-na not only filled the villagers’ tables but also gained attention as a “legendary vegetable” at local markets.
When a TV crew came for an interview, Koichi said:
“I didn’t do anything special. I just listened closely to what the soil was saying.”
His grandmother nodded quietly beside him.
“You’re finally becoming like your grandfather.”
One morning, Koichi stood in the middle of the field and gently placed his hand on the soil.
When he closed his eyes, he heard a familiar voice.
—Well done.
The earth beneath him felt warm, breathing deeply.
