is like music. 

It always needs a rhythm – and if a melody is added in, it can turn into art. The rhythm of apple growing is set by nature, the seasons, and the weather; that’s no different in Italy than in northern Germany, Japan, or America. But in Japan, apple growers add their own melody to this rhythm. And the instruments that create the melody are craftsmanship and love.

Photo Credits by Jane Alden Stevens ©2010 

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• It’s all just as elaborate and painstaking as it sounds: on average, a worker can bag between 100 and about 400 apples per hour, which even on a medium-sized plantation amounts to more than 1,000 labur hours.
• But Japan is a country tied to tradition. If it is customary to do things in a certain way, then that has a particular significance, and it is usually done patiently and without grumbling.  
• The structure of Japanese apple growing also reflects this: the main practitioners of this labur intensive, hands-on cultivation process with the focus on the highest possible fruit quality tend to be small family farms.

their status, apples

are often also bought and sold as individual specimens in Japan. Weighing in at around 300 grams on average, they are usually larger than European apples and will ideally have a deep, uniform color. So rather than being munched on as a snack between meals or as part of a cafeteria lunch, apples tend to be eaten on special occasions and at home. 

And that’s why growers give each individual apple the kid glove treatment in their attempts to get the very best out of their crop. Before the apples are bagged, the fruits are thinned out on the tree. Selectively removing apples from clusters of several fruits is emblematic of the fact that in Japan, tradition and care are valued over mass production and high yields.

More than half of the 750,000 tons of apples produced annually in Japan are grown in Aomori, followed by Nagano. But other prefectures such as Iwate and Akita are also well-known apple growing areas.

Some Japanese-bred varieties are now found all over the world. The best-known Japanese apple is the Fuji, which accounts for 60% of apple production in Japan.

the 1950s saw a revival

in apple growing in Japan, and by 1962, Fuji apples – named not only for the famous mountain but also for the city of Fujisaki, where the variety was developed at an apple cultivation research station – had become a worldwide hit.

• In addition to the Fuji, other varieties have also been licensed in growing regions around the world. Shinano Gold, a Nagano-bred variety – Shinano is the old name for Nagano – is now also grown in South Tyrol, for example. The best fruits of this variety grow to 350-400 g in weight.
• Thinning, bagging, leaf removal, rotating towards the sun, netting – a melody of craftsmanship and love that many Japanese apples clearly exude. And that attention to detail can ultimately payoff: in luxury fruit emporia and auctions, completely flawless specimens can go for as much as several hundred euros.

• These practices can, of course, elicit much astonishment and shaking of heads. Why lavish so much time and effort on something that is only going to be eaten? 
• That’s true, on the one hand, but this practice ties in completely with Japanese culture, which regards transience as part of the cycle of life and sees no reason to be less circumspect because of it – a form of “consciousness of existence”, perhaps. 
• And this not only applies to the apple itself – it’s also about the apple grower who nurtures the fruit with so much craftsmanship and love. CHH

→ Table of content ipoma Issue 02

→ The Fall of an Icon

→ Quo Vadis USA?

→ Read ipoma Issue 01

→ Apple therapy

→ The Forthright Farmer

→ Future-proofing the Apple

→ Preview ipoma Issue 03

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