Island News

Sugar Cane Harvesting Today I spent the whole of my morning harvesting sugar cane. Well, that is not actually true, let me try that again. Today I spent the whole of my morning cleaning sugarcane and bundling it up. The cane had been already cut down by the time that we had started, and all that I needed to do was cut off the dried leaves from the green sugarcane stalks. I was working with five other people, only one of whom was not over the age of 60. That being said, I was the slowest among them. Everyone had a role to play in their well practiced harvesting method. First, (a few days before) they would cut the cane down and leave it in the field to dry out. Then once he leaves had dried the two oldest men would walk up the rows of cane and trim the tops off of the stalks. They determined where to cut based on the diameter of the cane, once it had narrowed to be smaller than your pinkie finger it was a good place to cut if it was within the top 40 cm of the stalk. They w...

For the next four weeks I have been invited to help make a traditional type of Japanese Sugar here on Tanegashima. On Friday I went early in the morning to help with the distillation of the sugar from freshly pressed sugarcane juice. The type of sugar made on Tanegashima is called kokutou or kurozato. It is a unrefined sugar that has been made in the area since at least the 800s. The process that we are using has stayed the same for at least 2 generations according to the old guys I asked at the sugar making hut, but they were sure that it has been going on unchanged for much longer. The basic process as far as I understand it goes like this. 1- Crush the year old sugar cane that has been stacked up near the crushing machine. (We dumped the leftover cane bits into a truck. I don’t know what they were going to do with it, but I imagine that it will be used for something. I’m planning on asking next time.) 2- Strain the juice into a wooden box inside the sugar hut. ...