A Sendai couple moved to the tiny village of 1,000 people in the Oku-Aizu district in western Fukushima Prefecture in April last year.

Elderly people aged 65 or older account for half of the residents of the Showa village, which is so small that it has no convenience store.

Yutaka Sasaki, 34, and his wife, Yui, 33, were attracted by the lure of baby's breath flowers, and made their debut as growers earlier this spring.

“I am feeling so excited,” Yutaka said with beaming eyes.

Growers of the flowers in Showa are hoping to excite buyers overseas as well.

Floricultural products including “Royal Blue” Japanese gentians, dahlia varieties with big flowers and midwinter cherry blossoms being exported from the Tohoku region are already delighting people in other parts of the world.

Growers in the production areas have created original transportation and freshness preservation methods during their efforts to expand their sales channels. Baby's breath flowers could be the next to join the list of Tohoku exports.

BABY'S BREATH REPLACES TOBACCO LEAVES

Showa, where flatlands lie 400 to 750 meters above sea level and has a short midsummer, is suitable for growing baby’s breath flowers, which thrive in cool climates.

Villagers began growing the flowers in 1983 to replace the leaf tobacco culture, which was on the decline, because both crops can be grown by using the same hothouses and farm equipment, village officials said.

Fifty-four farming households currently raise the flowers, which have been branded the “Showa Kasumiso” (baby’s breath) as a local specialty. Baby’s breath culture has grown into one of the village’s chief industries alongside the making of ramie fabric.

The village government in April hailed Showa as a “village of baby’s breath flowers.”

The village has drawn on its snowy climate to build a snow cavern with a capacity for storing the equivalent of 300 10-ton trucks filled with snow.

The facility can keep flowers in cold storage, from assorting to loading for transportation, by drawing on the natural chill even in summer, thereby allowing high-quality flowers to be shipped to consumption areas.

Hothouses in Showa are seen brimming with tiny white flowers, which evoke a sky full of stars, during the harvest time that lasts from July through October.

To cope with an aging population, the village in 2003 began actively accepting beginner farmers and opened, in 2017, a “Kasumi no Gakko” (baby’s breath school) program that offers internship courses in farming, with stints starting from an overnight stay.

The village of Showa is also hosting would-be farmers to serve as apprentices to a coaching farmer for a year to receive practical training in the use of farming equipment and also to take classroom lessons in living in a rural community and in marketing.

The village has accepted 25 parties of 36 new growers of baby’s breath flowers, who range in age from the 30s to the 50s, from Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture since 2003.

Members of the JA Aizu-Yotsuba agricultural cooperative’s baby’s breath division, who also include growers based in the three neighboring towns of Yanaizu, Mishima and Kaneyama, set a record by selling more than 600 million yen’s ($4.47 million) worth of baby’s breath flowers in fiscal 2022.

The sales figure has grown from the 390 million yen recorded in 2011, the year of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster, despite a negative public image due to radiation fears. One baby’s breath grower is earning 20 million yen a year.

The growth of the domestic market for the flowers, however, has stalled, officials said.

“We are thinking about developing our sales channels overseas for the sake of future generations,” said Koichi Tachikawa, the 63-year-old head of the baby’s breath division.

TOHOKU FLOWERS PRIZED OVERSEAS

Fukushima prefectural officials said that flowers grown in the prefecture, such as white enkianthus flowers, cherry blossoms and dahlias, are being exported briskly, with particularly high demand in China.

The prefecture exported 169 million yen’s worth of flowers in fiscal 2021, and the figure has been growing from year to year.

In hopes of adding the baby’s breath to the list of flowers being exported, the Fukushima Agricultural Technology Center’s Aizu Research Center in 2021 airlifted the first batch of 700 flowers of the species to the Netherlands on a trial basis.

Workers wrapped the flowers in paper to reduce their volume and thereby to lower the transportation costs to one-fifth.

“We hope to help boost the export of baby’s breath flowers, even though there should still be market research and other studies to decide where to export them,” said Naofumi Yoshida, head of the Aizu Research Center, which is run by the prefectural government. 

Japanese gentians from Iwate Prefecture were a pioneer among the flowers being exported from the Tohoku region.

Growers of the species first entered the Dutch market in 2002, according to officials of the JA Shin-Iwate agricultural cooperative’s Hachimantai floriculture division.

They used many ingenuities, such as harvesting the flowers earlier than for the domestic market in taking into account the airlift time and controlling the temperatures rigorously to keep the flowers in cold storage.

They now have customers in eight countries and regions of the world, including the United States and Dubai.

Gentians are typically thought of in Japan as Buddhist flower offerings, so their circulation centers on the Bon holidays in August, when people honor their deceased ancestors.

The harvesting of Japanese gentians, however, lasts from July through October. Growers are therefore focusing on exports during periods of oversupply.

Blue Japanese gentians are highly appreciated in many countries under the name of the “Royal Blue,” the officials said.

The Keio-zakura is a cherry variety grown in Yamagata Prefecture, whose cut twigs growers cultivate in hothouses so they put forth pinkish blossoms in midwinter.

Domestic demand for the Keio-zakura, unfortunately, drops in February, during which time the growers focus on export to China and Hong Kong, where the Lunar New Year is celebrated around the same time.

The Keio-zakura is also traded in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and Singapore. All that helps stabilize the prices, which benefits the growers.

Cherry twigs are typically arranged solo overseas. The growers therefore take the trouble of splitting them up, when shipping them abroad, into plastic bag packages of several twigs each so consumers will feel freer to take them in their hands, officials said.

The export of Akita Prefecture’s “Namahage dahlias” began in 2014. Namahage refers to the grotesque demons that locals dress as when they storm houses and scream during the famous annual folk festivals of the same name in certain areas of the prefecture.

Dahlia varieties under that brand, which put forth big flowers that measure about 15 centimeters across, are much sought-after in Hong Kong, where they are used as decorations for parties and other occasions.

Growers are taking special measures when exporting Namahage dahlias, such as picking up flowers of varieties that have damage-resistant petals and using a jellylike freshness-preserving agent to keep the flowers moist.

They would conduct sales campaigns for Namahage dahlias in Hong Kong, including by organizing shows, before the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“We are pinning hopes on a post-pandemic growth of demand,” an Akita prefectural government official said.