Kenzo had farmed the same eleven paddies for fifty-three years. They lay below his house in a shallow valley in the mountains of Niigata. From the engawa on the north side of the house, he could see every one of them.
The paddies ran along the valley floor from the Shimono stream to the lower drainage ditch. They were irregular in shape, fitted to the contours of the valley over generations of work. Each one was level within itself. Between them, the earthen banks carried the footpaths and the water gates.
He was seventy-two years old. He had been sitting on this engawa, watching these paddies, since he was nineteen. The wood under his usual place was dark and smooth with use.
The house faced north-northeast. In summer, the engawa stayed in shade until late afternoon. His father had built on this orientation, or inherited it from his own father, and Kenzo had never questioned it. The shade of the eave kept the engawa cool through the long hot evenings when the valley held the heat after sunset. He could sit there and watch the paddies without squinting into the sun.
Beyond his eleven paddies were the paddies of the Tsuruta family. Beyond those were the former Nishida fields, now split between two families from the city. Beyond all the paddy land, the slope of the mountain began. It was covered in sugi, the Japanese cedar planted in the years after the war. The trees were now sixty or seventy years old and very tall. Their crowns made a dark continuous line along the upper ridge.