Feb. 13, 2006 issue - Every Friday night, Masaaki Yokota, a 57-year-old Tokyo office worker, hurries home, picks up his wife, Shizuko, and heads for their vegetable garden in the city of Kasama, 100 kilometers north of Tokyo. There they tackle the backbreaking chore of weeding the rows of spinach, beans, daikon radishes, maize and onions they planted after renting a small plot of land—complete with cottage—from the city last April. "When harvest time came, we were filled with such tremendous joy," says Masaaki. "I am considering remaining a weekend farmer after my retirement or even moving to the countryside. Spending time on the farm is good for my mind and health—and I want to be able to grow the vegetables that we eat."

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All across Japan, would-be retirees are taking up their hoes. Faced with the prospect of ending their first careers—the country's nearly 8 million baby boomers will begin to retire at 60 next year—many are pondering the idea of making a second career, or at least a lifelong hobby, out of farming. For the postwar generation, who faced fierce competition at school and work, the often-demanding physical labor is a way to relax and get back to the land. "Now they want to slow down, touch the soil and look for true spiritual fulfillment," says Hiroshi Takahashi, director of the Countryside Returnees' Support Center, which promotes country living. For the government, having baby boomers take up farming is the perfect answer not only to the "2007 problem"—what to do with all those retirees—but also to the country's 380,000 hectares of unused farmland created by urbanization and the aging of the farming population. "How to keep the farmland from becoming wasteland is one of our most serious issues," says Hirotoshi Matsuura, an Agricultural Ministry official.

Indeed, the government is doing all it can to encourage the practice. In 2004, for instance, Toyota City established the Center for Creating Agricultural Life, which offers a two-year farming course for only $90 per year. Of the 31 students set to graduate in February, 17 are embarking on second careers as farmers. The garden in Kasama, where the Yokotas spend weekends, offers a cottage with about 300 square meters of farmland—complete with an instructor and community house—for $3,640 a year.

Rural communities are starting farming seminars for prospective retirees in the region as well as from big cities. The city of Iiyama, 250 kilometers from Tokyo—famous for scenic beauty and buckwheat noodles—conducts "farming tours" four times a year to introduce Tokyo residents to the area. "I tell them to visit the countryside as many times as possible to get to know the place," says Tateo Igarashi, a counselor at the National Career Counseling Center for Future Farmers in Tokyo. "They have to be realistic about the move."

For some, the easiest way is to keep one foot in each world. Susumu Yazawa, 64, lives in a century-old farmhouse in Iiyama and grows buckwheat and soybeans. His wife, meanwhile, lives in Kyoto, where she wants to continue her own volunteer work and singing in a chorus. After years of working hard for Teikoku Databank, a corporate-information company, Yazawa longed to be free from the concrete jungle. "I was born and raised in a northern rural town," he says. "I wanted to return to the soil and grow fresh vegetables." After three years of living by himself in Iiyama, Yazawa says his marriage has improved, too. "It's much nicer to see each other once a month and carry produce back home, rather than get on each other's nerves." Perhaps Yazawa's unorthodox arrangement will help solve another national problem: the rising divorce rate among middle-aged couples. The power of fresh vegetables should not be underestimated.

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