Life of Vegetables

The flowers, fruits, leaves, stems and roots —
all exist, in essence, to help vegetables create new seeds.

From seed to seed.

What is displayed here is the ʻthe life of vegetables’ born from a farm that practices traditional farming, where the process does not end with the harvest, but continues with watching over the crops until they wither, collecting their seeds, and then sowing them once more.
Vegetables, too, bloom, wither, and form seeds as their pods inflate.
Stems that do not break in order to protect the seeds, fruits that lie down after fully nourishing the seeds, and then the seeds that are born to grow again and bloom.
The stems that do not break in order to protect the seeds, the fruits that lie down after pouring all their nutrients into nurturing the seeds, and the seeds that are born to grow again and bloom.
By weaving the strength that life inherently holds into the future, we are able to receive life.
From this exhibit, if you can picture the landscape of a vibrant field where vegetable flowers bloom, your dining experience may look a little different.

Everything exhibited here comes from the vegetable fields of a single farmer, Masatoshi Iwasaki, in Unzen City, Nagasaki Prefecture, grown over the course of a year.
Behind the rise of selectively bred vegetables for mass production, countless delicious heirloom varieties have vanished.
Once a seed is lost, it is gone forever.
In the midst of this, Mr. Iwasaki chose to ʻpreserve the seeds.’
Even though it is a painstaking form of farming.
Even if it goes unnoticed by most.
Together with his wife, the two of them cultivate as many as 78 varieties of vegetables.
He understands the 78 unique traits of each vegetable, and rather than ending with the harvest, he tends to the crops until they wither and yield seeds.
All to preserve the diversity of food culture for the next 100 years.
Throughout the six-month exhibition period, we will showcase seasonal vegetable flowers from the fields of Unzen as they bloom.
Please enjoy the changes with each season.

Collaboration
Exhibition supervised by OKUTSU Chikashi(Taneto, ORGANIC BASE)
Vegetables provided by IWASAKI Masatoshi

Audio guide narrator：SHOJI Mai