The Person I Wish I Could Meet

The vacant lot near my workshop is a zone of rampant grass, untouched for over forty years.

Wild plants of every season—spring, summer, autumn, winter—can be gathered there; for us it is a convenient and ideal spot.

This urban oasis, rare nowadays, we have taken the liberty of calling our “First Farm.”

But how, I wonder, does the owner think about the property tax on this land of more than 150 tsubo (about 500 square meters)? Ordinarily, anyone would think to make it a parking lot or rental space to at least cover the taxes, then build an apartment and run it as the owner, or size up soaring land prices and sell.

Then, one day in 2020, it was decided that an apartment building would go up on this land.

The shock of finally losing the farm I’d grown so familiar with over the long years was great.

On the day of the construction briefing, I tried asking the person in charge about the owner.

It turned out he had passed away recently, and his family had decided to sell. The family, too, apparently hadn’t even known their father owned this land.

This owner came to seem to me an extraordinary figure, and I was filled with the wish to convey my gratitude for having been allowed to make such good use of this land over the years, and to hear his feelings about it. I hope we might meet someday.