Four Seasons In Five Senses By Masumoto: Wisdom Of The Last Farmer

Throughout the novels that Masumoto has written, he details the changes that he has witnessed within agriculture in terms of farming methods and who is involved in the process of selling the crops produced by farmers. Four Seasons In Five Senses, also by Masumoto, is written six years before Wisdom Of The Last Farmer, and also depicts what traditional American farming resembled, though, there is an emphasis on the five senses. In the past, farming led farmers obliged to pick crops, such as peaches, when they were just about ripe since those crops would likely be in the hands of a consumer the very day that they were picked. Along with this, produce was rarely identifiable by computers, often relying on being “identified visually by the checkout clerk, whose hand entered a generic code...It was slow and especially confusing with the explosion of specialty fruits and vegetables and workers who couldn’t tell the difference between a nectarine and a peach…” (Four Seasons In Five Senses 144). Farming in the past also had “the strategy to diversify a small farm with different crops - vines mixed with tree fruit interspersed with odd lots of open planted with row crops…” (Four Seasons In Five Senses 185). Another important value of past traditional farming was slow cultivation to produce the best tasting crop, and Masumoto describes this process
In Four Seasons In Five Senses, Masumoto’s writing style can be described as poetic and delicate. Kirkus Reviews further solidifies this thought in its review, labeling Masumoto’s writing as “Intense, sensuous, lyrical, shaped by the sensibility of a poet and the eye of a farmer” (Four Seasons). An example of Masumoto’s writing style can be seen after he has harvested raisins,