Roses Princess: The Rose Jam Maker of Suo-Oshima
Four years ago, Kiyoka walked away from a predictable life and an engineering career to make rose jam.
Strong in her conviction but still searching for reassurance, she returned to her small village on Suo-Oshima, tucked between sharp green mountains and the unpredictable shores of the Seto Nai Kai. She left her boyfriend, her job, and her urban lifestyle behind. She now grows her own organic roses and prepares a weekly batch of rose jam in her atelier kitchen.
A Family Legacy
About 35 years ago, the Japanese government sent young professionals abroad for training. Kiyoka's father was one of them. He landed in Portland, Oregon, and trained as a rose farmer. Three years later, with the support of his American farming family, he returned to Suo-Oshima as a professional rose farmer and started his own rose garden, producing cut flowers for the Yamaguchi market.
While her father uses a mix of natural and chemical methods in his greenhouses, Kiyoka takes a more modest but deeply intentional approach. She uses a local technique of luring bugs away with seaweed picked from the shore. Bugs, she says, are more tempted by the sweet taste of seaweed than by rose petals. It seems to work. And even if her greenhouse looks like a beautiful mess, every living organism in there appears to cohabitate quite happily.
Why did we decide that a rose, to be worthy, had to be perfect? Why this race toward perfection, when the imperfection of things, in their rarity, is what makes them already so precious and unique? A mystery of mankind, or simply the PR machine of multinationals who can only produce clones?
Working with Kiyoka
The Island Academy Project and the Kokusai Boueki Group are working with Ouchi Farm, ordering roses for various group events and distributing Kiyoka's rose jam through MOLAO Japon at Canal City, Fukuoka.
International travellers already have access to unlimited international brand products wherever they go. With MOLAO Organic, the aim is to promote local, natural, organic products for global inside-out beauty.
Find Kiyoka's Rose Jam
Available from Akemi-Ya, Shimata, Hikari.
Visit Ouchi Farm
Best lunch on Suo-Oshima.
魚処 宇兵衛大島店, 8-1 Nishimigama, Suōōshima-chō, Ōshima-gun, Yamaguchi-ken 742-2101. Tel 0820-74-2000
MOLAO Japon
Now open at Canal City, the largest mall in Fukuoka.
