Preparing to Reroof

Meet the Kids

Shirakawa Junior High School

(Shirakawa Junior High School)

(Shirakawa Junior High School)

Nearly every year since 1987, the entire student body of Shirakawa Junior High School has helped harvest the pampas grass for the thatched roofs. This year the school's "grass-cutting day" is taking place on October 24. At 9:30 a.m., 51 students, together with about 50 teachers, parents, and volunteers, gather in a field near the village. The day starts off with a talk by a member of the Gassho-style House Preservation Society on how to cut the grass. Following this, everybody puts on work gloves and, scythe in hand, goes out to the field.

All morning long, they cut the two-meter-high grass at the base of the stem. One student describes the process, "There was grass all around, and it was hot. After a few hours of cutting, I was soaked in sweat."

From noon until one, they eat a lunch of rice balls and other foods and take a break in the field. In the afternoon, they bind about 50 stalks together with rope and stand the bundles in bunches of five.

Pampas grass is the general term used for the material used to make a thatched roof. Two varieties of grass are used, kogaya (Miscanthus tinctorius, left) and ogaya (Miscanthus sinensis, right). The stems of kogaya are hollow and more rot resistant, so they are mainly used for the ridge.

Thanks to all their hard work, a total of 672 bundles are ready by the end of the day. The grass is set out to dry until the middle of November, at which point it is stored in a special storage room. In a year or two, the grass that the students worked so hard to cut will be used for reroofing one of the village's Gassho-style houses.

In the past, thatched roofs lasted from 40 to 50 years, but today they have to be replaced every 25 or 30 years because of the variety of grass now used. In Shirakawa-go, about four or five thatched roofs are replaced every year.