Stone Masonry Preserving Japan’s Terraced Landscapes
Jul 31,2025
Jul 31,2025
When we heard there’s a woman whose job is repairing stone retaining walls in terraced orchards, we were intrigued. We therefore traveled to meet her in Akehama in the city of Seiyo, Ehime Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. Her name is Kamei Sayaka. We asked her about Akehama — and how she ended up mending walls there.
“I’d like to show you the view. Want to come?” With these words, Akehama resident Kamei Sayaka guides us to a scenic spot that offers a panorama of the area. Before us unfolds a view of terraced orchards where Japanese mandarin and other citrus trees grow, with a winding, indented coastline beyond. Before the Second World War, the people who lived here carved the mountain slopes into a series of flat terraces and built stone retaining walls to keep them from collapsing. The terraces extend high up the slopes, shaping Akehama’s distinctive landscape.
“Sometimes I eat the bento I’ve brought for lunch here,” says Sayaka.
“Stone walls stabilize the soil so it’s easier to farm,” says Sayaka. “The stones aren’t bonded with concrete when they’re laid, which improves drainage and lets the air through. That has the advantage of preserving soil quality.”
A well-laid stone wall will last for three hundred years. In some parts of Akehama, however, sections of wall had collapsed due to flooding or roaming boars and other animals. The farmers here knew how to mend retaining walls, but they sometimes left them unrepaired because they were short on labor or too old to handle the task themselves. They wanted a young person to come and do the job. In 2022, therefore, they put out a call for a professional wall repairer under the Community Revitalization Cooperation Corps program.
Meanwhile, Sayaka had graduated from university and found a job, but Covid prevented her from doing the work she wanted to, and she was worrying about what to do with her future. She then moved from Kagoshima Prefecture, where she was then living, to join her sister in Ehime. Having studied marine ecology in the agriculture department at university, she was interested in the natural environment. She therefore wanted to be closer to nature.
“I never would have ended up living in Akehama if it hadn’t been for every single person I’ve met,” Sayaka says. She visited Akehama as if led by fate and then settled there.
“I first came here in 2021 to pick mandarins as a part-time job. The family who put me up at the time told me about stone laying.” Sayaka thought it sounded like fun. She visited Akehama again the next year to take part in a workshop on repairing stone walls. That’s when she first tried laying stones. It was like a game, and soon she was hooked. So she decided to move to Akehama as a member of the Community Revitalization Cooperation Corps.
Over 30 varieties of citrus, most notably mikan or Japanese mandarins, are grown in Akehama.
“There’s no right way to lay stones. The appearance and strength of a wall vary depending on who does the laying. On farmland, the important thing is to lay the stones quickly and efficiently. It’s not like building a castle wall. There’s no single right way to do it. I guess that suited my style.”
Another interesting thing about stone laying, Sayaka says, is working together as a team.
“For example, repairing a stretch of wall just a few meters long is a lot of work. You have to bring the stones and raise the level of the soil. If there are three or four of you, though, you can work together laying the stones as a team, with one or two of you above and one or two below. One of you hands over the earth. One of you takes it from them. One of you decides which stones are easiest to stack and shifts them to the front. It’s a matter of deciding who’s going to do what. A team consisting of a brawny dad, a delicately built mom, and a child in primary school, for example, can quickly build a nice stone wall if they each do what they’re suited to and work in tandem. It’s often said that anyone can lay stones. That’s part of the beauty of it. It’s also fun to develop a rapport as a team as you lay stones.”
Sayaka’s fascination with laying stones wasn’t the only reason she decided to move to this community. The friendliness of its people was the clincher.
“The people here are really nice. I guess you could say they’re a bit nosey [laughs]. They were nice to me from the start. They would happily invite me to their place for a meal. I wasn’t sure what to do with my future at the time, and people were so good to me when I came here. So I wanted to work at a job where I could be useful to them. That’s one of the main reasons I decided to settle here.”
The Community Revitalization Cooperation Corps program generally has a maximum three-year term. But from the moment she arrived, Sayaka never saw herself leaving the place three years later.
“It’s strange when I think of it now, but I knew from the start that I would stay here. I love this place and how the mountains and the sea are so near. I figured that if I repaired walls for a living, I could live here forever.”
Sayaka was thus enchanted by the community and its people. As she went about her job repairing walls, she didn’t just find it interesting and enjoyable as she had at first. She also came to appreciate the wondrousness of the place.
“When laying stones, you need, for example, to pack the gaps between them with what’s called backfill. This makes the wall less prone to collapse and stabilizes it where it’s rickety. When I first started repairing walls, I sometimes noticed sections without backfill, and I thought to myself that people in the old days did a pretty rough job of it. But as I got to know the place better, I began to get a sense of how hard it must have been for people back then. They were in a hurry to stabilize the soil and level the ground so they could start planting crops. Backfill was the least of their concerns. As I observed the stone walls all over town, I came to realize how much work it must have been to carry all that stone.”
Sayaka continues.
“The walls here were built by someone laying stones one by one. The layer might have been a woman like me, or it might have been a child. That’s what I imagine in my mind’s eye, because the stones used for the walls here are of a size that a woman can easily carry. Repairing stone walls is like communing with people from the past. It gets me thinking of what life was like in the old days and how much effort people went to back then. Now I respect their hard work and admire this land more than ever. The use of drystone walling in farming is a common sight in other parts of Ehime as well, and I’d like to learn more about each of their histories.”
Sayaka is now married to a local mandarin grower and is the mother of a child. She dreams of spreading the art of stone laying and passing it on to a new generation.
“This land is so easy to farm today thanks to the people who worked hard developing it long ago. There are places not far from here where there are few terraced farms and almost all the fruit trees are grown on mountain slopes. It’s grueling work. Terraces and the retaining walls supporting them are a big asset for the people here. That’s why it’s vitally important that there will always be someone who knows how to repair them,” says Sayaka.
But today there are few people capable of repairing stone walls, and Sayaka can’t do the job all alone. Moreover, training professional wall menders isn’t practical.
“A robust stone wall, they say, will last for three hundred years. But the better constructed walls are, the fewer opportunities there are for the next generation to lay stones. That makes it difficult to keep the art of re-laying stones alive. That’s why I believe it’s important for anyone to know how to lay stones, rather than leaving the job to a professional. It would be great if stone laying could be passed on from generation to generation like a family miso recipe. If there were more people all over Japan who knew how to fix a collapsed wall, stone walls here and indeed everywhere could be preserved far into the future.
That’s why Sayaka promotes stone laying as a recreational activity by holding workshops.
“These attract participants from other prefectures, and it’s such a delight to watch them laying stones as they talk about how difficult it was to get a particularly large rock into place, or to watch a whole family having fun laying stones. A stone wall is something that endures, so a section of wall laid with family or friends is a way to commemorate your visit.”
While getting more people to join her laying stones, Sayaka is thinking about the future of Akehama and its stone walls.
“I’d like to create more opportunities for people of all backgrounds to visit this place and experience its history and topography while having fun trying their hand at repairing stone walls. I’d like to systematize the process. By so doing, I want to help people here keep farming worry-free. That’s why I intend to work harder than ever. There’s still much more I’m willing and able to do.”
As Sayaka speaks, she looks radiant in the bright sunshine.
Repairer of stone terrace walls
Repairer of stone terrace walls
Kamei Sayaka moved to the Karie district of Akehama in the city of Seiyo, Ehime Prefecture, under the Community Revitalization Cooperation Corps program in 2022. While repairing local terraces, she teaches the art of stone laying by holding workshops on how to do it.