＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
When I was a child, bananas were “Taiwan bananas. They were expensive, but I remember that they were nutritious, very sweet, and tasty, and until around 1955, they were only eaten when people got sick or as souvenirs. They were like expensive muskmelons today.
My father told me a story about bananas that surprised me. He said, “In Africa, monkeys don’t even try to eat bananas. It is such a common fruit that it is not considered tasty. Only the Japanese eat them as an expensive and tasty fruit.
1. breeding of “taiwan banana
Taiwan’s climate is colder than that of the Philippines, and it takes 12 to 13 months to harvest bananas in Taiwan, compared to 8 months in the Philippines, making the growing conditions for bananas unfavorable. However, because of the lack of accelerated cultivation, bananas are characterized by their intense flavor and aroma.
During the period when Taiwan was under Japanese rule (1895-1945), the Japanese instructed local farmers to improve the Taiwanese banana breed to suit Japanese tastes.
2. “Ecuadorian bananas
However, Taiwanese bananas were frequently damaged by typhoons, and in 1962, cholera broke out, resulting in a sharp decline in shipments.
However, Ecuadorian bananas had problems in terms of long-distance transportation and quality control, and the good quality Taiwanese bananas gradually regained the market.
3. “Philippine Banana
On the other hand, “Philippine bananas” had a market share of 2% around 1967, but made a breakthrough in 1973, when it accounted for 50% of the market, and in 1974, when it accounted for 70% of the market. The reason for this was that although the quality of Philippine bananas was not as good as that of Taiwanese bananas, the transport distance was shorter and there was less deterioration in quality.
However, banana consumption itself declined sharply during this period in Japan, which had been a major banana-consuming country. This was due to the generalization of “greenhouse cultivation,” in which fruits can be harvested at different times of the year, which has expanded the choice of fruits other than bananas.
Because of this, bananas are now often eaten as an inexpensive fruit, but because they are harvested while still green, they do not taste as good as the Taiwanese bananas of the past.
Call it a luxury, but for some reason we appreciate bananas less and less these days.
4. a memorable story about “banana boats
Although unrelated to the main topic, I was reminded of something when I wrote the article on bananas. It is the song “Banana Boat,” released in 1956 by Harry Belafonte, a black singer of Jamaican descent, which became a big hit. The song is a “mento,” a type of Jamaican folk song, a labor song for Jamaican stevedores.
4. a memorable story about “banana boats
Although unrelated to the main topic, I was reminded of something when I wrote the article on bananas. It is the song “Banana Boat,” released in 1956 by Harry Belafonte, a black singer of Jamaican descent, which became a big hit. The song is a “mento,” a type of Jamaican folk song, a labor song for Jamaican stevedores.
In Japan, it was introduced in 1957 as a representative song of the calypso boom that followed the mambo as Latin music, and became a hit sung by Michiko Hamamura, Chiemi Eri, and Teruo Hata.
The beginning of “Day-o, Day-ay-ay-o” sounds like “Dei-o, Ide-de-dei-o, ” and “me say day, me say day” sounds like “Ide-de, ide-de” in this interesting song. As children, we used to have fun singing the song as a variation of “ide-de, ide-de, ouch te te,” etc.
5. Bananas in danger of extinction due to the “New Panama Disease”?
(1) The original banana was “seeded
The original banana was “seeded,” but breeding has given rise to the “seedless banana” that we eat today.
As a result, the way to increase the number of bananas is to “share the plant”. However, there is a disadvantage that diseases such as mold can spread at once because the bananas produced by “strain-splitting” are “clones with the same genes.
(2) Panama Disease
In the early 1900s, a seedless banana variety called “Gros Michel” was created and quickly became popular in the United States. However, the “Gros Michel” variety was devastated by the “Panama Disease,” a banana mold disease that was first identified in Panama in the 1950s and quickly spread throughout the world, causing the bananas to die standing.
(3) New Panama Disease
As a result of years of breeding, a seedless banana variety called “Cavendish” was created, which tasted worse than the “Gros Michel” variety but was resistant to Panama Disease. This is the variety of banana we eat today.
However, around 1990, the “New Panama Disease” was discovered in Taiwan, which also infected the Cavendish variety. Subsequently, the disease spread to China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and other countries in Southeast Asia.
Recently, an outbreak of the “New Panama Disease” was confirmed in Colombia, South America, and the Colombian Agropastoral Institute declared a “State of Emergency” on August 8, 2019.
Will the “Cavendish” be doomed to extinction like the “Gros Michel”?
It will take a few years to switch to a variety resistant to the “New Panama Disease.” Bananas are now the king of cheap “snacks,” but I am worried that this breeding will make bananas an “expensive fruit” again.
