Kitazawa Seed connects cultures, traditional foods

The early days: Gijiu Kitazawa and bookkeeper Kenji Sera at the Kitazawa Bros. Seeds storefront in San Jose. The early days: Gijiu Kitazawa and bookkeeper Kenji Sera at the Kitazawa Bros. Seeds storefront in San Jose. Photo: Courtesy Kitazawa Seed Co. Photo: Courtesy Kitazawa Seed Co. Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Kitazawa Seed connects cultures, traditional foods 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

This is the fourth in an occasional series on farmers and gardeners working to preserve their cultural food ways by growing heritage crops in the Bay Area.

When Maya Shiroyama was growing up in rural Kings County in the 1960s, the manila packets from Kitazawa Seed Co. were as much a part of her life as the summer heat or the tule fog of winter.

"My Issei grandparents - first-generation Japanese Americans - always had a huge vegetable garden, growing traditional crops," she recalled. "They taught me how to open the packets without ripping the printed information and plant the seeds." Her parents also bought seeds from Kitazawa.

She never dreamed that one day she would own the company, now a major international source of seed for "dento yasai," translatable as "traditional vegetables" with a strong implication of "local varieties." "I've always had an interest in agriculture, but I love the Bay Area. It's hard to find a fit that offers both in the same place."

Fast-forward to 2000: Shiroyama, then a housing market research analyst, was living in Oakland with her husband, Jim Ryugo. Her parents still grew vegetables back in Hanford, and when her father told her that his mail-order seeds from Kitazawa hadn't arrived, she called the company and connected with Helen Kitazawa Komatsu, daughter of founder Gijiu Kitazawa.

Komatsu said the business was in disarray after her husband Sakae's massive heart attack. "She said she couldn't do it all herself," Shiroyama said. "I thought about what Kitazawa was to me. It was the only company specializing in Asian vegetables. I thought it should stay in business rather than close its doors."

Three months later, Komatsu phoned Shiroyama and asked her if she wanted to buy the business. "Yeah, I do," she replied, to her own surprise. She turned to her husband, mother and mother-in-law and announced: "I just bought a seed business." Now, she says it was "one of the best things I ever did in my life."

Started in San Jose

Gijiu Kitazawa and his brother Buemon founded the seed company in San Jose in 1917. It quickly became a mainstay for Japanese farmers on the West Coast. After the brothers divided the business, Gijiu's wife and children helped with testing new varieties, record keeping, packing and shipping.

The late Mai Kitazawa Arbegast, oldest daughter and noted landscape architect, told NikkeiWest writer Margaret Schulze that she spent much of her early life "tromping on particular tomatoes and collecting the seed for further (hybrid) crosses."

In 1942, the Kitazawas were sent to the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming. They returned to San Jose after the end of World War II and restarted the business from the basement of their home, filling mail orders from the Japanese American diaspora. Gijiu died in 1963; his son Ernest took over. Eighteen years later, when the house was demolished to accommodate the expanding San Jose Airport, Ernest moved operations to Oakland. In 1992, he sold the company to Sakae Komatsu.

Shortly after she bought the business, Shiroyama got a phone call from Arbegast: "She said, 'Thank you for carrying on our family business. I'm delighted you can do it, and I know you're going to make it better.' "

The Internet effect

Shiroyama brought Kitazawa Seed into the Internet age, broadened the company's seed sources and added new varieties to the inventory.

She now runs Kitazawa Seed from an office on Fourth Street in Oakland's Produce District, currently offering 450 varieties of seed. What are her big sellers? "It depends on the season," she said. Popular summer varieties include shishito peppers, Japanese cucumbers and tomatoes. Napa cabbage, Japanese turnips and daikon are winter favorites. In her own Oakland garden, and the family tradition, Shiroyama is growing out multicolored bok choy to seed for the microgreens niche market - despite the local gophers.

Beyond the domestic market, Kitazawa exports U.S.-grown seed, supplied by a network of contract growers, to Asia and Europe. The company still imports seed from Japan and elsewhere, but doesn't re-export what it imports. Suppliers must meet rigorous standards: "We need to have legitimate biological purity and genetic tests."

She said some customers expressed concern about radiation-contaminated seed after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan: "The seed we buy isn't produced in that area. Vegetables and dairy products came from there, but it's not an area for seed production."

The dento yasai have been augmented by Spanish Padron peppers, molokhia from the Middle East and other additions, but the heart of the business remains East Asian. Many of the traditional varieties come from Japan's Kansai region, which includes Kyoto. Shiroyama is always looking to add more: "Sadly, a lot of the old open-pollinated varieties are being phased out. If we don't support them, it's going to go away."