The mayor’s office, initially skeptical, recently designated herb farming as a strategic niche industry. “They preserved our agricultural land,” a local official told me. “Better than letting it turn into parking lots.” Now, let us address the elephant in the keyword: the fragment “jux773.” A quick, responsible search reveals that JUX-773 is the catalog number of a Japanese adult video from the mid-2010s, in which the narrative involved a farmer’s daughter-in-law in a traditional, often exploitative, dramatic scenario. It is a genre known as jinrui (human drama) in the adult industry, frequently portraying rural women as passive or victimized.
One such woman is Mai Suzuki (name changed for privacy), a former graphic designer from Osaka who married into a dairy and potato farm in Chitose in 2018. "My mother-in-law thought I was crazy when I refused to spray the edges of the fields," she tells me over a cup of yomogi tea she harvested herself. "She said, 'Those are pests.' I said, 'No, those are antibiotics, antifungals, and digestive tonics.'" jux773 daughterinlaw of farmer herbs chitose better
But a shift began in the late 2010s—coinciding with a global pandemic, a renewed fear of food insecurity, and a deep, existential fatigue with urban consumerism. Young women, some with degrees in nutrition or environmental science, began marrying into farming families not as subservient laborers, but as partners in regeneration. Chitose, with its clean air, abundant springs, and proximity to both wilderness and the New Chitose Airport (a gateway to the world), became an unlikely epicenter. It is a genre known as jinrui (human
Below is a long-form article written in the style of a lifestyle or cultural essay, drawing from the fragments to build a meaningful narrative. Unearthing a Forgotten Wisdom In the rural outskirts of Chitose, Hokkaido—where mist clings to the potato fields and the Tokachi Plain stretches toward snow-capped peaks—there exists an old, unspoken tradition. It is not written in any tourism manual. It is whispered among farming families who have tilled the same volcanic soil for generations. They speak of the yome , the daughter-in-law, as the quiet engine of the homestead. But in recent years, a new phrase has emerged in these circles: “Chitose no yome wa yori yoi” — “The daughter-in-law of Chitose is better.” Better at what? At healing. At sustaining. At weaving the forgotten language of herbs back into the fabric of daily life. "She said, 'Those are pests
And that is a story worth far more than any forgotten catalog number. If you are a farmer, a daughter-in-law, or simply someone seeking a deeper connection to the plants around you, begin today. Walk outside. Find one weed. Learn its name. Your own “better” is waiting in the soil.
The “better” is not moral superiority. It is resilience. When heavy snow cuts off Chitose’s rural roads for days, the herbalist yome does not panic over a forgotten pharmacy run. She walks into her frost-covered garden, brushes off the snow, and harvests what she needs. She is better prepared. She is better connected to the land. And she is often better rested—because her family’s minor ailments no longer spiral into emergencies. Chitose is not Kyoto or Nara. It lacks ancient temples or tourist-clogged streets. But it possesses something rarer: a transitional climate where wild herbs grow with unusual potency. The city sits on a plateau with dramatic temperature swings between day and night, which increases the secondary metabolite production in plants—the very compounds that provide medicinal benefits.
Here, the “daughter-in-law” redefined her title. She is no longer just the farmer’s wife. She is the farm’s herbalist, the soil’s chemist, and the family’s memory-keeper. The core of this transformation is herbs . Not exotic imports, but the hardy, often overlooked plants that thrive in Hokkaido’s cold climate: shiso (perilla), yomogi (Japanese mugwort), dokudami (houttuynia), fuki (butterbur), and tade (water pepper). For decades, these were dismissed as weeds. The modern agricultural system favored monocrops and herbicide sprays. But the new generation of daughters-in-law saw something else: medicine.