A Rice-Bran Pickling Bed Cannot Be Managed

Fermentation is a task of waiting. More attention does not always improve it, but neglect will spoil it. Anyone who has cared for a nukadoko, a fermented rice-bran pickling bed, knows that particular frustration. Stir, smell, wait. That is all there is to do, yet nothing goes quite as intended.

Inside the pickling bed, lactic acid bacteria and yeasts increase or decline according to their own conditions. All people can do is tend the environment: maintain temperature, add salt and introduce air. There is no way to order the microbes to work a certain way. What appears to be cultivation is really an effort not to obstruct growth.

Anyone entrusted with a group of people may recognize the feeling. Only a small part of an organization responds directly to instructions. Trust, casual conversation, a little job someone unexpectedly takes on: these things do not emerge from commands. Within a well-tended environment, they either grow of their own accord or they do not.

Of course, comparing organizations to fermentation is only a metaphor. People are not bacteria, and pushing the comparison too far could excuse neglect. Letting go is different from failing to care. Yet in this one respect, working alongside what cannot be controlled, kitchens and meeting rooms look remarkably alike.

The language of efficiency struggles with waiting. It counts time without visible movement as delay. But hurrying a pickling bed will not make it ferment faster. Can we call the time when our hands cannot work preparation rather than waste? Perhaps fermentation teaches us less about technique than about what we call that time.