The founding of the Pioneers community was a 1974 attempt by Fukada and his followers to build an enduring communal life through agriculture in the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture. Cheaply acquired land, local subsidies, and a substantial source of money Fukada never explained enabled the settlement to take shape; its practical achievements and public reputation would later stand in sharp contrast to the abuse committed under the authority of its founder.

Origins and Establishment

Fukada’s group sought a village that had been largely depopulated, where farms lacked successors and the remaining elderly residents could no longer cultivate the fields. The situation gave the newcomers an opportunity to acquire land and houses for very little. They also obtained plastic greenhouses, municipal subsidies on the condition that they continue farming existing cultivated land, and favorable tax treatment during the community’s first years.

The public support did not account for all the resources behind the project. Fukada had a private source of financing, but even Professor Ebisuno, his close friend, did not know where the money came from or what its nature was. Fukada never disclosed the secret to anyone. The capital was nevertheless substantial and indispensable: it paid for agricultural equipment and building materials and allowed the group to maintain reserves as it repaired existing houses and constructed facilities for its approximately thirty members. In 1974, they named the new community the Pioneers.

The settlement’s founding also brought a close friendship into a shared historical account. Ebisuno remembered Fukada as physically and temperamentally unlike himself: Fukada was tall, imposing, political, and naturally a leader, while Ebisuno described himself as small, solitary, and apolitical. Despite these contrasts, the two men had been close, respected, and trusted one another. Ebisuno’s account of the community thus comes from a witness who admired Fukada personally, even as he acknowledged that the community’s founding finances remained unexplained.

Building a Working Community

The Pioneers needed several years to adjust to their new region. Fukada insisted on rigorous management, but daily life went better than he had expected. Favorable weather helped, and some neighbors offered practical assistance. Local residents appreciated Fukada’s honesty and admired the young members’ willingness to work hard; repeated contact allowed the newcomers to learn farming methods and the habits of communal life from people who knew the land.

The group retained practices learned at Takashima while developing its own agricultural methods. It abandoned chemical insecticides and cultivated vegetables using organic fertilizer alone, anticipating what would later be called ecological agriculture. Its members’ urban backgrounds gave them an understanding of city consumers’ preferences: affluent customers would pay more for attractive, fresh, unpolluted produce. That knowledge turned cultivation into a viable business rather than simply an ideal of self-sufficiency.

To reach those customers, the Pioneers contracted with a delivery company, simplified distribution, and arranged rapid delivery into the city. They also became early sellers of irregularly shaped vegetables still covered in soil, making a selling point of produce that conventional expectations might have rejected. The combination of organic cultivation, direct delivery, and attention to urban demand increased their profit margins. It made the community’s agricultural project both a social experiment and a commercially effective enterprise.

Growth and Public Reputation

Ebisuno visited Fukada’s farms and found him apparently happy in an environment that allowed him to test bold possibilities. He thought this may have been the calmest period of Fukada’s life, when his hopes seemed to be coming true; Fukada’s family also appeared to adapt well to the new communal life. The early years were therefore remembered not only as a period of labor and adjustment, but as a time when the founding vision seemed to be working.

As the Pioneers’ produce circulated, the community’s name became more widely known. The media presented it as an example of a successful community, and its reputation attracted people seeking physical work in nature away from an information-saturated, money-centered society. Applicants were interviewed and admitted only if they could contribute. The group did not accept everyone: it sought candidates whose health, agricultural abilities, and capacity for hard physical work suited communal farming, while also welcoming women as part of its effort to achieve a balanced membership.

The public picture of the Pioneers emphasized practical competence and a persuasive account of communal life. When journalists later visited, they could move freely through the grounds, talk to residents, and report as they chose, although the association asked the media to use only approved photographs or footage to protect members’ privacy. Leaders answered questions about the association’s organization, religious principles, and management in a large meeting room. Their courteous, polished explanations made them seem less like the officers of a sect than highly skilled publicists.

Founding Ideals and Later Contradictions

In its public explanation of its religion, the association claimed not to have a fixed doctrine or codified manual. It described its approach as studying early Buddhist principles and practicing different forms of exercise in pursuit of enlightenment, understood as fluid and free rather than obedience to literal dogma. Individual awakenings, it said, came first; rules and doctrine were supposed to emerge afterward, spontaneously from those experiences. The statement offered an ideal of a community whose principles grew from its members instead of being imposed in advance.

The association also presented agriculture and simplicity as alternatives to dependence on donations and the materialism of the market economy. It acknowledged voluntary contributions but said its aim was an austere, largely self-sufficient life based chiefly on farming. Its representatives appealed especially to educated people and specialists with high social standing, describing the community not as an institution that relieved people of responsibility but as a place for people who wished to save themselves. The language of individual awakening and self-direction gave the Pioneers a distinctive public identity, though it could not establish how power was exercised in private.

That contradiction becomes unavoidable in the account of Tsubasa. The Dowager later states that Fukada, the Pioneers’ founder, sexually abused her, presenting the assault to her parents as a spiritual-stimulation rite that had to occur before the girl’s first menstruation. Her parents believed his claim that the suffering was necessary for spiritual advancement. The Dowager says other girls suffered the same fate and characterizes the religious doctrine as a convenient cover for Fukada’s sexual appetites. The community’s history therefore cannot be reduced either to the successful agricultural venture its members and the media displayed or to its founder’s abusive conduct: the record holds both its real organizational achievements and the violence hidden beneath its spiritual authority.