Sow while the ground is still half frozen

Sow while the ground is still half frozen is Sekiguchi’s advice to build trust before a relationship promises an immediate return. Spoken over a family barbecue, the seasonal image becomes a practical method for cultivating sources: make time for people in the quiet periods, and they may be more willing to help when the ground thaws.

The Advice at the Barbecue

In July, Sekiguchi invited the narrator to a family barbecue in Japan. The meal was skewered ayu, small fresh river fish rubbed with salt and grilled over charcoal, eaten on the porch with Cokes. There, Sekiguchi offered a metaphor that the narrator found unusual coming from him: “You have to plant the seeds when the ground is still half frozen to reap the spring harvest. Plant the seeds in spring.” The two formulations sit together in the advice: preparation begins before conditions look promising, while the seeds must still be planted in time for growth.

Applying the Metaphor

Asked to explain, Sekiguchi pointed to the dog breeder case, which was then attracting attention. He cautioned the narrator against spending all his time on it. Other officers had no good cases and little to work with, he observed, so they had time for company; if the narrator brought them useful material, they would welcome him. The metaphor thus concerned not only cultivating informants but also developing working relationships with officers before they had an urgent need to cooperate.

Sekiguchi made the principle explicit: visit sources and informants when nothing is happening, so they come to regard a reporter as a friend rather than a hungry opportunist. Familiarity, in his account, breeds trust. He also explained the narrator’s own early access: the narrator had come to him before Sekiguchi’s name became widely known, and Sekiguchi had let him in the door. The access was presented not as an automatic entitlement but as the result of arriving early enough to establish familiarity.

Practice and Significance

The barbecue lesson extends Sekiguchi’s wider habit of maintaining relationships beyond the moment of a case. When he sent a yakuza to jail, he visited the man’s family, checked on them, and sometimes bought groceries or helped with house repairs; he also contacted the prisoner to tell him how things were going at home. That sustained attention later made former prisoners more disposed to pass information to him, helping him build a small yakuza information network. The seeds, then, were visits and practical help offered when no immediate payoff was assured.

The advice reframes reporting as patient cultivation rather than extraction. Its measure of success is not an instant tip but a relationship that can bear fruit later, when a case or a source’s circumstances change. At the end of the barbecue, Sekiguchi punctuated the lesson with another small gesture: he used his fish skewer to remove an eyeball and offered it to the narrator, who ate it. The scene keeps the principle grounded in shared time and ordinary hospitality, rather than presenting trust as a technique detached from personal contact.