Rural Japan during the twentieth century has been portrayed as a vast reservoir of conservatism in much of the literature on Japan's modern development, and Japanese agriculture since the 1960s has been treated as an artificial creation sustained only by protectionism of the worst sort. This book presents a range of original, in-depth work, including work by Japanese scholars, that seeks to move beyond such stereotypes to reveal the diversity and complexities of rural life in Japan from 1900 to the present.
Rural Japan during the twentieth century has been portrayed as a vast reservoir of conservatism in much of the literature on Japan's modern development, and Japanese agriculture since the 1960s has been treated as an artificial creation sustained only by protectionism of the worst sort. This book presents a range of original, in-depth work, including work by Japanese scholars, that seeks to move beyond such stereotypes to reveal the diversity and complexities of rural life in Japan from 1900 to the present.
Annotation A broad, richly textured social history of the Japanese countryside from the 1920s to the present. told through the life of one woman and her community.
Presents a collection of Japanese recipes; discusses the ingredients, techniques, and equipment required for home cooking; and relates the author's experiences living on a farm in Japan for the past twenty-three years.
In Japan as in the United States, family farming is on the wane, increasingly rejected by the younger generation in favor of more promising economic pursuits and more sophisticated comforts. Yet for centuries past, the village and the family farm have constituted the world of the vast majority of Japanese women, as of Japanese men. The dramatic economic and demographic developments of the past two decades have orced extensive changes in the lives of Japanese farm women, many of hwom have been left virtually in charge of their family farms. This book is a study of Japanese farm women's lives in the present era: its central figure is 42-year-old Haruko, a complex, vibrant woman who both exemplifies and makes a mockery of the stereotype of Japanese women. Through Haruko we learn the work routine, family relationships, and social life of the women who are the mainstay of Japanese agriculture. Other women from Haruko's village also figure in the story, and the author's observations of them, based largely on a six-month stay with Haruko and her family in 1974-75, are supplemented with data from questionnaires and personal interviews. An epilogue recounts the author's return to Haruko's village in 1982 and describes the changes that have occurred since 1975 in the lives of Haruko's family and other village women. The book is illustrated with photographs.
In fact, this is the first book-length study on the farm tenancy conciliation procedure and analysis of the Japanese government's wish to maintain tradition at al cost in the farmer community.
Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA), a nationwide network of farm cooperatives, is under increasing pressure to expand farmer incomes by adapting coop strategies to changing market incentives. Some coops have adapted more successfully than others. In Betting on the Farm, Patricia L. Maclachlan and Kay Shimizu attribute these differences to three sets of local variables: resource endowments and product-specific market conditions, coop leadership, and the organization of farmer-members behind new coop strategies. Using in-depth case studies and profiles of different types of farmers, Betting on the Farm also explores the evolution of the formal and informal institutional foundations of postwar agriculture; the electoral sources of JA's influence; the interactive effects of economic liberalization and demographic pressures (an aging farm population and acute shortage of farm successors) on the propensity for change within the farm sector; and the diversification of Japan's traditional farm households and the implications for farmer ties with JA.
