ABSTRACT
In writing this paper, I found most difficult the matter of establishing the proper frame of reference for evaluating the change that has taken place in the Japanese farming communities. Writing in 1959, Thomas C. Smith (1959, p. lx) states that there has been very little change in Japanese agriculture:
In the course of its long history, Japanese agriculture has in some respects changed remarkably little. Farming is scarcely less a family enterprise now than it was a thousand years ago; holdings are still tiny and fragmented, tools simple, and rice the main crop. Although a Heian peasant would no doubt be perplexed by many things about contemporary farming…the main operations of planting, tilling, and harvesting he would understand.
