ABSTRACT
It must be almost second nature by now to view rural Japan as perched on the brink of disaster. The list of economic crises, social ills and ecological calamities that have afflicted farming communities is a long one. From the start of the modern era, as this volume certainly helps illustrate, towns and villages throughout Japan were subject to a series of difficult transitions, from the sharp shocks of the Matsukata Deflation of the early 1880s to the subtler challenges of industrial capitalism and the rise of the nation's cities. The increased visibility of tenancy and tenant movements around the time of the First World War highlighted growing divisions of wealth and power within villages, and between commercially successful regions and those less able to break old habits. Joined to these economic problems was a series of programs and policies designed by the state to protect farmers and their communities. The introduction of industrial cooperatives and agricultural associations, local improvement in its various forms and tenancy conciliation laws all grew out of elite and bureaucratic concerns over the fate of the countryside. That even the postwar land reform and farm subsidies can be understood as part of the ongoing attempt to address gaps between agriculture and industry, and between changing agricultural technologies and static land-holdings, speaks to the intransigence of the problems facing Japan's farmers.
