Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-xlmdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-10T15:58:29.781Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why Is Japanese Farming Culturally Central and Economically Marginal? Rice Revolutions and Farm Families in a Tohoku Region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

William W. Kelly
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

A longer version of this essay appeared in a volume (Thompson and Traphagen 2006) on recent scholarship about Tohoku, Japan's archetypal rural region, and the puzzle that intrigued me as I wrote it was why mine was to be the only chapter on agriculture. There are chapters about young women working and old people dying, about lacquer ware and Deer Dances and enka, and about internationalization and administrative amalgamation. But where were the farmers and what happened to agriculture, even in Tohoku?

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 6 , June 2007 , e15
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

References

References Cited

Brown, L. Keith 1986 “Agriculture in Japan: The Crisis of Success,” Japan Society Newsletter 34(1): 2–5.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H.L. and Rabinow, P. (editor) 1983 Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francks, Penelope 1984 Technology and Agricultural Development in Pre-War Japan. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jussaume, Raymond Adelard Jr. 1991 Japanese Part-time Farming: Evolution and Impacts. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.Google Scholar
Kazutoshi, Kase 2003 “Agricultural Public Works and the Changing Mentality of Japanese Farmers in the Postwar Era.” In Waswo, Ann and Yoshiaki, Nishida (editors), Farmers and Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan, pp. 244–266. Routledge/Curzon, London and New York.Google Scholar
Kelly, William W. 1982 Water Control in Tokugawa Japan: Irrigation in a Japanese River Basin, 1600-1870. East Asia Papers #32. Ithaca: Cornell University China-Japan Program.Google Scholar
Kelly, William W. 1985 Deference and Defiance in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, William W. 1992a “Rural Society in Japan: Past and Present.” In Cohen, Myron L. (ed.), Guide to Asian Case Studies in the Social Sciences, pp. 127–136. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Kelly, William W. 1992b “Tractors, Television, and Telephones: Reach Out and Touch Someone in Rural Japan.” In Tobin, Joseph J. (editor), Re-made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, pp. 77–88. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries 2000 Preliminary Statistical Report on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.Google Scholar
Moore, Richard H. 1990 Japanese agriculture: patterns of rural development. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Mulgan, Aurelia George 2006 Japan's Agricultural Policy Regime. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yoshiaki, Nishida 2003 “Dimensions of change in twentieth-century rural Japan.” In Waswo, Ann and Yoshiaki, Nishida (editors), Farmers and Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan, pp. 7–37. Routledge/Curzon, London and New York.Google Scholar
Masakatsu, Okado 2003 “The Women of Rural Japan: An Overview of the Twentieth Century.” In Waswo, Ann and Yoshiaki, Nishida (editors), Farmers and Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan, pp. 38–59. Routledge/Curzon, London and New York.Google Scholar
Smethurst, Richard 1986 Agricultural Development and Tenancy Disputes in Japan, 1870-1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taira, Koji 1993 Review of Jussaume, Japanese Part-time Farming. Journal of Japanese Studies 19(1):185–188.Google Scholar
Thompson, Christopher S., and Traphagen, John W., eds. 2006 Wearing Cultural Styles in Japan: Concepts of Tradition and Modernity in Practice. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Waswo, Ann, and Yoshiaki, Nishida, eds. 2003 Farmers and Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan. London and New York: Routledge/Curzon.Google Scholar