Harvesting State Support: Institutional Change and Local Agency in Japanese Agriculture
© 2021
Agriculture has been among the toughest political battlegrounds in postwar Japan and represents an ideal case study in institutional stability and change. Inefficient land use and a rapidly aging workforce have long been undermining the economic viability of the agricultural sector. Yet vested interests in the small-scale, part-time agricultural production structure have obstructed major reforms. Change has instead occurred in more subtle ways. Since the mid-1990s, a gradual reform process has dismantled some of the core pillars of the postwar agricultural support and protection regime. Harvesting State Support analyzes this process by shifting the analytical focus to the local level.
Drawing on extensive qualitative field research, Hanno Jentzsch investigates how local actors, including farmers, local governments, and local agricultural cooperatives, have translated abstract policies into local practice. Showing how local variants are constructed through recombining national reforms with the local informal institutional environment, Harvesting State Support reveals new links between agricultural reform and other shifts in Japan’s political economy.
Product Details
- Series: Japan and Global Society
- World Rights
- Page Count: 288 pages
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 1.0in x 9.0in
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Reviews
"This meticulously researched book fills an important gap in our understanding of Japan’s agricultural support and protection regime by analyzing how local actors and agricultural institutions have influenced the nature of change in that regime. What it reveals is that the agricultural reform process in Japan is a complex story of top-down and bottom-up. Change is the product of interaction between nationally imposed policy reforms and the norms, practices, and community links of local actors, including farmers and agricultural cooperative organizations."
Aurelia George Mulgan, professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Canberra"Working with the case of Japan’s agricultural policy, Hanno Jentzsch has written an important theoretical contribution about institutional change. Jentzsch carefully draws out a local theory of gradual institutional change, a novel contribution to scholarship. Besides being essential for anyone interested in Japan’s agricultural policy, this book is also strongly recommended to those interested in Japan’s politics or policy-making, or in the broader theories of institutions."
Robert J. Pekkanen, professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington -
Author Information
Hanno Jentzsch is an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna. -
Table of contents
Part I: Introduction – Institutional Change in Japan’s Agricultural Sector
1. Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection Regime
Gradual Change and an Ongoing Crisis
The Agricultural Support and Protection Regime as a Case to Understand Gradual Institutional Change2. Toward a Local Perspective on Gradual Institutional Change
Shifting the Analytical Focus to the Local
The Local as Level of Analysis
Toward a Dynamic Concept of Informal Institutions and Institutional Change3. Institutional Change in the Japanese Agricultural Support and Protection Regime through the Local Lens
Farmland Consolidation in Hikawa Town
Local Agricultural Regimes in Comparison
The Social and Normative Foundations of Local Agricultural Regimes
Boundary Change – The Limits of Local Institutional Agency
Village Institutions as Dynamic Resources
The Structure of the BookPart II: Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection Regime in Time
4. The Postwar Evolution of the Support and Protection Regime
Land Reform, the Owner-Cultivator Principle, and Local Control over Farmland
The Food Control System and the (Re)Birth of Nōkyō
Constructing the Agricultural Welfare State
Rice Production Control and De-Agriculturalization
Growing Pressure and Adjustment of the Food Control System5. Gradual Change and Increasing Institutional Ambiguity in the Agricultural Support and Protection Regime
Agricultural Policy-Making in a Changing Political Economy
The New Basic Law – An Ambiguous New Constitution for the Agricultural Sector
Rice Market Liberalization and the Changing Role of Production Control
Towards Exclusive Subsidization (and back)
Farmland Deregulation and the End of the Owner-Cultivator-Principle
Interim ConclusionPart III: Local Agricultural Regimes and Village Institutions
6. Different Local Manifestations of Macro-Level Change
Disparate Neighbors – Agriculture in Hikawa and Izumo City
Introducing Local Variety
Making Sense of Local Variety7. The Postwar Formation of Local Agricultural Regimes and Village Institutions
The Emerging Boundaries of Postwar Local Agricultural Regimes
Village Institutions – The Changing Social and Normative Foundations of Local Agricultural Regimes
The Changing Postwar Hamlet
Local Social Ties Beyond Hamlet Boundaries
From Traditional Rural Social Organization to Village Institutions
Interim ConclusionPart IV: Village Institutions as Dynamic Resources – The Local Renegotiation of the Agricultural Support and Protection Regime
8. Farmland Consolidation as a Social Process
Village Institutions and Public Control over Farmland in Hikawa
Village Institutions and Farmland Governance in the Kamiina District
The Local Origins of National Farmland Legislation
Interim Conclusion9. Local Variations of Agricultural Entrepreneurship
Large-Scale Farms in the Local Agricultural Regime in Hikawa
Other JA-Related Corporations
Agricultural Entrepreneurship in the Kōfu Basin
Large-Scale Corporate Farming in Yasu City
Interim Conclusion10. Hamlet-Based Collective Farming and Village Institutions
The Social and Normative Foundations of Hamlet-Based Collective Farming
Hamlet-Farming in the Context of Local Agricultural Regimes
Hamlet-Based Farms as Corporations
Interim Conclusion11. Boundary Change – Decreasing Prospects for Comprehensive Local Institutional Agency
Decentralization, Deregulation, and the Changing Cooperative and Administrative Landscape
The Diffusion of Socio-Spatial Boundaries in Amalgamated Local Agricultural Regimes
Extended Municipal and Cooperative Autonomy and the Trajectory of the Local Agricultural Regime in Hikawa in the 2000s
Beyond Hikawa – Stable Boundaries in Comparison
Decreasing Prospects for Organized Local Agricultural Regimes
Interim ConclusionPart V: Conclusions
12. Renegotiating Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection Regime
Agricultural Reform and Local Agency in the Context of “Boundary Change”
Quo Vadis, Japanese Agriculture? The Limits of Intervention and the Risks of Disorganization13. Institutional Change Through the Local Lens
Informal Institutions as Dynamic Resources
Local Institutional Agency in ContextAppendixes
Appendix A: Field Research
Appendix B: Interviews
Appendix C: Overview on Types of Farms in Japan
Appendix D: Overview on Paddy Field Subsidies
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