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.
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.
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Part One: Introduction: Institutional Change in Japan’s
Agricultural Sector
1. Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection Regime
2. Toward a Local Perspective on Gradual Institutional Change
3. Institutional Change in Japanese Agricultural Support and
Protection through the Local Lens
Part Two: Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection over
Time
4. Postwar Evolution of Support and Protection
5. Gradual Change and Increasing Institutional Ambiguity in
Agricultural Support and Protection
Part Three: Local Agricultural Regimes and Village
Institutions
6. Different Local Manifestations of Macro-Level Change
7. Postwar Formation of Local Agricultural Regimes and Village
Institutions
Part Four: Village Institutions as Dynamic Resources – Local
Renegotiation of Agricultural Support and Protection
8. Farmland Consolidation as a Social Process
9. Local Variations of Agricultural Entrepreneurship
10. Hamlet-Based Collective Farming and Village Institutions
11. Boundary Change: Decreasing Prospects for Comprehensive Local
Institutional Agency
Part Five: Conclusions
12. Renegotiating Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection
13. Institutional Change through the Local Lens
Appendix A: Field Research
Appendix B: Interviews
Appendix C: Types of Farms in Japan
Appendix D: Paddy Field Subsidies
Notes
References
Index
Hanno Jentzsch is an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna.
"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
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