Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Village and the Issues -- 1 Agricultural Policy and Regional Politics in Japan -- 2 Reclamation and the Old Social Order -- 3 The Storm and the Aftermath -- 4 Rice: Alliances, Institutions, Frictions -- 5 Politics and the New Social Order -- 6 What Can We Learn from Ogata-mura? -- Afterword -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary
Following the Second World War, a massive land reclamation project to boost Japan's rice production capacity led to the transformation of the shallow lagoon of Hachirogata in Akita Prefecture into a seventeen-thousand-hectare expanse of farmland. In 1964, the village of Ogata-mura was founded on the empoldered land inside the lagoon and nearly six hundred pioneers from across the country were brought to settle there. The village was to be a model of a new breed of highly mechanized, efficient rice agriculture; however, the village's purpose was jeopardized when the demand for rice fell, and th
