Hanno Jentzsch, "Harvesting State Support: Institutional Change and Local Agency in Japanese Agriculture" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

New Books in Japanese Studies · Aug 11, 2021 · 36m

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…