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.

Harvesting State Support provides an analytical focus on the local implementation and interpretation of the agricultural reform process in Japan.

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

"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."

"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."