Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the role of social ties and norms on the village level ("village institutions") as resources for local actors in Japan's rural and semi-rural peripheries to alleviate the repercussions of structural reforms in the agricultural sector.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the role of village institutions as resources for local actors in Japan's rural and semi-rural peripheries to alleviate the repercussions of structural reforms in the agricultural sector. Village institutions include social network ties within and between hamlets, local co-ops and local governments, as well as norms and rules governing everyday cooperation and natural resource management.

For much of the postwar era, extensive agricultural support and protection served as a "functional equivalent" (Estevez-Abe 2008) to rural welfare provision. Yet, a gradual shift toward less comprehensive support and the promotion of more "efficient" (corporate) farming has come to challenge this role. The growing emphasis on entrepreneurial agriculture puts pressure on aging smallholders especially in remote areas; and on Nokyo, the powerful organization of agricultural cooperatives. Based on extensive field research in several rural and semi-rural communities, this paper argues that village institutions provide the foundation for crafting defensive local responses to the changing agricultural support and protection regime. For the local branches of Nokyo, being involved in such local responses is vitally important. Their postwar position as "carriers" of village institutions is challenged not only in the realm of agricultural politics, but also by a number of accompanying institutional shifts. The ongoing reduction in the number of Nokyo branches has been disrupting the once tight territorial, social, and political bonds between villages and local co-ops, and fiscal restructuring and municipal mergers pushed once autonomous villages to the peripheries of larger, more heterogeneous, and less socially coherent municipalities. As rural livelihoods increasingly depend on local initiative and entrepreneurship, reviving and reinterpreting village institutions remains crucial. If and to what extent "incumbent" local actors like Nokyo can take the lead in such processes shapes the pace and direction of institutional change in Japan's rural welfare state.