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 the goal of creating an egalitarian
farming community was threatened as individual entrepreneurialism
took root and as the settlers became divided into political
factions that to this day continue to struggle for control of the
village. Based on seventeen years of research, this book explores
the process of Ogatamura's development from the planning stages to
the present. An intensive ethnographic study of the relationship
between land reclamation, agriculture, and politics in regional
Japan, it traces the internal social effects of the village's
economic transformations while addressing the implications of
national policy at the municipal and regional levels.
Donald C. Wood is an Associate Professor at Akita University,
where he has worked since earning a PhD in cultural anthropology at
the University of Tokyo in 2004. He is currently editor of the
Research in Economic Anthropology book series.
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