Abstract
Most of the rural districts in Japan have experienced rapid structural changes in both agriculture and rural life over the last two decades, since the period of high economic growth. Consequently, on the one hand, movement of farm population to cities or to other industries has produced problems of depopulation in many rural districts. On the other hand, the growth of extensive mechanization of farms with excessive use of chemical fertilizers and medicines under the name of the modernization of farming, have conduced an unbalanced development of agriculture.
Such problems lead to the destruction of agriculture and the rural environment. Thus, the contemporary problems that rural planning in Japan has to deal with, inevitably include at the same time both farm production and rural life. From this point of view the rural improvement subjects can be summarized as follows:
1. Synthetic arrangement of environments,
2. Creation of chances for work on and off the farm,
3. Conditional arrangement of regional agriculture promotion,
4. Maintenance of traditional culture in the region,
5. Promotion of the interaction between urban and rural inhabitants.
