The Structure of the Rural Settlements Damages by the Kanogawa Typhoon

Abstract

In the Kanogawa river basin, various sorts of commercial agriculture are highly developed, such as strawberry, eutrema wasabi, tobacco, dairy milk, sericulture, etc. other than rice production. The flood by the Kanogawa Typhoon brought about severe damage on the agricultural production in this basin. The author interviewed 71 farmers at four rural settlements (J, O, S, N) located at the upper, middle, and lower parts of the flooded area, and asked them about real status of the dmage and their way of living since the accident.
The influences of the damage on the individual farms are different by the size of the farms and their social classes.
1. Landlord class (class A): Many of them avoided damages, because of their monopolistic ownership of safty land.
2. Upper class farmers (class B) and part-time farmers (class D): They overcomed their damages through their own economic potentialities.
3. Lower class farmers (class BC) and part-time farmers (wage earners)(class C): The degree of their damages was rather high and the effects were very severe. Consequently, many of BC class farmers are going to fall down to the unstable worker-peasant class.
As for the regional difference of the restoration from the damage, settlement of higher standard's agricultural production (settlement N) is rather active. In the settlement S severely damaged by the collapse of dykes, joint cooking and reconstruction for the damage were successfully carried out.