抄録
This paper attempts to pursue how a rural community has transformed itself with the industrial development. The reclaimed community studied, which is located in oyama City of Tochigi Prefecture occupying the northern part of the Tokyo metropolitan region, was characterized by a pure rural landscape, but it has greatly added to its character some industrial aspects during the nation-wide growth of Japanese economy in the last decade.
In this paper, the author puts stress on understanding the reasons why the farmers of the reclaimed community accepted or had to accept the new location of big factories, which would give a radical conversion to their living, and the ways how they thought and conducted themselves in the process of this new location. In this point, it is generally to be thought that the farmers' attitudes toward the transformation of their community to industrialized one are strongly influenced both by the external force of industrialization and by the nature of the rural community.
There were three stages in the industrial development of oyama City from the historical point of view. The third stage, corresponding to the period of the rapid growth of Japanese economy since 1955, was quite different in quality and in pace of industrialization from the preceding stages. Also, this city was the typical one of rapidly industrialized cities in this period. So, it could be regarded as the city on which the external force of industrialization influenced in the strongest.
As for the nature of the rural community itself, the newly reclaimed community in this city had the following characteristics:
1) The farmers in this community have suffered from the low crop productivity due to the infertile land and the unseasonabiness such as a cold snap in spring and over-droughts in summer.
2) Most of the newly colonized farmers, predominating in the community, were unmarried and had less experience than the native-born farmers. Consequently, they could neither conduct effective agricultural management nor succeed in a new plantation such as peach culture. This obliged them to get deeper and deeper in debt.
3) In the community, income difference gradually appeared and became greater between the farmers having better conditions——such as ealier colonization, ownership of paddy fields and affluent experience of agriculture——and those having less favorable conditions.
4) with regard to the farmers' attitude for establishing big factories, there was a strife between people with a more or less conservative opinion and those with a more or less reformist spirit. This resulted in a situation that they were not strongly united.
Broadly speaking, all of these characteristics indicate a weakness as for the community's rural foundation. Thus, when the project that aimed to change the reclaimed land into an industrial park was offered to the farmers by municipal authorities, they were obliged to accept this project. As a result, most of them removed themselves and the reclaimed community was completely broken up.
This project of an industrial park was carried out under the leadership of the municipal authorities with the two main objects: the industrialization of oyama City and the income increase of the farmers through their removal from the reclaimed land. However, every farmer had great attachment to the land which they had reclaimed with the greatest efforts for more than ten years, and this attachment was quite strong particularly in the case of industrious farmers who had built up the foundation of agricultural management with much difficulties and also had a reformist sentiment. These industrious farmers strongly opposed to the project for the reason that the foundation of their living would be destroyed.
