STUDY ON THE AGRICULTURAL LABOR IN “MODERATELY BUSY SEASONS” FROM THE STANDPOINT OF LABOR SCIENCE

Abstract

Farmers in Japan who live mostly on rice-cropping, because of the nature of their work and climatic restrictions, have busy seasons of outdoor work and a comparatively inactive season of indoor work.The former are called “Nohan-ki”, lit, busy farming seasons or on-seasons falling in spring and autumn, and the latter called “Nokan-ki”, slack farming season or off-season corresponding to winter.
The conditions of agricultural labor in the on-and off-seasons have already been reported by many scholars, but we have few reports on the transitional time lying inbetween. The author named this transitional time “moderately busy season”, and studied the conditions of the agricultural labor in such seasons from the aspect of labor science.
In consideration of climatic, economic and other conditions, the author selected a village deemed as an average rural area in Japan in Ibaraki Prefecture and conducted a time study in the three “ moderately busy seasons” and on-and off-seasons then calculating the energy consumption in labor on the basis of working hours and the degree of labor, analyzed the findings.Along with this study, the author also tried to elucidate the labor conditions through the estimation of individual worker's labor capacity.The results of the present study revealed the existence of excessive labor among farmers, esp.among women in the young housewife bracket, even during the “moderately busy seasons”.