Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine how natural disasters affected policies for farming villages in prewar Japan by looking at the reconstruction of community storehouses by the government after poor rice harvest due to cold weather in Iwate Prefecture in 1934. In contrast to economic development and tenancy disputes, natural disasters in modern Japanese history have not attracted historians' attention in Japan. From a historical perspective, however, natural disasters always highlighted the mutual help in farming communities, which was based on traditional "mura" or hamlet relationship in Japanese rural areas. The "mura" relationship was used by the government for mobilizing rural communities to its total war system, which is characteristic of Japanese rural policies in 1930's. This paper analyzed the reasons why and the process in which the government reconstructed community storehouses in affected areas after the 1934 disaster. It has been found that the function of community storehouses that the government had hoped for most was not only stockpiling of rice for a future lean year but also rice loan from the storehouse to poor farmers who run short of food before harvest of each year. This also suggests that the government, especially the Naimusyo or the Interior Ministry, recognized the function of "mura" as a traditional mutual help, changing its long-time negative attitude toward the "mura" relationship into a positive one, realizing its availability.
