Abstract
In modern era, the northeast Japan was considered a developing area and had relatively low economic
and health standards, especially in the 1930s. However, within this area, the Tsugaru region of Aomori
Prefecture accounted for the highest apple production in Japan since the 1900s, and seemed to enjoy richness
compared to the other regions of the prefecture even in the 1930s. The purpose of this study is to analyze why
the peasants of Tsugaru region chose to cultivate apples, how they produced apples alongside rice despite the
fact that these goods’ busy harvest season come at the same time, and what impact their faming management
had on their living standards over time. The analysis reveals the following. (1) In Tsugaru region, peasants
began to introduce the cultivation of apples from the 1900s, but this was done as a workaround; for these
peasants, the most attractive crop was rice because it was more profitable than apples in the 1910s and 1920s
and peasants could sell, store, and eat it. Some peasants purchased active paddy fields after becoming rich
from apple cultivation. (2) Apple growers adopted labor-intensive technologies to make apples red in response
to consumer preferences and to thereby increase their revenues. Although part of the labor force during the
busy season was attracted from outside the prefecture by the offer of high wages, the labor quantity of peasant
men and women increased due to the farming of these multiple crops. (3) There is a possibility that such labor
environment raised the infant mortality rate, which is an index of mothers’ and children’s health, but the region
experienced rapid economic development and, in the 1930s, a total production value per household that was
close to the national average. This means that although the multiple farming of rice and apple increased the
labor burden on peasants, it led to the economic development of the region.
