Abstract
This article examines the kind of influence exerted on agriculture and agrarian communities by industrial development, exemplified by the growth of electrification projects in Japan during the interim war era, by utilizing the case of the Oide Irrigation Cooperative’s electromechanical irrigation project on Kyushu’s Saga Plain conducted in cooperation with the Toho Electric Power Company between the late Taisho and early Showa era.
The author’s analysis shows how the Saga Plain irrigation project demonstrated to electric power enterprises the profitability of supplying electricity to Japan’s agricultural sector and led to the in earnest promotion of agricultural electrification, exemplified by the founding of the Agriculture Electrification Association in 1923.
In addition, the wholehearted operations of electrical power enterprises in the agricultural sector meant access by cultivators to the lowest cost electricity available; and it is in that sense that the discovery of agricultural electrification by power companies represented a great leap forward for farmers who wanted to electrify their operations.
It goes without saying, therefore, that the historical significance of the Oide Cooperative’s electromechanical irrigation project goes beyond innovation on the Saga Plain to become an epoch-making event from which successful cooperation between a farming community and a large electrical power enterprise led to the widespread utilization of electricity in all aspects of agriculture.
Moreover, the author argues that the Saga Plain electromechanical irrigation project provided the moment for the spread of agricultural electrification and mechanization in prewar Japan, leading to the gains in productivity provided by industrialization.
Finally, in terms of the research to date on the subject, the evidence provided in this article clearly shows the synergism between the development of agricultural electrification and the accumulation of capital in the farming industry, as well as the embarkation of agrarian communities into the fledgling mass consumption society of prewar Japan.
