Capitalism and Agricultural Structure in Postwar Japan

Abstract

The object of this paper is in clarifying the significance and the role played by agriculture of small landowner cultivation in the structure of the reproduction of the postwar capitalism of Japan. The land reform in postwar Japan has effected merely a transformation of the traditional tenancy into an owner cultivation system of farm land, its small scale of old days being left over unchanged. In order that the small farmer may cultivate his land, it is not necessary that the market price of his products should rise, either as high as the value or as high as the price of production. Nothing appears as an absolute limit for him, as a small capitalist and landowner, but the wages which he pays to himself, after deducting his actual costs. So long as the price of the product covers these wages, he will cultivate his land. The capitalist mode of agricultural production, however, is formed through appearance of the farm in which a category of profit comes into existence, due to its especialy high productive capacity, under the price which covers only the wages for family farms. The purchase and the concentration of the farm land are prerequisites for such a high productive capasity. But, these are impossible due to the dispersive property of the small scale farm and a rising of the price of the land being based on inflation. Therefore even now a predominance of small farmers marks the agricultultural structure in this country. With agricultural products being sold at the price lower than their value, the small farmers take up side-jobs to earn extra money. The agricultural structure under the "high pitched economic groth", therefore, became characterized by a large number of farm households getting engaged in some dusiness besides farming. Because the agriculture is the industry which produces the food, its productive power makes a wage regulating factor. The government, therefore, is trying to enlarge the scale of agriculture as an enterprise, but, in fact, not much has been acomplished so far. On the contrary, a remarkably large number of farm houses has come to take up side-jobs; 80% of them are now engaged in extra business. Even the heads or heirs of the farm houses began to take to side-jobs. There is no denying that farm houses, or even some whole villages have now turned out to be supply agencies for cheap industrial laborers in Japanese capitalism. Really, the petty scale of farming and the large number of farm household being engaged in some sort of extra jobs make the characteristic features of agriculture in the reorganized capitalism of present Japan, sending out required cheap wage laborers for the industrial development of the nation.