This study examined the roles of social connections between farmers and their relationships with outside actors to sustain agricultural production in fruit-growing areas from the perspective of social capital. Social capital is divided into two categories, bonding–bridging and structural–cognitive. The study area was the Koba district in the town of Nagayo, Nagasaki prefecture.

Having begun in the 1950s, cooperation within the region, such as the activities of a research association of kindred spirits for mandarin production, has progressed considerably. Recently, with growing awareness of the difficulties of sustaining agriculture, new types of cooperation have been sought. Cooperation in the Koba district has been based on structural-bonding social capital, such as roles in cooperative activities. Levels of cognitive-bonding social capital, such as the norms for cooperation and trust, continued to be high as some farmers undertook nonagricultural jobs or new types of agricultural management. Bridging social capital, which maintains relationships with government agencies, is sustained by the development of trust and supports new types of cooperation.

This study aimed to clarify the relationship between Chinese migrant workers and passenger transportation on the South Manchuria Railway in the 1920s. This paper has two objectives. One is to clarify the reality of railway passenger transportation in Manchuria, and the other is to determine the relationship between the travel routes of workers who migrated for employment and passenger transportation on the South Manchuria Railway. Although studies of the South Manchuria Railway have focused more on freight than passenger transportation, the author considers that passenger transportation should be examined more closely since it accounted for one-third of railway company income.

First, the author attempts to clarify the concept of passenger transportation in the pioneering days of the South Manchuria Railway. It is clear that the South Manchuria Railway Company mainly considered upper-class foreign passengers and rarely focused on Chinese passengers. The results of this study can be summarized as follows:

1.Passenger transportation mainly carried Chinese migrant workers on Manchurian railways. Their main destinations shifted from South to North Manchuria in the 1920s. They first settled in Jilin province and then especially in the suburbs of Harbin in Heilongjiang province in North Manchuria.

2.Chinese migrant workers who came from Shandong province avoided the Jing-Feng Railway and selected sea routes and the South Manchuria Railway, which, unlike the Jing-Feng Railway, reduced fares for migrant workers in transit via Dalian to avoid armed Chinese factions that targeted passengers on outbound journeys. Most of them selected not the South Manchuria Railway without preferential treatment but the Jing-Feng Railway for the return.

3.Chinese migrant workers were mainly transported as fourth-class travelers in freight cars on Manchurian railways. Although migrant workers used railways because of the reduced fares and the relative ease of fare evasion, railway companies maintained financial viability by transporting migrant workers in freight cars intended for cereal grains that had available space for cargo for the return.

4.Chinese migrant workers had mainly settled in eastern regions along the Chinese Eastern Railway by the 1920s due to enticement from Jilin province officials in North Manchuria. They settled in western regions to avoid the armed conflict between China and the USSR during the first half of the 1930s by taking advantage of developing automobile transport.

Most colonial railway companies such as the South Manchuria Railway saw Chinese migrant workers as subhuman and maintained financial viability by transporting them as human cargo in freight cars intended for cereal grains. The author believes that earlier studies overlooked the efficient use of freight cars because of the attractive image of joint traffic between East Asia and Europe on the South Manchuria Railway.