This research investigated the cause of maintenance and development of reclaimed land as agricultural settlements after World War II, taking the example of the Oyashima Reclamation Agricultural Cooperative Association area constructed in the Tone River basin in the southern part of Ibaraki Prefecture. The “Actor Network theory” was used to analyze the area and the change process related to reclaimed land was investigated from the viewpoint of the actors.
Reclaimed land in the post-World War II era came under a national policy. The Oyashima Reclamation Agricultural Cooperative Association area, was constructed by persons from “Manmou Kaitaku-dan” (the Manchuria and Mongolia Reclamation Group). Koji Sato, a member of the Kanji Kato reclamation group, assumed the position of the main actor on a local scale and promoted the maintenance and development of the reclaimed land by implementing a joint operation system.
After the high economic growth period, a second generation of settlers became the principal farming operators. Many settlers graduated from Nihon-Kokumin-Koto-Gakko (the Japan Folk High School). They learned new agricultural techniques in that school and applied them in agricultural management. They formed functional groups in the form of external networks for rice growing and dairy farming. Those networks were promoting the improvement of farming infrastructure and cooperative projects with national and regional subsidies for the area.
Internal networks for land trade and mutual aid for community members in this area were also formed. Those networks played a role in preventing community members from leaving the area.
Consequently, this area successfully maintained and developed the reclaimed land as an agricultural settlement in the post-World War II era. Because the area formed internal and external networks in multiple layers, and because various actors were involved, linkage of vertical networks on the national and regional scale is possible.

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As interest in ethnic groups and their entrepreneurial activities has grown in recent years, economic sociology, immigration and ethnic studies, and economic geography have come to emphasize . the importance of, ethnic social structures as the source of economic action to propel business growth. The Polanyian-Granovetterian concept of embeddedness is among those often used in this respect. The debates about embeddedness highlight the short-term benefits within co-ethnic networks, but do not illuminate the effects of network dynamics over time and the broader formal networks.
This article illustrates how job search networks are diverse and transformative in an ethnic community. It concerns the extent to which Korean networks for job searches are embedded in their social relations, and at the same time considers formal networks beyond co-ethnics. The research is based on a questionnaire survey of the Korean community in the Osaka metropolitan area conducted by the author in 1998. Unlike new immigrants, recently the legal status of established Koreans in Japan has been changed to a category called “special permanent residents.” They are, however, basically treated within the same legal framework of policies toward foreigners in Japan.
Findings from this study indicate that for some subgroups economic action is deeply embedded in co-ethnic informal networks, while for other subgroups it is not so deep. That is, the extent differs with respect to occupation, gender, and generation. Among various occupations, the self-employed tend to rely strongly on family ties. They are mostly male family members whose self-employed status evolved through generational succession. These findings also show that many employees gravitate toward co-ethnic companies, and most of them rely on relatives and ethnic ties. These employment tendencies have allowed the establishment of an ethnic economy.
On the other hand, it was found that women and younger generations rely less on co-ethnic networks and instead rely more on formal networks. Therefore, their occupations became more diverse and they tend to be less dependent on self-employment. The implication is that their networks are geared toward a wider society or social space.
These various networks result in different outcomes in employment. The divergence and transformation in job networks can be explained by their better education as well as the institutional relaxation of discrimination against foreign employees. Thus it seems likely that the economic life of the Korean community will gradually become embedded in wider Japanese society.
The conclusions suggest that networks for job search can vary over time, can change differentialy for different segments of the resident community, and therefore can have disparate effects on embeddedness. These emprical findings show that it is necessary to consider the network dynamics in order to understand the forms of socioeconomic adoptation and mobility. The findings also have implications for the trajectory of other immigrant incorporation into the host society.

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The aim of this paper is to analyze the economic value of a terraced rice paddy landscape, a typical Japanese rural landscape, using the contingent valuation method (CVM) and to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of a project to conserve the landscape. The CVM involves estimating the economic benefits of public goods by surveying people's willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a project to conserve the goods. The goods to be valued in this study are the rice paddy terrace landscape (2.1 ha) of Kanzaiko hamlet, Yusuhara town, during the 2001-2020 Japanese fiscal year. We call it L for simplicity. The CVM survey was conducted from September to October 2000. The subjects of the survey were all heads of households in Yusuhara.
The results of CVM application to L are as follows:
(1) The monetary value of L is about 28-48 million yen.
(2) WTP for the project depends on the aesthetic and materialistic sense of value of the local inhabitants for L, and the ability of the household economy to pay. Moreover, the household's WTP declines as the household's location becomes further from the Kanzaiko area. This corresponds to the distance decay property of the external economic effect of public services.
(3) On the basis of CVM, the balance between the estimated benefit and the estimated cost of a local government project to preserve the rice paddy terrace will not be reached in the short term. Therefore, we need to carry out a long-range plan based on the concept of the bequest value of conserving the landscape.
Then, if we apply these results as an objective indicator to political actions, we need to pay sufficient attention to the following:
(1) If we are going to make a financial investment in L, we must take into account the space and time limitations of public goods. Because of the distance decay effect, the local inhabitants should coordinate the loadings of the investment in accordance with their distance from the Kanzaiko area.
(2) It is important to note the detailed contents of CVM: scenarios; the scope of valuation of benefits; the spatial scale concerning costs; and the prerequisite conditions of the subject of evaluation. In particular, we should subsequently consider carefully how to value the landscape for the people living outside the area and how to share the cost loadings between the inhabitants and other people.

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