In the 21st century, Japan like any other countries is expected to develop into a more globalized society which is directly promoted by quick high-tech information development. With this background, this paper deals with the following four topics. Firstly, it focuses on the changes and impacts of the international environment to which agricultural/rural communities have to face. Globalization directly affects different industries based on their mobility of inputs and outputs. Agriculture has a unique position in the input-output mobility structure. Its major input, land, has no mobility although its output, agricultural and food commodity, has a quite good mobility. This imbalance of input-output mobility creates the source of international trade conflict. Secondly, the paper focuses on the peculiarity of agricultural/rural communities which is a given condition directly determined by the natural and social environments. The peculiarity affects directly the process of agricultural/rural development, differentiating between the labor-intensive and land-productivity oriented type of development and the labor-saving and labor-productivity oriented type of development. The former type of development is observed in Japanese agriculture while the latter type of development is in American agriculture. Thirdly, the paper focuses on the strategic framework for agricultural/rural development in the globalizing era. The labor-intensive type with land-productivity orientation in agricultural development is associated with Fordism type of development while the labor-saving type with land productivity orientation is associated with Nichism type of development. The former type of development is required in American agriculture, while the latter type of development is in Japanese agriculture depending on the formation of direct linkages between the urban sector (consumers) and the rural sector (producers or farmers). Lastly, the paper focuses on the social responsibilities of rural sociologists in the agricultural/rural development in the globalizing era. Roles of rural sociologists in Japan are crucial to construct the direct linkages of rural-urban linkages that are fundamental requirement for the sustainable development of Japanese agricultural/rural communities in the globalizing economy.

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　　　This article examined the argument of Ishikawa Rikinosuke about the KAGYO（management of IE business and subsistence）. This work clarifies vision of the farmer’s IE management that he held.
　　　The previous studies have considered that the RONO（a farmers and peasants leader from late the Edo era to the Meiji era）held a particular thought about management: They collected the high ground rent and loaned the rice and money, on the one hand, they carried on the excessive diligence and saving as their management of KAGYO. They also have been remarked that they were the thinkers who were antagonistic to commerce and the commodity economy. Ishikawa has been considered as a typical RONO as such.
　　　However, there was an important point which had been understudied. My close examination of Ishikawa’s thought and practice found that he denied the loan of rice and money for means of management. Instead, he managed KAGYO, agriculture in particular, with a fund and work force. In addition, he firmly thought that IE should make the efficient utilization of a variety of businesses that each family performed for managing the IE（farmhouse）, rather than solely concentrate on agriculture（rice crop in particular）. He thus appreciated knowledge, technique and experiences about occupations that were stocked in IE. In fact, he engaged in forestry in managing his KAGYO. He was not negative about commercial activities at all. Rather, he admitted the social significance in commerce. With this thought, Ishikawa treated particularly agriculture as “productive occupation”. In the modernization, he was going to reorganize a rural community based on such a IE.

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　　　The Matsusaka Agricultural Park “Bell Farm” was founded by Municipal Matsusaka with a 500 million yen invest and opened in 2004. Bell Farm was managed by the Incorporated Foundation of Bell Farm which was provided 50 million in stock from the municipality during the first 3 years. The joint stock company “Matsusaka Collaborative Farm” succeeds the management of Bell Farm from 2007 to 2012 by the result of public offering competition. The change in management was expected as Matsusaka Municipal reduced the subsidy to the farm due to budgetary cutbacks. The company adjusted to the subsidy reduction from about 100 million yen in the first 3 years to 80 million yen in 2007, 2008 and 50 million yen in 2009, 2010 and 2011 by various innovative devices of private business.
　　　To compensate for the subsidy reduction, the company invested 159 million yen in a farmers’ market, barbecue restaurant, and other activities. The company is obliged to return the money to the bank within five years of the designated administrator system. In spite of these difficulties the company attained an attractive park in which 600 thousand people per year gather to eat, shop, and play. The farmer’s market is the core facility in the park with various roles, not only to sell fresh and reliable agri-product with 230 million yen sales per year, but also provide information such as how to cook the new vegetables, how to grow these agri-products, knowledge about healthy life, and so on. The challenge now is the various innovations as the private company goes ahead.

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　　　The purpose of this study is to analyze the regional relationship and the development process of organic agriculture in Ogawa-Town, one of the pioneering areas of organic agriculture in Japan.
　　　Organic agriculture in Ogawa-Town was started in the beginning of 1970s by a local farmer named ‘K’. Being engaged in his farming, ‘K’ made direct contact with several consumers and local food enterprises in order to supply his products, and accepted people willing to begin organic farming as trainees on his farm, some of them later started organic farming as independent farmers. Since the late 1980s the number of such newcomers in organic agriculture has gradually increased also in Ogawa-Town, while local farmers except for ‘K’ still continued conventional farming. It was in 2001 that one local farmer named ‘A’ changed his way of farming from ‘conventional’ to ‘organic’, partly because of his aging and increase of abandoned farm land. Conclusively, the development process of organic agriculture in Ogawa-Town is quite characteristic in the sense that organic farming gradually extended in the town, caused by social change surrounding agriculture rather than by social movement of farmers’group.

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　　　What is the methodological significance of case-study research in Japanese rural studies ? In this paper I reflect on this question by making a critical evaluation of the joint works accomplished by the three distinguished rural sociologists, Masashi KANNO, Otoyori TAHARA, and Takashi HOSOYA in Shounai District in Yamagata Prefecture between 1960s and 1980s. The main points of my reflections are as follows:
　　　First, the importance of the use of case-study research in rural studies lies in developing a substantive theory of the dynamics of the collective life in rural society accompanied by its idiographic descriptions. In the joint works above mentioned, they succeeded in developing the theory in which the analytic emphasis was put on the linkage between the national regime and farmers’needs for living at each epoch.
　　　Secondly, while the case-study research is fit for the explanation of events in their temporal process in general, Japanese rural studies have attached great importance to the long-term historical contexts in particular to grasp the persistence and change in rural communities.
　　　Thirdly, the joint works set a fine example of the mixed methods research in rural studies. They utilized various methods and data to explore the case villages comprehensively from their macroscopic and historical contexts to the meanings and values in farmers’everyday life.

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