Japanese rice production has been developing within diversified social relations among farmers in rural communities. There are animated discussions regarding assessment and prospect of them.

　The purpose of this paper is to study the behavior of farmers on rice production from the viewpoint of “economy embedded in society.”

　First, we classify the connections among farmers according to the function of specialization and collaboration, based on fact-finding survey for rural communities in Mie Prefecture. Second, we investigate the interactions among farmers and the social relationships in the rural communities. Third, we analyze the farmers' consciousness for “cooperation” and “competition” and their perspectives for rice production in their communities.

　The major findings of study are as follows: 1) There are relevant correspondences between the farmers' consciousness and their behavior regarding to rice production in each communities; 2) The connections among farmers on rice production are prescribed by their consciousness which affect cost of forming and maintaining organizations or markets; 3) Low level of paddy rent and charges of consignment work is restricting development of markets in rice production.

　The purpose of this paper is to have a clear grasp of the internal mechanism of the peasant household economy in Taisho-Showa eras, paying attention to the unity of labor and consumption. Especially this paper emphasizes the issue how that mechanism functions in the market economy during the course of the adaptation to capitalistic system.

　A.V.Chayanov's “The Theory of Peasant Economy” has been known as an excellent work in grasping the principles of the peasant household economy. This paper analyzes mainly the data of “Investigation Reports of Peasant Household Economy in 1928” from the point of view suggested by Chayanov's theory. The following are the major findings.

　1) The important factor in the peasant household economy was the organization and size of the household, especially the relations between laborers and the consumers within the same household.

　2) In the peasant household economy, the pressure of consumption to labor (the ratio of the consumers to the laborers) determined the extent of self-exploitation and the allocation of labor (containing domestic labor) . As a result, the equilibrium between the increasing drudgery of labor and the decreasing marginal utility of goods produced was realized.

　3) The level of equilibrium between consumption and labor differed between the owner-tenant and the tenant households because the latter curtails their living expense under the pressure of rent.

　4) The equilibrium between labor and consumption is inseparably related to the family cycle.

　These principles existed as the basis of the farmers' behavior even in the course of adaptation to capitalistic system.

　Recently, importance of “linkages” has been reemphasized with special reference to unemployment problems in the rural area. Therefore clarification of “linkages” is indispensable in agricultural economics. The methods proposed for the evaluation of linkages, however, suffer from some conceptual limitations. Especially, direct and indirect backward linkages have been confusedly used in the literature.

　With this theoretical issue in mind, this paper clarified relationships among the conventional indices, proposed a new index which could have some significant reference to agricultural economics, and showed some empirical results.

　This paper intends to clarify the change in the theory on agricultural cooperatives in China in the 1950's which has not been studied in Japan and to draw some implications through study of controversy in the Chinese Communist Party.

　1) Changes in theory: “The Resolution on the Realization of Agricultural Cooperatives” in 1953 withdrew the theory of “The Resolution on Mutual Aid and Cooperation (Draft)” in 1951 which advanced protection of private ownership (especially ownership of middle-farmers) and realizing of cooperatives to settle poor-farmers' difficulty, and adopted the theory of “Struggle between the Way to Socialism and the Way to Capitalism” that means the beginning of “Agricultural Socialistic Reorganization” and negation of private ownership.

　2) “Left Deviation” in the cooperatives campaign: The change of theory was apparently based on the accomplishment of Land Reform, but in fact it appears to be based on the occurrence of the following “Left Deviation.” As poor-farmers had less agricultural instruments than middle-farmers, the cooperatives campaign usually developed as plunder of middle-farmers' by poor-farmers. Therefore middle-farmers resisted the cooperative campaign.

　3) Controversy about cooperatives: Liu Shao-chi (in 1951) and Deng Zi-whui (in 1953) opposed to this deviation and maintained that protect middle-farmers' private ownership. But Mao Tsu-tung rejected these, finally the resolution in 1953 was adopted.

　Conclusion: The change of theory in 1953 means precedence of poor-farmers' interest and promotion of “Left Deviation” in the Cooperatives campaign.