Majority of the studies on low-wage levels in Tohoku, Japan have been focusing on the analysis of part-time non-farming jobs for males. On the other hand, some former studies have analyzed the full-time non-farming jobs for males in Tohoku and also indicate low-wage levels in these cases. The previous studies presented two hypotheses in order to explain the structure of the full-time low-wage levels for males in the farming regions. One is with regard to the influence of low-wage levels for part-time jobs, and the other pertains to farmers' family norms. However, the conclusions of these studies were rather hypothetical and vague.
This article reveals the structure of the low-wage levels for full-time non-farming jobs for males in Tohoku by analyzing the results of interviews of farmers in three villages. The results indicate that most farming households in the Tohoku region should combine the incomes of all the adult members of the family in order to meet their family budget. However, this scenario differs from that in the Kinki region where the breadwinners earn enough to meet their family bud-get. The study also highlights a generation gap in the job structure in the Tohoku region. The younger generation holds full-time non-farming jobs, but most of their wages only match the family budget per adult, and not per family. Therefore, these individuals need to maintain the farmers' family norms in order to share the family budget among all the adults in the family, and therefore, the farmers' family norm is considered the defining factor of the low-wage levels of non-farming jobs in Tohoku, Japan.

View full abstract

Land fragmentation, in which a farm operates several separate plots of land, is a common phenomenon in Japan. It is generally agreed that the existence of fragmentation causes cost increment by increasing time and fuel for traveling between plots, or labor hours for water management, weeding, and so on. However its quantitative impacts on these inputs or production cost have not been clarified yet.
This article estimated these impacts using panel data of Japanese rice farms. Empirical results reveal that fragmentation increases production costs and offsets economies of size, and that these impacts are especially strong for large size farms. For a long time, the Japanese government has aimed to increase farm size, but as the farm gets larger, emphasis should be switched from increasing size to the settlement of fragmentation, since the harmful effects of fragmentation increase sharply.
Moreover, it was demonstrated that fragmentation increases not only fuel inputs or labor hours for planting, weeding or harvesting, as generally accepted, but also managerial labor such as bookkeeping or meeting, and materials such as fertilizers or pesticides, probably caused by substitution effects from labor. The range of fragmentation's impacts is spread beyond our scope. The latter results especially have an important policy implication: the settlement of fragmentation will bring not only the reduction of production cost but also an environmental benefit by reducing fertilizers or pesticides.

View full abstract