Once, OGURA Takekazu, who is one of the key persons behind the Agricultural Basic Law, made the following reflection. "I was caught by the theory of Western Europe and couldn't think over the reality of Japanese agriculture profoundly. It was necessary to conduct a study on the character of Japanese agriculture and the rural community, and to plan the structural reform based on it." The theme of this paper is to consider the type of structural reform based on the reflection of OGURA. The main reason why the agricultural structural reform hasn't proceeded well in Japan is that agricultural administration disregarded the power of rural society. In a traditional Japanese rural community, i. e., each plot of arable land was a separate territory, and its property rights belonged to the family of each peasant. In such a rural community with this tradition, it is necessary for agricultural administration to declare it would insure that farmers could defend their farmland property rights in the first place, and after that, to devise a way to to separate use right from the ownership of the arable land to execute the structural reform. After the mutual agreement of the landowners' group in the rural community is completed, it is necessary to entrust the farm management to a reliable person or group who has managerial skills. However, there is a great deal of room for the invention of these methods in each region. Therefore, the types might be diversified and a long term is also required. In the above-mentioned points, Japanese type agricultural structural reform will be greatly different from the image that WTO holds. It is necessary for agricultural administration to declare these clearly inside and outside Japan.

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In Japan, the continuous reduction in family size during the post-war period has caused a decline in the efficiency of domestic production in households. The proportion of expenditure on foodstuffs for homemade meals in total food expenses has decreased; on the other hand, the proportion of expenditure on convenience foods (cooked food, fast food, etc.) and eating-out has increased. The changes in the diet of Japanese people prevent the household consumption of domestic agricultural products. The objective of this study is to provide a baseline about food consumption from the viewpoint of the household demand-side and to find a measure, which acts as a brake on the decrease in the household consumption of domestic agricultural products. The main outcomes of this study are as follows. First, the changes in the dietary habits of Japanese households during the post-war period depend on the economic factors associated with Japanese economy at that time in spite of dietetic issues. Second, the household consumption of domestic agricultural products is going to decline if we maintain the same conditions. Third, an improvement in the efficiency of domestic agricultural production is essential for keeping the volume of household demand for domestic products since progress in the efficiency of homemade meals is difficult for today's households. This is the measure of cooperation between households and domestic agriculture the study suggests.

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Various actors, based on the rules established for each place, are directly or indirectly planning, determining and implementing policies related to food, agriculture and rural communities. When this "agricultural policy system" tries to achieve its policy objective, the policy system is influenced by the other policy systems. This article discusses conceptually how the other policy systems, especially the international trade policy system, the fiscal policy system, and the decentralization policy system, could interact with the agricultural policy system. Furthermore, the article tries to understand what the major constraints are that the agricultural policy system is facing and its future directions.

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This article analyzes the agricultural structure among rice sector, livestock sector, and vegetable sector in Japan, adopting the viewpoint of the movement of main production areas. This article also considers the influences of international market access, production adjustment, cultivated land lease market, land improvement and the logic of the farm household. The livestock and the vegetable sector experienced a structural change including the moves of the main production to areas such as Hokkaido and Kyushu, which had an economic rationality from the geographical point of view. Behind this change, there was stiff market competition from abroad as well as domestic products and improvement of infrastructure in production areas. In contrast, the rice sector maintains production areas widely all over Japan, and there are many small-scale rice farmers that don't aim at profit, while large-scale rice farm managements occupy a constant share of the rice sector of Japan. The issue of the structure of Japanese agriculture depends how the rice sector changes.

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