In recent years, various strategies for rural regeneration have been performed in Japanese rural districts. And there,“community support policies”are very important. This paper compared three “community support policies”in Iizuna Town, Nagano prefecture which has not only flat but also hilly and mountainous farmland areas, and clarified the features of these policy implementations. Three community support policies are the direct payment system to farmers in hilly and mountainous areas,“farmer and farmland”plan and the community support of Iizuna Townʼs original program. First and second policies are the subsidies of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
The innovative actions were not performed in“the direct payment system to farmers in hilly and mountainous areas”．However, in the implement process, there are the devices on the management for community activity. In“farmer and farmland plan”，they couldn’t conduct a lively discussion. Moreover, in“The community support of Iizuna Townʼs original program”，they had the results of the discussions by the members of the community, but they couldn’t achieve a substantial result.
Thus policy implementations were different depending on policy designs and administration support methods.

View full abstract

Rural communities are undergoing significant changes. In this study, we analyzed new movements in rural communities from the perspective of efforts in community farming and community development. It was revealed that rural communities seek the following changes: internal changes of the participation structure from household-based to individual-based as the participation of women and young people in community farming and community development advances; external changes from a “closed society” to an “open society” as cases of U-turn（returning to home communities）and I-turn（moving from urban regions to rural regions）increase; and both internal and external changes as exemplified by the reconstruction of relationships for community support through vertical connections under the multitier structure of rural communities.

View full abstract