The agricultural policy loan programs had been drastically changed in Japan after 1990s under the financial policy reform. The objective of this study is to grasp those changes in both cost and effectiveness sides, mainly focusing on the loan programs by Japan Finance Corporation (JFC) and its Super-L loan. It is analyzed depending on the public statistics between 1990 and 2018. The main results are the followings. First, the cost side of the program has been considerably improved, because the negative interest rate margins between the financing and loans were solved under the reform of national investment and loan program. Second, the effectiveness side is admitted mainly by the increasing number and farm size of borrowers, especially in the farm category of livestock. And it is presumed that the Super-L loan and JFC have supported local private banks in their business of agricultural loans. Finary, this study concludes that the agricultural policy loan by JFC can be evaluated by a certain achievement through its policy reform.

This study aims to identify the factors for establishing interdepartmental cooperation in diversified paddy field farms. In this study through participant observations and semi-structured interviews with corporation A in Hokuriku region. Corporation A is a diversified paddy field farm which established interdepartmental cooperation.

At corporation A, employees were actively engaged in the work of their assigned departments and in the work of other departments. From participant observations at corporation A, the following factors were found to contribute to the establishment of interdepartmental cooperation.

First, in the case of works for which the scope of roles can be clearly define, the personal system was designed to share the results of those works between executives and employees. Secondly, in the case of works for which clear roles could not be specified in advance, the personnel system was designed to evaluate employee’s attitude toward cooperative behavior. In addition, in order to achieve both of these goals, it was necessary for the corporation to have a flexible staffing system that allows employees to prioritize the work of their assigned departments even when they are asked to cooperate with another department.

In this research, we analyzed the selection factors and the determinants of consumption frequency of horsemeat, and as a result we obtained the following 3 points:

1) The most important factors when purchasing horsemeat were the expiration date, price, domestic production, and the color and luster of the meat.

2) The results of the 2way ANOVA showed that the main effect was that consumers in Tokyo considered price to be more important than consumers in Fukushima and Kumamoto, and consumers who consumed horsemeat more frequently considered the part, nutrition, and calories of the meat to be more important. The interaction of region and frequency of horsemeat consumption was confirmed for meat color/gloss, domestic production, origin, and brand.

3) The results of the decision tree analysis showed the determinants of consumption frequency that price, part of the meat, fat around the meat, calories, brand/brand, and awareness of domestic production were important in Fukushima, age, color/gloss of the meat, nutrition, calories, part of the meat, and awareness of brand were important in Tokyo, and nutrition, age, fat around the meat, origin, and price were important in Kumamoto.

Vulnerability describes susceptibility to harm, incapacity, and marginality in physical and social system. Developing countries are more vulnerable to natural disasters, primarily due to weak response strategies and inadequate institutional frameworks. This study evaluated the vulnerability of individuals, households, community (gaun) after the 2015 Nepal earthquake. We conducted questionnaire survey on 188 households of ward number 7, 8 and 9 in Betini Village Development Committee, one of the most affected areas by the Nepal earthquake 2015. We did group discussions with members in all 13 gauns of study area about the damaged situation and mutual aid actions at the time of earthquake happened. At the individual and households’ level, vulnerabilities were analysed by focusing on women and the elderly, ethnicity, head of household gender, and household economic conditions. As a result, it became clear that Dalits (members of lower caste based on traditional caste system) were vulnerable as an ethnic group. Also, in terms of the structure and damage of gauns, smaller gauns and those located on steep slopes were more vulnerable. There was mutual cooperation among the inhabitants of gauns to mitigate the damage, but economic factors also affected their vulnerability.