This paper attempts to analyse the process of part-time farming of agricultural households in a central highland region of Japan, where the electronic and precision industries are flourishing.
The writers analyse the process from the view point of manpower distribution within the agricultural household, influenced by the expansion of the regional labor market. The viewpoint is somewhat contrary to the traditional one of peasantry differentiation theory.
We pay particular attention to decision making concerning the division of labor among the key stem family members (householder's couple + heir's couple), related to the family cycle as well as to the householder's generation.
The first finding is that job changes by agricultural householders into the non-agricultutal sector were especially prevalent during 1965-1974, when the industries were expanding rapidly. Since 1975, however, it has become usual that the heirs choose non-agricultural jobs from the start, immediately proceeding graduation. The middle aged housewives also have shifted to parttime non-agricultural work.
Secondly, the generational division of labor among the key stem family members is patterned not only according to the size of land holding, but by the relative position in the household. To take example, a full time farmer of a single generation household on one day can easily be changed into a part-time farmer the next day, due to income from the non-agricultural work of heir's generation.
Thirdly, the generation still practicing full time farming is in its sixties, with a few exeptional cases of fourties and fifties. When generation changes, a pure type of part-time farming appears which is composed of one or two generations doing farm work part time.
The fourth is that those for whom the vocational change was most painful and difficult are those householders in their fifties and sixties, who were forced to change to a non-agricultural occupation, faced with the industry-agriculture gap caused by the “high economic growth”.
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