The Japanese organic farming movement: Consumers and farmers united

The Japanese organic farming movement, which has its roots in the social upheavals of the 1960s against war, pollution, corporatism, and sexism, is today part of a global proliferation of alternative strategies for environmental, social, and personal transformation. Movement participants representing a diverse cross-section of Japanese society are transforming social relations and creating new values, self-identities, definitions of gender, and socio-political assumptions. Earlier village-bounded studies of Japanese rural society emphasized cultural continuity, the masterful blending of modernity and tradition, and the stoic acquiescence of villagers to externally imposed change. My research, by contrast, found organic farmers' groups revitalizing rural economies, forming direct-marketing relations with urban consumers, linking up with farmers in the Third World, opposing Tokyo-directed golf-course and resort development plans, and uniting in a variety of new social movements.