The Japanese organic farming movement: Consumers and farmers united

Abstract

Organic farmers' groups throughout Japan have formed direct-marketing relations with urban consumers who are interested not only in obtaining “safe” foods but also in helping farmers survive as full-time farmers. This article looks at one such urban-rural coalition, focusing on actions taken by farmers and consumers united in a joint struggle to stop the construction of a golf course resort. Part of that “other Japan” in which people are working together at the grassroots to create an alternative vision of what Japan can become, participants in this movement are fashioning new cultural values and social relations that challenge the dominant culture's hegemony.

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.