Politics of Agriculture in Japan

Agriculture is one of the most politically powerful sectors in Japanese national politics. This book provides a comprehensive account of the political power of Japanese farmers. It analyzes the organisational and electoral basis of farmer's political power, including the role of agricultural interest groups, the mobilization of the farm vote and links between farmers and politicians in the Diet. Agrarian power has helped to produce the distinctly pro-rural, anti-urban bias of postwar Japanese governments, resulting in a general neglect of urban consumer interests and sustained opposition to market opening for farm products. The book represents a major study of Japanese agricultural organizations in their multifarious roles as interest groups, agents of agricultural administration, electoral resource providers and mammouth business groups. It describes the policy issues that engage farmers' concerns and identifies the agricultural commodities that carry the greatest political significance. Using extensive primary sources including interviews and questionnaires conducted in Japan, the book taps the vast literature in the Japanese language on the political economy of Japanese agricult

'The reader cannot help admiring the painstaking and detailed analysis. The book is a brilliant study ... highly recommended to all of those who are interested in why agricultural policy is as it is, and not as it should be.' - Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture

Aurelia George Mulgan is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics at the University of New South Wales, and an internationally renowned authority in this field of Japanese politics and the Japanese political system. She has co-edited a number of books including The Political Economy of Agricultural Protection, Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan, Australian Agriculture and Newly Industrialising Asia