Abstract:

This program is an outline history of people's lives during the past fifty years in rural Japan. It uses film and video footage from the NHK television documentary series, "Akarui Noson" (literally translated as "Brighter Village"), an extensive archival record of Japanese village life from the 1950s through the 1970s. It explains how major shifts in national agricultural policy and changes in the global economy have affected the everyday lives of farm families in postwar Japan.