Japan's post-war agrucultural land reform and subsequent agricultural land system
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan
Current assessment of agricultural land reform with a focus on owner farmers principle 1) In 1946, the agricultural land reform was implemented by an order of the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces in Japan. The purposes of the reform was to break up structure of the land ownership by state power-landlords and democratize rural communities to boost agricultural productivity. With this drastic measure, the national government purchased all of the tenant farms of absentee land owners and the tenanted lands of resident landlords that exceeded one cho (1 cho = 99.2 ares) as well as their own lands exceeding three cho (a total of 1.74 million hectares), and sold them to 4.75 million individual tenant farmers. 2) The reform was critical under the national policy of the days of post-war reconstructionn, the securing of food suppliess and the stabilization of employment.. It is recognized as having made a significant contribution to the stabilization of the Japanese economy and society in subsequent years.
Event: A vision for the future : International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development
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