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Abstract

Rural regions and communities in Japan have changed drastically following the rapid economic development that occurred in the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Important outcomes of rural changes were the rapid outflow of labor from rural areas and the increase in the number of part-time farmers. This paper mainly focuses its attention on the evolutionary processes of rural regions over three decades from 1960 to the present, through a case study of a typical Japanese village named Urayamashin. The traditional rice growing village transformed itself into a non-farming village in the early 1970s partly because of a reduction in farm working hours due to mechanization and land consolidation, and because of an increase in opportunities for off-farm jobs and motorization.

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