戦前期農家小組合の形態と機能 : 日本農業・農村における「個と集団」の歴史的分析

Abstract

The Taisho & pre-war period in the Showa era were noteworthy in the sense that agricultural organizations based on hamlets had been expected to play more important roles than today and these organizations created in almost all hamlets. Those organizations had been called "peasant cooperatives" in those days. The peasant cooperatives were formed based on a geographical unification whose units were usually hamlets (often villages in Edo era). The traditional characteristics tended to be emphasized and showed long histories of Japanese agriculture. Therefore, they have not been appreciated positively so far. However, these cooperatives had been formulated as a collective. Voluntary measures due to lack of labor force and agricultural commodities followed the development of big cities and were preconditioned by the growth of individualism & collapse of old communities. They were new functional groups different from pre-modern hamlet organizations. The peasant cooperatives increased remarkably by the strengthened policy supports during the Showa economic crisis and the war time regime. However, contrary to their developments in terms of numbers, they were reorganized as the "terminal organizations of controlled economy" or "controlled organizations for rationing and shipments" and have lost their autonomy & diversity.