A Time of Crisis

The events of the early 1930s - a severe economic depression, political unrest and profound social change - were unprecendented in the history of modern Japan and deeply unsettling to those who lived through them. This study of Japan's transformation by the crises of the 1930s focuses on efforts by average citizens to overcome the effects of the Great Depression. The author draws on the experiences of the inhabitants of a small farming community in northeastern Japan to illustrate how these efforts, commonly known as "rural revitalization", affected farm families' economic standing, their relationships with the state, and their attempts to bridge the growing divide between city and country, farm and factory. By revealing the ways in which the state and communities dealt with the Great Depression, this study brings us closer to a comparative, grassroots perspective on how average men and women addressed some of modernity's fundamental questions.