1. Introduction

The opportunities for people to grow a little of their own food are severely limited in Japan's crowded cities. Competition for space is intense, and in the absence of an inheritance of publicly owned and legally defended gardening land - there is nothing equivalent to Britain's statutory allotments - it has proved difficult to hold on to existing sites in the long term, let alone to create new ones close to where most people live (Wiltshire, Crouch and Azuma, 2000a). Convenient local allotments or community gardens are certainly the ideal for maximising both site usage and the contribution which gardening can make to local sustainable development, and we have argued elsewhere (Wiltshire and Azuma, 2000) that a contribution to initiatives such as Local Agenda 21 can strengthen the case for provided and retaining allotments in Japan, no matter where they are located. But there are other, complementary options, and the one which particularly distinguishes the Japanese case over the past decade has been an emphasis on evading the squeeze on scarce land resources in the city through a strategy of displacement, of setting up allotment sites (shimin noen in Japanese) for city people in both periurban and more distant rural areas, where land is more easily obtained. In this paper we will explore the origins of these new rural allotments, in the context of some of the chronic problems besetting the Japanese countryside to which allotments may provide a partial answer, the legislative reforms that were necessary to make it possible to establish allotments on agricultural land, some illustrative examples of rural sites which owe their existence to these reforms, and finally some of the problems which remain to be solved if the new rural allotments are to maximise their contribution to the quality of life of city and country dwellers alike. There is nothing uniquely Japanese, of course, about the coexistence of urban cramming and crises in the countryside; what is instructive from the Japanese experience, however, is the realisation of an option, the rural allotment for city people, which social prejudice and political pressure have sometimes precluded in other contexts, including Britain (Wiltshire, Crouch and Azuma, 2000b).

2. Rural allotments: A convergence of interests

Allotment gardens first appeared in urban Japan in the 1920s (Kinoshima, 1994), and enjoyed only limited success, even in the preferred kleingarten model, prior to the Pacific War. With the outbreak of hostilities, the same enthusiasm for growing vegetables which had British and American gardeners "digging for victory" swept Japan as well, and vacant plots of land everywhere were brought into cultivation. The fervour soon waned after the war, however. Vegetable growing for home consumption had become associated to its detriment with recollections of material deprivation, at odds with the new dedication to rapid economic growth and devotion to the modern. In the cities reconstruction was followed by hectic expansion, and vacant plots quickly disappeared under factories and housing. Urban sprawl engulfed the countryside around Japan's cities, and although the discontinuous nature of this sprawl left many pockets of residual farmland physically untouched within the urban fabric, the anticipation of speculative gain deterred landowners from making land available to would-be gardeners, and where the planning system made development unlikely restrictions on the use of farmland precluded conversion to allotment use - in the town and in the countryside. Postwar land reforms, which proved successful in eliminating absentee landlordism from rural Japan and creating a new agriculture rooted in small family-owned farms, placed severe restrictions on the renting of agricultural land, confining this essentially within the farming community, thereby excluding the possibility of subdividing fields into allotments for use by local non-farm residents.

As postwar recovery gave way to the "miracle" decades of rapid growth and rising incomes, however, the negative side of modern urban life attracted increasing concern - notoriously in rising levels of pollution, cramped housing conditions, and the loss of any direct connection to nature. The emergence of consumer society and the quest for a better quality of life rekindled interest in horticulture, not as a prerequisite for survival but as a leisure pursuit. A rising demand for quality allotment space was frustrated, however, by restrictions on supply which were only partially relieved (and only in urban areas) by guidance issued by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1975, which allowed farmers to sell limited and short term rights of access to farmland (perhaps conveniently sub-divided into plots) to ordinary residents without falling foul of the Agricultural Land Law, under the pretence that those granted access would simply be helping the farmer out in cultivating the land and harvesting the crops (Azuma, 1991, p. 41). The rapid inflation of land values in Japanese cities soon undermined any possibility that public funds might be used to secure adequate and permanent space to satisfy the growing demands of aspiring but frustrated urban allotment gardeners. The need for an alternative solution was therefore apparent - and that solution lay in the impact of urbanisation not on city dwellers, but in the countryside.

Massive rural to urban migration in the postwar decades, particularly amongst the young, has led to absolute depopulation, particularly in more remote areas, and the rapid ageing of the workforce that remains on the land, most of which is only engaged in farming on a part-time basis anyway (Fujita, 1993 and Wiltshire, 1992). Changes in dietary preferences have undermined the mainstay of Japanese agriculture, glutinous rice, and controls introduced to cut surplus production have triggered the widespread abandonment of paddy fields as productive assets - though with little change in ownership. The threat to rural communities posed by the depopulation (kaso) problem has been countered by a stream of government policies and public investments in infrastructure, as well as widely publicised campaigns to promote "village revitalisation" (mura okoshi), which culminated in 1987 in the late Premier Takeshita's "ichi-oku-en" (¥100 million) grants programme to allow every village to invest in something that might help secure its future - or make the present more enjoyable (Graburn, 1998, pp. 199-200). Village authorities have been highly receptive to ideas on how to rebuild local economies, and a reorientation towards a wide variety of leisure pursuits to attract urban tourists and generate employment and income has been evident. This has stimulated the production of goods for sale that might appeal to city dwellers, including mountain vegetables traditionally gathered from the wild (Moon, 1997, p. 225), and publicity campaigns have appealed to the rural roots of the urban population, with sentimental calls to return home to the old ancestral village (furusato), be it real or simulated for those whose roots have long since withered (Graburn, 1998, p. 206), to rediscover the gentler ways of old Japan. And amongst the new attractions, why not allotments - as a rural development tool, lucrative for farmers in the short term, but also a way of reintroducing people to the farming life, tempting them to settle permanently and sustain rural communities for the long term (Azuma, 1991, p. 38). A tool, moreover, which can draw upon the villagers' traditional expertise and management skills, and help to prevent the physical deterioration of abandoned paddy fields which might one day be needed again to feed the country in times of crisis. Thus rural allotments emerged as an option, not just in periurban areas but especially in those remoter villages most affected by depopulation, as one of a range of beneficial and reversible "dual uses" of agricultural land alongside other recreation and conservation options (Azuma, 1998).

This fortuitous convergence of urban and rural interests, of unmatched demand with surplus land, could not be realised in the rural allotment, however, without reforms to the law restricting tenancy arrangements for farmland, as well as the law restricting the construction of buildings and infrastructure on agriculture land, facilities that would be needed to attract and retain cultivators from the city. And without a firm basis in law, rural allotment projects would be unable to secure the participation of ministries, cooperatives and other agencies which were active in promoting (and financing) other village and agricultural revitalisation initiatives.

3. A legal basis for rural allotments

As a prelude to the implementation of a new approach to promoting allotments, a study group composed of government officials and academics, in which one of the present authors participated, visited various countries in Europe in the latter half of the 1980s on a mission to find "best practice" in allotment legislation and management. The findings of this group (Egaitsu and Tsubata, 1987) reestablished the German kleingarten as the most appropriate model for Japan to emulate, given its high quality and obvious appeal, while the framework for reform advocated by Azuma (1987, 1988), focussing on the use of surplus agricultural land for allotments outside areas already designated for urbanisation, was realised in the subsequent passage of two key pieces of legislation.

The first, the 1989 Agricultural Land (Allotments) Rental Law (Tokutei Nochi no Kashitsuke ni kakawaru Nochiho nado no Tokureiho), resolved the underlying problems created by the controls on agricultural tenancies inherited from the postwar land reforms, by enabling farmers to rent out land for use as allotment gardens, either directly or through a local authority or agricultural cooperative acting as an approved intermediary, without creating a tenancy under the terms of the Agricultural Land Law. Critically, this legislation applied not only to designated agricultural land in urbanised areas, which had benefited since 1975 from the Ministry of Agriculture's guidance on rights of access, but also to farmland in rural areas which could not previously have been legally subdivided for allotment use. The new law established an upper limit (5 years) on the length of any individual cultivator's tenancy, it established an upper limit on the size of individual plots (1000 square meters - although in practice typical plots are much smaller than this, even in rural areas), and applied the condition that land made available for allotments must not be used by the cultivator with the intention of making a profit - allotments are strictly a leisure pursuit (Azuma, 1991, p. 60).

While the 1989 law established the legal basis for subdividing agricultural land for use by city people, it was not designed to encourage the development of allotment sites of a standard high enough to attract an adequate number of customers through the provision of appropriate facilities on site. This might not be a problem for urban allotments made available on people's doorsteps, but good facilities and conveniences would clearly be required on rural sites, particularly those established in remote and depopulated mountain villages, and to which users would have to travel long distances. At the very least, some form of shelter would be required on individual plots, a functional equivalent to the picturesque chalets to be found on many German gardens. The second new piece of legislation, the 1990 Allotments Promotion Law (Shimin Noen Seibi Sokushinho), resolved the legal difficulties which had previously restricted any form of building on designated agricultural land, by designating a range of facilities that might be provided (subject to various approvals) to meet the needs of allotment gardeners arising from their legitimate gardening activities, and commensurate with maintaining the option of reconverting the land to conventional agricultural use at a later date. While the facilities had to be for the exclusive use of allotment tenants, which precluded the introduction of some of the usual adjuncts to the rural tourist trade, such as the restaurant and the souvenir shop, nevertheless, the provisions of the law enabled the construction of chalets and club houses as fine as anything in Europe. As important, since the length of tenancies made it very unlikely that these facilities would be constructed by the plotholders themselves (as often happens in Europe), the new laws together made it possible for local authorities and other approved agencies to access substantial financial support, especially (but by no means exclusively) from the Ministry of Agriculture, which has responsibilities both for the maintenance of farmland and for the revitalisation of villages, and which welcomed new ideas for projects that might enable it to achieve these goals.

4. Illustrative examples of the new rural allotments

Two of the best known sites established under the new allotment laws are Bozuyama Kleingarten and Makiyama Kleingarten*, sites which are distinguished primarily with respect to distance from the nearest major urban area, and consequently the planning regimes under which they fall.

Bozuyama Kleingarten, nestled at the southern foot of the Japan Alps in central Japan, is a classic example of a site located in a mountain village far from the nearest metropolitan area. An essential feature of this project, given the practical impossibility of maintaining a plot on the basis of day trips from the city, has been the necessity of providing chalets constructed to what are in effect residential standards, but located on land that is still legally designated for agricultural use. Experience has shown that sites in remote areas which do not provide adequate accommodation have difficulties attracting users, but this is not a problem at Bozuyama. Achieving a high standard of facilities has, however, required a great deal of public financial support: half of the capital cost of providing the necessary infrastructure (a hefty ¥6,000,000 per plot) came from subsidies provided by the Ministry of Agriculture. The plots themselves are large by Japanese standards (some twenty times the urban average), but rental charges are also very high to help defray the capital cost of the project, and tenancies are limited by law to a maximum of 5 years. Despite the costs and the short tenancies, Bozuyama can still claim to make a contribution of sorts to sustainable development, given that the site is managed using organic and low chemical input methods which minimise environmental damage, and it has certainly contributed in some measure to the revitalisation of the local village community. There is, for example, a scheme to pair each user with a local resident who can look after the plot while the tenant is away, and the spacious clubhouse is used for village meetings.

The second example, Makiyama, is located much closer to major centres of population (Okayama and Kobe), in an area covered by urban planning laws under which urbanisation is controlled. It is sited on abandoned rice paddies, and the plots have been crafted in such a way as to maintain the integrity of the original terrace structure. Some of the plots have chalets, built to provide shelter during the day rather than as accommodation, and some plots serving people living within a reasonable distance have no chalets at all. The capital costs per plot have been a third of those required to establish the Bozuyama Kleingarten, but still represent a substantial burden on the local authority's budget, because the bonds required to finance the project are not underwritten by the central government, unlike the depopulation bonds issued to support Bozuyama. Individual plots are half the size of those at Bozuyama, but the charges levied on users are roughly comparable on a per square metre basis. The site has contributed to village revitalisation through the management schemes executed by the landowners association which runs the allotments, plus a regular morning market. The management philosophy rests on principles which are clearly in sympathy with local sustainable development, including access to healthy exercise for all, especially the elderly and disabled (raised beds are provided), community development (including the building of links and improvement of mutual understanding between city people and villagers), and active promotion of waste recycling and other measures to protect the environment (see also Aoki 1996).

While these two projects, and other like them (see Azuma, 1998) have proved successful in attracting tenants, and the management practices employed have gone some way to alleviate the negative environmental consequences of the travel required to reach them, which would not arise with allotments located close to home, they nevertheless illustrate some of the difficulties which have slowed the diffusion of the rural allotment model more widely within Japan.

5. Problems in sustaining the rural allotment model

The most obvious problem is cost. High quality facilities do not come cheap, and a capital cost of £30,000 per plot (as at Bozuyama) is difficult to sustain without public subsidies justified on grounds other than the benefits to the users, or very high rents, such as those which can be seen on other sites run by cooperatives, which have been less successful in attracting subsidies - and tenants. In areas closer to the cities, where residential-standard accommodation is not essential, there are examples of sites which have reduced cost by introducing an element of self-help - and an incidental contribution to recycling: on the Yamada site just outside Kobe, for example, plotholders are actively encouraged to build their own sheds from scrap wood provided by the garden's manager. This is less viable, however, as a strategy for creating the chalets required on sites in more remote locations, where one solution is to encourage plotholders to reach into their pockets and finance construction themselves. This is unlikely to happen, however, while the five year limit remains on tenancies, and for that reason an amendment to the Cabinet Order which implements the 1989 law is essential, to allow the 20-25 year leases required for full amortisation of the plotholders' investments (Azuma, 1998, Footnote 3).

The arguments justifying the creation of these new allotments have been rooted in the needs of rural communities and the maintenance of agricultural land, without reference to changes in the structure of demand. In the future, however, allotments policy may well be driven not by rural and agricultural interests but by social welfare and environmental conservation priorities on the demand side (Azuma, 1991, p. 123).

While population ageing, for example, has been a factor driving land abandonment in the countryside, it is also having its impact in cities, as a rising proportion of elderly people seek ways of filling their long retirements in healthy, meaningful and affordable pursuits. Attempts have already been made to encourage older urban residents with time on their hands to help out with farm chores (Nikkei Weekly, 29/9/98), and with the continuing recession bearing hardest upon workers in their fifties, many companies have introduced schemes to help their workers manage the transition to an early and active retirement (Linhart, 1998, p. 10). Demand increases driven by urban population aging pose a number of challenges, however. For example, given the lower mobility of more elderly people, the pressure will increase for provision not in distant mountain areas but in periurban areas close to centres of population, which is at odds with the priorities of many local government officials involved with agricultural issues, who tend to see allotments almost exclusively as a tool for the revitalisation of depopulated mountain villages. Provision for an elderly client base also raises questions about the most appropriate institutional location for allotments policy within local authorities, and indeed national government, as health and welfare considerations become more important and agricultural issues relatively less so.

As for environmental conservation, there are latent conflicts between the traditions of modern Japanese farmers and the priorities of conventional agriculture on the one hand and the interests and ideology of conservation groups and environmentalists on the other. While we have seen in both of the empirical cases presented above that environmental values can and have been incorporated into rural allotment projects, through an insistence on organic methods for example, questions have been raised in respect of other forms of domestic environmental tourism in Japan as to whether villagers really take environmentalism and sustainable development on board in anything other than an instrumental frame of mind; that is, simply in order to humour the tourists (Moon, 1997, pp. 232-233). There have also been cases where friction has arisen between people with "deep green" values who have turned their backs on the city and taken up organic farming instead, and their conventional neighbours raised in the local communities that "village revitalisation" schemes are trying to help (Knight, 1997). Such frictions may in future be articulated around allotment sites as well, given the growing popularity of organic food amongst consumers and the possibility that Japan's well known system of consumer-supported agriculture (Soil Association, 1998; Smit, Rata and Nasr, 1996) may in future encourage more direct involvement of ideologically-motivated consumers in production. It is all very well to encourage greater understanding between city people and villagers through the rural allotment; what happens, however, when villagers decide they don't like what they see?

Finally, while the development of "modern" rural allotments undoubtedly generates some environmental benefits, there is much scope for improvement, defined both in ecological and cultural terms. While the conversion of dry fields traditionally used for vegetable cultivation to allotment use in areas where such fields are in abundance, as for example on the Kanto Plain around Tokyo, implies little change in local ecological resources, the draining of paddy fields to enable vegetable cultivation, and the consequent loss of the rich ecosystem that paddy fields support, may be of concern, particularly in areas such as the Kansai District around Osaka where the option of dry field conversion is less viable (Ando, 1995). And on the cultural front, while the adoption of the kleingarten model has led to the creation of some impressive simulations of European alpine architecture in the Japanese countryside, attention should also be given to the incorporation of more traditional materials and building styles, to ensure that the rural allotment maintains a harmonious relationship with the fudo, the essential character of the Japanese countryside (Azuma, 1991, p. 126).

Acknowledgement: The authors wish to acknowledge the generous assistance received from the Sumitomo Foundation in support of the research upon which this paper is based.

* Note: For images of these sites visit www.btinternet.com/~richard.wiltshire/le5.htm and /le8.htm respectively.

References

Mitsuyoshi Ando, "Toshi nogyo no jittai to koreisha mondai [The actuality of urban agriculture and the problem of successors]". Toshi Mondai, 86 (12), 1995, pp. 53-65.

Shinji Aoki, "Chiho ni okeru kuraingaruten no kanosei: Nihon-gata kuraingaruten no genkyo to hatten hoko [The potential for kleingarten in the provinces: Current situation and development trends of Japanese-style kleingarten]". BIO-City, 9, 1996, pp. 38-43.

Ren Azuma, "Atarashii shimin noen to mou hitotsu no 'dai-sanji nochi kaiho' [New allotments and an alternative 'Third Agricultural Land Reform']". In: Fumio Egaitsu & Shuichi Tsubata (eds.), Shimin Noen: Kuraingaruten no Teisho [Allotment Gardens: An Advocacy of the Kleingarten]. Tokyo: Ie no Hikari Kyokai, 1987, pp. 217-229.

Ren Azuma, "Toshi kinko noson ni okeru mo hitotsu no ryokuchi keikaku: Nihon ni oite kuraingaruten wa kanoka [An alternative form of green space planning for villages in the urban fringe: Is the kleingarten possible in Japan?]". Noson Keikaku Gakkai-shi, 6 (4), 1988.

Ren Azuma, Ekorojikaru Raifu: Midori to Hito ga Fureau Shimin Noen [Ecological Life: Allotment Gardens Putting People in Touch with Nature]. Tokyo: Ie no Hikari Kyokai, 1991.

Ren Azuma, "Toshi jumin ni yoru nochi no rekurieeshiyonteki riyo no kanosei: nochi no tamenteki riyo seisaku no Ohnichi hikaku [The potential for recreational use of agricultural land by urban residents: A comparison of policies to promote multiple use of agricultural land in Europe and Japan]". Nogyo Mondai Kenkyu, 34 (3), 1998, pp. 32-39.

Fumio Egaitsu & Shuichi Tsubata (eds.), Shimin Noen: Kuraingaruten no Teisho [Allotment Gardens: An Advocacy of the Kleingarten]. Tokyo: Ie no Hikari Kyokai, 1987.

Yoshihisa Fujita, "Changes in mountain villages and policies for the development of mountain areas in Japan". In: John Sargent and Richard Wiltshire (eds.), Geographical Studies and Japan. Folkestone: Japan Library, 1993, pp. 47-52.

Nelson Graburn, "Work and play in the Japanese countryside". In: Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück (eds.), The Culture of Japan as Seen Through its Leisure. Albany: SUNY, 1998, pp. 195-212.

Haruo Kinoshima, "Nihon ni okeru saisho no shimin noen [The first allotment garden in Japan]". Japanese Journal of Agricultural Education, 25 (2), 1994, pp. 101-108.

John Knight, "The soil as teacher: Natural farming in a mountain village". In: Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (eds.), Japanese Images of Nature. Richmond: Curzon, 1997, pp. 236-256.

Sepp Linhart, "The Japanese at play: A little-known dimension of Japan". In: Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück (ed.), The Culture of Japan as Seen Through its Leisure. Albany: SUNY, 1998, pp. 1-25.

Okpyo Moon, "Marketing nature in rural Japan". In: Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (eds.), Japanese Images of Nature. Richmond: Curzon, 1997, pp. 221-235.

Jac Smit, Annu Rata and Joe Nasr, Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities. New York: UNDP, 1996.

Soil Association, Local Food for Local People. Bristol: Soil Association, 1998.

Richard Wiltshire, "Rural development and processes of agricultural change in Japan. In: Keith Hoggart (ed.), Agricultural Change, Environment and Economy. London: Mansell, 1992, pp. 49-67.

Richard Wiltshire and Ren Azuma, "Rewriting the plot: Sustaining allotments in Britain and Japan". Local Environment, 5 (2), 2000, pp. 139-151.

Richard Wiltshire, David Crouch and Ren Azuma, "Contesting the plot: Environmental politics and the urban allotment garden in Britain and Japan". In: Philip Stott and Sian Sullivan (eds.), Political Ecology: Power, Myth and Science. London: Edward Arnold, 2000a, pp. 203-217.

Richard Wiltshire, David Crouch and Ren Azuma, "A Small plot of earth: Sustainability, justice and urban recreational horticulture in Britain and Japan". Paper presented at the PERG/RGS Conference "Towards Sustainability: Social and Environmental Justice", Tufts University, Medford, May/June 2000b.