University of Leeds, UK

• 1. Rethinking Rural Japan Part 1: The Nineteenth Century: The Establishment of the Diversified Rural Economy 2. Rural Economic Growth in the Nineteenth Century 3. The Rural Economy and the Household 4. Power, Policy and Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century Countryside Part 2: The Agrarian Transition, 1890-1920 5. The Rural Sector and Urban Industrialization 6. The Household and the Village in Transition 7. The Agrarian Question: The Rural Economy and the State Part 3: The Inter-War Years: Crisis and Modernization 8. The ‘Rural Problem’ of the Inter-War Period 9. The Rural Household and the Agricultural Adjustment Problem 10. The Rural Dream 11. Conclusion

'Francks challenges the image of Japanese farmers as victims of industrialization. Applying the tools and concepts devised for analyzing economic development in the contemporary Third World and other micro-level research, she portrays them as post-peasant small-scale producers who exploit both the knowledge of their agricultural environment and whatever scope their household resources allows them for securing and improving their livelihoods.' - Reference & Research Book News'Useful and thorough book...I would happily assign this one to my students.' - Monumenta Nipponica'Penelope Francks has written a fine overview of the history of Japanese agriculture from the late Edo period until 1945. Drawing on a wide variety of English and Japanese-language secondary sources, she has made important contributions to our understanding of modern Japan, and of its economic and rural development.''A reader who wants to read a synthesis of Japanese agricultural development from 1800 to the Second World War, that is, just before and during Japan’s prewar industrialization, can do no better than turn to this book.'- Economic History Society 2007, Economic History Review, 60, 1 (2007)