| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Kerry Smith. A Time of Crisis: Japan, the Great Depression, and Rural Revitalization. (Harvard East Asian Monographs, number 191.) Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center; distributed by Harvard University Press. 2001. Pp. xvi, 481. $40.00.

The plight of the countryside in prewar and wartime Japan is something with which the student of modern Japan must grapple, both in research and teaching. Kerry Smith's excellent study of the rural revitalization movement during the Great Depression has changed the way this reviewer will conceptualize the rural plight in future academic work. This book is Smith's first, and it is a sterling study that will establish for him a solid reputation in the field. 1

Smith's focus is on developments in community life and the economics of farming. "By revealing some of the ways in which the state and communities provided alternatives to despair and violence, this study brings us closer to a grass-roots perspective on the meaning of Japan's time of crisis" (p. 2). How did the average Japanese deal with some of the most basic questions of the modern age? How could rural communities retain the best from their past and still look forward to the future? What was the role of agriculture in a modern economy; and where was the boundary between city and country? The author has drawn on Toyohiko Kagawa's novel, The Land of Milk and Honey (1934–1935), to introduce his study, positing that the novel reflects in fiction some very basic realities about rural life in the l930s. . . .

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