Passage 5 Young Japanese Are Back to the Farm
日本年轻人返回农村 《时代周刊》

[00:00]Tatsunori Kobayashi is part of Japan's 2,400-strong Rural Labor Squad,
[00:09]urban trainees dispatched to the countryside under a pilot program
[00:14]to put Japan's underemployed youth to cultivate its farms.
[00:20]Started last month as part of Prime Minister Taro Aso's stimulus plans,
[00:26]the program stems from growing concern about
[00:29]both the plight of Japan's younger workers and the dismal state of farms.
[00:35]The predicament of Japanese in their 20s and 30s dates back
[00:41]to the lost decade of the 1990s, when many failed to find good,
[00:46]stable work. Today, a disproportionate number endure low-wage jobs
[00:53]a potential portent for America's students and first-time job seekers
[00:59]plunging into a shallow job market in the United States.
[01:04]As the Japanese recession has worsened,
[01:07]younger workers have taken the brunt of wage cuts and layoffs,
[01:12]especially in manufacturing.
[01:15]Now the government views the slump Japanese exports fell almost 50 percent
[01:21]year-to-year in February as a chance to divert idle labor to sectors
[01:27]that have long suffered from worker shortages, like agriculture.
[01:33]Many young Japanese, for their part,
[01:36]have shown a growing interest in farming
[01:39]as disillusionment rises over the grind of city jobs and layoffs.
[01:45]Agricultural job fairs have been swamped with hundreds of applicants;
[01:51]one in Osaka attracted 1,400 people.
[01:56]Whether it will save Japan's deteriorating economy is something else.
[02:02]"Rural communities could benefit from an influx of young people,"
[02:07]said Masashi Umemoto at the National Agricultural Research Center.
[02:14]"But it's unrealistic to look to agriculture
[02:17]as a solution to the country's unemployment problems."
[02:22]Like the French and the British, whose industrial societies have deep
[02:27](if distant) rural roots,
[02:30]the Japanese have long romanticized life in the countryside.
[02:36]Only 4 percent of Japan's labor force works in agriculture,
[02:41]but a reverence for the country's rice-farming heritage is strong.
[02:47]Japanese children grow up with warnings not to waste a single grain of rice,
[02:54]out of respect for farmers' labor. And in international trade talks,
[03:00]rice remains the most sensitive crop for Japan.
[03:05]Beneath this romanticism, however, is a stark reality.
[03:10]Japanese farming is a picture of inefficiency,
[03:15]and the rural work force is graying.
[03:19]A decline in rice prices has hit farms hard only the largest farms
[03:25]still turn a profit from harvesting rice, forcing farmers to take on extra jobs.
[03:32]The farms most desperate for workers
[03:35]do not have the means to pay for new recruits.
[03:39]Agricultural jobs pay as little as $1,500 a month and are often seasonal.