Japan's Rice Farmers See Trade Deal As Threat To Tradition
"Japanese agriculture is pretty costly," Ogura says, "so we don't want the government to treat food as a commercial business. We want it to protect our food sovereignty."
To be sure, the issue of Japanese agriculture carries some weighty symbolism.
But the TPP would also liberalize insurance, automobiles and other industries that employ more people and account for bigger chunks of the Japanese economy.
The TPP includes 11 nations bordering on the Pacific, and its members account for around 40 percent of global trade.
Ogura is very proud that he grows his own food, and that he lives in a community that celebrates this tradition. He says that joining the TPP would threaten his way of life.
"The farmland and rice farming is at the core of our culture," he says. "They are linked to this culture through community festivals like this one. But if we stop cultivating the rice, this culture will be destroyed."
The solidly-built, more than 60-year-old Ogura is a pretty typical specimen of Japanese yeomanry. He farms less than 25 acres of land and has to do sideline jobs to make ends meet. His children are not very enthusiastic about following in his line of work.
In recent elections, Ogura voted for the Communist Party of Japan.
Actually, he confides, he's no Marxist. It was a protest vote, he says, to show that he was fed up with the main political parties, because they refuse to stand up and oppose the TPP.
"They pretend to listen to us," he says. "Especially at election time, they make sympathetic faces, and they're kind of helpful. Some of the candidates promised to oppose the TPP. But they voted for it in Parliament. They really broke their promise."
Related NPR Stories
The Two-Way
Japan Uses Laptops, Cost-Cutting To Launch Rocket Into Space