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1968 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public ServiceBIOGRAPHY of Seiichi Tobata
In the short span of a century Japan has moved from a feudal to a modern society and from a basically agricultural economy to fourth among the world's industrial nations. Japan's agriculture supported this industrial development. Among Japanese scholars who have worked creatively on agricultural policy and economics to insure high agricultural growth and productivity, SEIICHI TOBATA is the acknowledged "Great Teacher." His teaching has been on two levels, as professor of agricultural economics at Tokyo University and as administrator of major governmental agricultural programs. In both capacities he expanded the horizons of Japanese agriculturists and economists by adapting ideas he studied abroad to specific Japanese conditions and demanding that agriculture be considered in terms of modern economic systems.
SEIICHI TOBATA was born in the hamlet of Inoue of Toyochimura (a village later incorporated in Ureshino-cho), Ichishi-gun, Mie Prefecture, central Honshu, on February 2, 1899. Eldest of four sons and two daughters of Kichinosuke and Yoshiko Uejima Tobata, he grew up in the secure environment of a landowning family closely associated with the activities of the countryside. TOBATA affectionately describes his birthplace as "median." Ise (the old name of the prefecture) is in the center of Japan, the climate is mild and in his youth "per capita income and expenditure were that of the average for the nation with neither very rich nor very poor people." In a way, he says, he "never left Ise," because he always came home for summer and winter vacations even after he started to work; it was only when he grew older that he was unable to get home at least once a year.
Inoue was a typical hamlet of some 30 families (50 years later this number had not changed) with a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine. Funerals, weddings, festivals and other celebrations were hamlet affairs. Crops were rice, barley and vegetables, and silkworm raising was an important industry.
TOBATA's family differed from other rural families in its concern for nutrition, health and education. Although his father had not finished high school, his mother was a graduate of the first girls' high school in Kyoto, and his paternal grandmother, even in her last years, read constantly. Five of the six TOBATA children became university graduates. This represented a major expenditure on the part of the family and a major break with rural custom. Of the nearly 40 pupils in TOBATAS village elementary class only two even went on to high school. (He and the other boy studied after school to prepare for the entrance examination and his father taught him arithmetic at home.)
Coming from a village grade school to the First Prefectural High School in Tsu in April 1912 TOBATA had the usual feelings of a rural boy coming to the city: that all his classmates were better prepared than he. The school had a policy of permissive liberal education and an outstanding teacher-principal under whom he studied eastern and western philosophy. His teacher of history and social studies made a lasting impression by telling him "there are six types of questions—what, when, where, who, why, how—and no matter how great a scholar you are, you cannot ask questions other than these."
In September 1916 TOBATA entered the Eighth Preparatory School near Nagoya. Aside from being born in a rural area to which he remained close, he had no special interest in agriculture during his high school days but, as he said, "it just seemed fitting for the eldest son of a landowner to study in the Department of Agriculture." For the 15 hours each week devoted to the study of foreign languages TOBATA chose to study English and German.
His three years at preparatory school coincided with World War I and were a time of upheaval in Japan. New ideas, especially of democracy, flooded in from outside and a rapidly expanding economy, spurred by entry into world markets, created a widening gap between the rich and the poor and spiraling inflation. Rice riots exploded throughout the country, spreading even to TOBATA’s home county. Rice that had cost 15 yen per 150 kilos in 1916 soared to ¥40 by the summer of 1918 and to ¥50 the following year. TOBATA was shocked by the riots into a realization that "people in the mass have great energy" and "tenant farmers have common interest with city wage earners."
A positive result of Japan's expanding economy was a revolution in the system of education. Many new institutions of higher learning, and faculties of economics and industry within existing institutions, were created; colleges of agriculture increased and research organizations proliferated.
In the fall of 1918 TOBATA fulfilled his hope to enter Tokyo Imperial University. He chose to enroll in the second section of the Faculty of Agriculture, which included economics and social sciences. From a classmate's elder brother, a law student who was a "born educator," TOBATA learned how to study and select books. Most agricultural research and books in those days, TOBATA recalls, were unsatisfactory "because a methodology had not been established."
TOBATA received his Bachelor of Agriculture in April 1922. His graduation thesis was entitled "Study on Land Problems of Ricardian Socialism." Two days later he entered graduate school to pursue his studies in agricultural economics. In the whole of Tokyo at that time there were fewer than 20 graduates studying agricultural economics and the majority were government officials concerned chiefly with agricultural political problems hence the discipline then was keyed to government requirements.
After a year and a half in graduate school TOBATA was appointed Assistant of the Faculty of Agriculture, and a year later, in August 1924, he was named Assistant Professor. In 1926 he was awarded a one-year fellowship by the International Education Foundation (later Rockefeller Foundation) to study agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin in the United States. TOBATA had met only two foreigners—a German and an American who were teachers in his preparatory school. Because studies in agriculture and agricultural economics at his university were patterned on the German approach his preference for foreign study would have been Germany. However his senior colleague and mentor, Shiroshi Nasu (Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for International Understanding in 1967 "for practical humanitarianism, enhancing cooperation in agriculture by learning through multinational experience"), who had himself recently returned from abroad, strongly urged his going to the United States.
The moment the American President Lines ship sailed from Yokohama in mid-August, TOBATA says, he was "in a foreign country where even the room boy could not be summoned without speaking English." In Seattle where he and his cabin mate disembarked he visited the University of Washington and met a professor there who explained the American college system and procedures for enrollment which were "very helpful to know later." Enroute to Chicago the two travelers stopped at Glacier National Park for two days to see the Rocky Mountains. "Everything was so new and novel" that the first week in the United States "made a very strong impression."
In early September he arrived at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He was "so happy" to find Madison a small, beautiful city surrounded by four lakes, but for the first several months he had difficulty adapting to an entirely different culture in an unknown world. After the relaxed atmosphere at Tokyo Imperial University, the haste and long working hours at Wisconsin were startling. He took a room in the home of a dentist and played with the young children in the family in order to practice English conversation. "We had studied through the eyes and now for the first time I was studying through the ears," he commented.
TOBATA read everything he could find to help him understand American land history, agriculture, agricultural economics and use of agricultural machines. His particular interest became land policies. He came to believe that the system of land grant colleges working closely with state agricultural departments through experiment stations, extension work, research, and disseminating knowledge by lectures and booklets, should be adapted for Japan where the universities tended to ignore field research and extension opportunities.
After less than 10 months at Wisconsin he and a grantee from Japan and one from Germany set out on an automobile trip to New York and Washington, D.C. On this two-week tour they stayed at farmhouses which took paying guests for the nominal charge of US$1 per night. Through the friendly families whom he met and lived with, America's farming community "became very close."
In late June TOBATA returned to Washington, D.C. to spend the summer studying at the Bureau of Agricultural Economics in the Department of Agriculture. He stayed in the suburban home of a Bureau member whom he had met on his earlier visit. At the Bureau he was introduced by pioneers in the field to econometrics—the use of statistical techniques in analyzing economic data and problems—a concept he would find useful in the future.
In September he and a Japanese assistant professor from Hokkaido University visited universities in the eastern United States and Canada. At Johns Hopkins in Baltimore he was fortunate to meet the foremost American scholar on David Ricardo whose treatises were the basis of his graduation thesis.
TOBATA's fellowship was for one year but he wanted to pursue two concepts which he had deduced were at the base of land policies in the United States: private ownership and the relationship between freedom of movement of the individual and acquisition of land. Extending his stay, he spent October to December at Northwestern University's Institute of Land Economics and Public Utility where he "mostly read books" under the direction of two professors. He then returned to Washington, D.C. to attend meetings of various economic societies, at one of which he heard for the first time a report on the production function as a tool for economic analysis. On January 1, 1928 he traveled by bus to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, founded for liberated slaves, and journeyed the southern route to Los Angeles, California, where he was surprised at the passion for standardization in the citrus industry.
He arrived back in Tokyo in early February, only to learn that the Ministry of Education was sending him for two years of study to the University of Bonn in Germany. He sailed from Kobe at the end of March with his wife Mineko Isaka, whom he had married in March 1925. The one-month sea voyage afforded them their first glimpse of other Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
Arriving in Germany TOBATA first called on a Japanese scholar studying agricultural management at Bonn, then proceeded to Berlin to prepare himself for the fall term. He felt he had spread himself too thin in the United States and wanted to concentrate his studies in Germany. He spent the summer reading Joseph A. Schumpeter's major works in preparation for courses under this learned economic theorist. Though he could read and comprehend German, he was discouraged by his lack of grasp of the subject. Schumpeter was lecturing abroad the first semester but returned in the spring. TOBATA attended his lectures and seminars and sometimes "monopolized the Thursday afternoons when he met students." The professor was "kind, patient and encouraging," and TOBATA left Bonn in October 1929 in a cheerful mood—economics was no longer strange to him. After stays in Paris and London he and his wife returned to Japan via the United States.
He reported to Tokyo Imperial University at the end of March 1930 after three years and eight months abroad and four years away from teaching. Now he had to carry a heavy research and teaching load but he "was young and had no complaint."
Japan in 1930 had been shaken by the 1926-27 domestic recession and bank crisis and the world-wide depression that began in 1929. In that still predominantly agricultural country, rice and raw silk were the largest export items. Raw silk dropped in price 50 per cent between 1929 and 1931. Workers real incomes fell to 33 per cent of their 1926 value. A bumper crop of rice, including rice from the colonies of Korea and Taiwan, caused its selling price to drop below its cost of production. Rural areas were so depressed that poverty-stricken farmers resorted to selling their daughters into prostitution. Marxist thought and attacks and assassinations by young army and navy officers and rightist youths fanned political unrest. In 1931 the militarists exploited the situation by seizing Manchuria from China and setting up the puppet state of Manchukuo.
Starting his career in agricultural economics in this atmosphere TOBATA sat before his desk and tried to plan how to make use of the knowledge he had gained abroad. He had studied with great scholars but did not want simply to expound their theories. Rather he wanted to mold a new Japanese way of thinking and apply what he had learned specifically to Japanese agriculture. He identified six goals. One was to take agriculture out of the isolation in which it was commonly studied and put it in the context of the national economy. Two was to break away from the idealization of agriculture—seeing it as a "sacred occupation" and considering it "wrong" to analyze it as part of the money economy. Three was to design studies for particular Japanese circumstances. For example, the price mechanism was not a suitable tool in Japan where data was lacking and the rural economy was not capitalistic; produce was usually sold because producers were too poor to consume it themselves and land was seen by tenant farmers not as capital but as property paid for in produce.
Four, business cycles in Japanese agriculture needed to be studied. TOBATA had learned that the business cycle, which is closely related to the price mechanism, is central to economic analysis, and that there are cycles unique to agriculture, e.g. good and poor harvests and speculative investments in agricultural land and their results. Five, studies should ask "by whom, for what purposes and how" is agriculture carried on. In 1930 identification of those engaged in agricultural work was limited to owner-farmers, and Japanese economic theorists did not differentiate between the different types of owner-farmers. This lack of differentiation, TOBATA was to stress in the 1950's, was the major reason why owner-farmers who came to the land through government projects or land reform could not rapidly develop and expand production. And six, sociological studies of rural life were needed—the nature of hamlets and villages, living standards, population patterns, and urban immigration, particularly of women.
These six fields of study that he defined were to guide his own research and that of those under his direction during his nearly 30 years at the university. Concerned that his findings be made available to others, TOBATA wrote some 100 papers and several books, and coauthored, edited and translated others. His first major work was Nihon Nogyo no Tenkai Katei (The Developmental Process of Japanese Agriculture), published in 1936.
When TOBATA resumed teaching in the 1930's new economic theories were thriving—especially Marxist agricultural theories to which TOBATA did not subscribe but which attracted many students who were charged with an impatient desire to change the miserable conditions in rural villages—and interest in statistical analysis was keen. TOBATA constantly reminded his classes that, whereas Japanese industry and banking shared conditions similar to those of more advanced countries, Western theories could not be applied to analyze and understand Japanese agriculture. Special tools and a special approach were needed. Both he and his students were searching for the correct approach. He remembers as the most enjoyable of his life this period when he was "a happy teacher surrounded by bright students—I learned while I taught and taught while I learned."
TOBATA’s influence on the course of Japanese agricultural economics studies was far-reaching. Twenty-three of the graduates studying under him between 1939 and 1945 stayed on in the Faculty of Agriculture to become outstanding scholars, and all but one are still active. Fellow professors at his own and other universities also credit him with stimulating their thinking.
Agriculture classes in those years averaged 20 to 30 students. TOBATA could lecture in a normal speaking voice, he knew all of his students, and in the close knit groups frank discussion was the rule. He still believes universities should be "quiet and simple," and says of the modern emphasis on sophisticated equipment, "no matter what expensive hardware you get, if your software is poor you cannot expect any good results."
In November 1933 TOBATA was appointed full Professor, although he had yet to complete his graduate work. He received his Doctorate in Agricultural Economics in August 1937.
From April 1939 until the end of World War II TOBATA held a concurrent professorship in the Faculty of Economics teaching colonial policies. Nominated from within the university to help in this faculty following a mass resignation of professors over personnel policy, TOBATA accepted on condition he would not be involved in personnel administration. Before taking up this position he made a trip to observe rice production in Korea and Taiwan and later he and a colleague, Kazushi Ohkawa, collaborated on a book on the Korean grain economy (Chosen Beikoku Keizairon, 1937).
Unlike other colonial powers which faced differences in religion, economic ethics and consciousness and living styles, Japan faced life-patterns in its colonies similar to those on the home islands. TOBATA thus found much similarity between colonial agricultural programs and the agriculture programs in which he had specialized. He also studied the economic and social problems faced by Japanese emigrants to Manchuria and to the United States. These studies were a welcome diversion because agricultural studies per se had a low priority during the war years.
In 1942 in line with his colonial studies TOBATA was asked to participate in the Philippine Investigation Committee requested by the high command of the Japanese Army of Occupation. Its objective was to study the formation of the middle class which would have a pivotal role in Philippine independence. Each committee member was responsible for a section of study and TOBATA was given economics.
He accompanied the full committee to the Philippines in March 1943 where he made fruitful contact with Philippine scholars. With the assistance of such scholars and researchers the committee completed its work in 1944 and published the 1,000-page Report of the Philippine Investigation Committee. TOBATA regrets that translation of this report into English was not completed "because the purpose of the investigation was to formulate policies the Philippines could work out herself and would have some value today." From this experience TOBATA gained knowledge and understanding of the Philippines which were put to good use in his lectures and which proved even more helpful later in development of the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs.
In May 1953 he again visited the Philippines, this time as a member of the Reparations Commission which was headed by the same man who chaired the Investigation Committee. Although the mission did not succeed in finalizing a Reparations Agreement, it gave TOBATA an opportunity to renew his acquaintance with Philippine scholars.
In May 1946 TOBATA was surprised to be asked to become Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in the cabinet of Shigeru Yoshida. In the last days of the preceding cabinet he had chaired an informal study group within the ministry on food programs. He knew that over one million tons of rice would have to be imported in order to maintain distribution of a minimal 0.4 liters per day per adult for the six months until fall harvest. TOBATA liked Yoshida from their first meeting and he could see some solutions to the problem of rice procurement, but he was certain he could never be a politician. Although under great pressure to accept the appointment, he refused.
In December 1946 the Nogyu Keizai Noson Shakaigaku Kenkyujo (Research Institute of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology)—later changed to Nogyu Sogo Kenkyujo (National Research Institute of Agricultural Economics) (NRIAE - was set up under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. TOBATA had worked for the establishment of such an organization combining sociology with agriculture and he became its first director, at the same time maintaining his professorship at Tokyo University (the term "Imperial" had been dropped). Both the ministries of Agriculture and Finance cooperated to put the Institute on a sound footing, but time and patience were necessary to overcome interference with program by the Allied Occupation which oversaw Japanese administration, and interference with appointments by ministers seeking to serve party politics.
TOBATA emphasized selection of a staff capable of carrying out research on the rural reconstruction then being implemented by newly legislated land reform. He looked for persons trained in management and bookkeeping, statisticians, and experienced agricultural technologists who could be trained in economics. He was keenly aware that farmers subservient to old societal mores—looking upon agriculture as manual labor rather than an independent industry requiring informed management—would not make agricultural progress in the postwar world. He also knew that few ministry officials were capable of using economic tools to work out a parity formula for rice rationing or prepare statistics on rice production.
TOBATA insisted that NRIAE give researchers free rein. He felt his staff were mature and should work out their own research plans. In this he differed with ministry practice of continuing the strict control over research imposed during the war. TOBATA was equally insistent that NRIAE, unlike academic institutions, maintain close contact with reality.
The wisdom of his staff selections and policy quickly became evident. The first technologist and engineer both became scholars of economics and were in the forefront of relating technology and economics. Research progressed both in quality and quantity. After one year the Institute began publishing quarterly the Nogyu Sogo Kenkyu (Journal of Agricultural Economy) which soon became the leading forum in its field. Many reports on specific studies were published separately. TOBATA is especially proud of the Japanese translation of the Chinese classic written in the sixth century about the agricultural technology which had been developed and survived over trial and error for more than 1,000 years in the arid region of North China.
TOBATA retired from directorship of NRIAE in 1956 but the following year became its Interlocking Councilor. He felt he had achieved his aim of a fruitful union between academic abstraction and reality. With some 60 research members in its three branches, NRIAE was now the largest institution doing economic research in agriculture and it was providing important guides for agricultural development.
From June 1956 to March 1963 TOBATA again presided over the formative years of a new organization as Chairman of the Norin Suisan Gijutsu Kaigi (Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Technology Research Council). The Council was created by the Minister of Agriculture to encourage accelerated growth for these industries—within the context of the rapid economic growth of the nation—by the introduction of new technology. This was a position TOBATA had long championed. The Council would not itself carry out research; maximum development of technologies would have to be planned through close cooperation with existing experiment stations.
The minister had been impressed on his visit to Britain the previous year by the coordinated development of its technology, in contrast to Japan where many experiment stations were doing research on the same subject. He asked TOBATA to close two or three stations doing repetitive work, in exchange for which he gave him authority to institute three or four new stations if he felt they were called for.
In prewar Japan, TOBATA writes, "agriculture had been a dumping ground for surplus labor from overpopulation, and labor-absorbing technology had been more valued than labor-saving technology." Research programs at the experiment stations throughout Japan had much in common with agriculture: just as emphasis was always on increasing crops per acre by adding more people, with little consciousness of productivity, so additional researchers were immediately asked for when any new research was chosen without attention to improving the quality of research or admitting the insufficiency of facilities. Knowing technology could not be advanced in this way, TOBATA decided not to approve an increase in stations or in research staff which stood at 5,000 permanent and 500 temporary employees. Instead he decided to improve and expand the facilities by spending annually about one-half of the cost of one researcher at each station for this purpose. He insisted upon approval of this proposal by the director and deputy director of the Ministry of Finance Budget Bureau before he accepted the chairmanship.
At each experiment station one researcher was appointed coordinator and made responsible for liaison on research with other stations and with the Council Secretariat. TOBATA's only condition was that the first coordinator-designate should be chosen from among future station directors.
TOBATA's program concern was that research should be directed to the realities of present needs. His visits to experiment stations confirmed that this was often not the case. For seven years (1958-1963) he sought to reorient research—e.g. to study rice, not as a plant but as a crop, to concentrate on small-scale agriculture and livestock management since such was the pattern in Japan—and to improve the status of technologists within the Ministry. At the end of that period, feeling that "the course was already laid for the Council to move in the right direction" he asked the minister to excuse him. Since he had worked for so many years with the NRIAE and with the Council he asked for the establishment of a research institute on plant viruses as a farewell gift. This materialized with the succeeding minister.
In July 1958 TOBATA had also been asked to head the Ajia Keizai Kenkyujo (Institute of Asian Economic Affairs) (IAEA) established by the government in response to requests from business, government and the educational sector to conduct research and provide guidelines for Japan's growing relationships with developing countries. The Prime Minister gave the Institute two tasks: 1) to train experts on developing countries, and 2) to establish a good library which would be open to the public. TOBATA believed it would take five to ten years to train experts and asked for and received assurance that plans and interest would not shift and financial support would be provided. It was to be nine years before he felt his share of this responsibility had been met.
Upon accepting the directorship of IAEA TOBATA spent the months of November and December 1958 as a roving ambassador in Asian and Middle Eastern countries. His mission was to learn about aid being extended to developing countries and contact those governments informally to ascertain what Japan might do. He and three assistants of his choosing visited Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Malaya, East and West Pakistan and Thailand. Staying only a few days in each country, their observations were necessarily superficial, yet their report provided useful leads for future missions that would probe in depth.
From the beginning of his stewardship of IAEA, TOBATA put his usual priority on getting a good research staff. The search was initially for persons who knew the history, and knew or could learn the languages, of the nations on which they were to become expert. The search revealed that although excellent training existed in Japan for scholars of oriental history, particularly of China, no serious efforts had been made to train specialists on developing countries. IAEA would have to provide its own training program.
Venturing into uncharted waters as the only organization in Japan engaged in large-scale training of researchers on developing countries, IAEA began by appointing 12 trainees a year and made it a rule that each one would be sent for two years to the country in which he was to specialize to study at the universities there. Each was to identify some problem of the society, study that problem and try to find solutions. TOBATA believes that researchers "who study in a country, get a good grasp on that country, develop their theory and then generalize it, make a steadier advance and their scholarship will be more practical." Allaying TOBATA's fears that some trainees might return without finishing their two-year study, not one has come back early and some have even asked to extend their stay without requesting additional support. TOBATA also instituted the practice of inviting to IAEA an average of 10 researchers from abroad each year and of holding symposiums with these and other foreign visitors.
The Japanese name of IAEA has remained the same but the English translation was changed to Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) since its scope was not confined to Asia. The government funds 90 per cent of its annual budget equivalent to more than US$10 million, with no strings or obligations attached.
The IDE library contains government statistics from all Southeast Asian countries since their independence and a steadily growing map collection. A major publishing program is under way which covers the politics, economies and administrative systems of various developing countries.
Having fulfilled the two tasks set by the Prime Minister of establishing a training program and developing a research library, and having seen IAEA/IDE earn repute as an "indispensable research resource," TOBATA resigned as director in 1967. With day to day responsibilities in the hands of his successor, he agreed to stay on as chairman for another six years.
TOBATA also served as one of 50 members of the Research Committee on Basic Programs on Agriculture, established within the Ministry of Agriculture in 1959 to determine what agriculture should be in the various stages of high economic growth which had started 10 years after completion of the 1947-1949 agricultural land reform. Among problems dealt with by the Committee were: 1) how to achieve a balance of income between agriculture and non-agricultural industries and 2) how to strengthen domestic agriculture to compete in the free world market.
To raise the position and competitiveness of Japanese agriculture within the country and abroad the Committee concluded that priority attention must be given to making agriculture a mature industry, equal to other industries in the Japanese economy. Structural reform was required both to improve agriculture and to provide for selective expansion of crop and cattle production in response to rising demand. It should aim first at raising productivity and then at introducing larger scale management, the first step of which should be to increase joint management in order to achieve the profits and other benefits of larger scale operation. Research Committee members met once a week, they worked hard, TOBATA reports, "and after a year were able to submit a thick report to the government."
Although he was extremely active in the Research Committee and IDE, the prospect of his retirement from Tokyo University in March 1959 at the age of 60 prompted TOBATA to take critical stock of his three decades as a teacher. "I had accomplished only a fraction of what I intended to accomplish based on the program I had designed at the beginning of my career," he noted, and he was assailed by doubts that he could continue to make a serious contribution as a scholar. After several years of agonizing soul searching, he concluded he would be most useful training good scholars and providing them with suitable research environments. The decision put his mind at ease only briefly for he found that a lifetime commitment to scholarship goes on. To "exercise his brain" he had earlier started translating Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, published in 1954, which was for him a stimulating new kind of book encompassing 2,000 years from Aristotle to Samuelson. His translation (entitled Keizai Bunseki no Rekishi) done over a period of six years was published in seven volumes in 1955-1962. Translations by him and Ichiro Nakayama of two other of Schumpeter's works were published in the same period. His Introduction to Agriculture of Japan, written in English, came out in 1958. He co-edited with Kozo Uno Nihon Shinshugi to Nogyo (Japanese Capitalism and Agriculture) in 1959, with Hiromi Arisawa and Ichiro Nakayama Keizai Shutaisei Koza (Lectures on Economic Subjectivity) in 1960 and with Keiji Kamiya Gendai Nippon no Nogyo to Nomin (Contemporary Agriculture and Farmers in Japan) in 1964.
Despite his heavy teaching, administrative and research loads over the years, TOBATA has always been willing to serve on agriculturally related commissions and participate in international conferences. In June 1947 he accepted directorship of the Ie-no-Hikari (Shining House) Association established 35 years earlier to assist in rural development. In the same year he was appointed consultant to the Economic Stabilization Board. Named a director in May 1948, he became president in December 1950 of the Farmers' Education Association which was devoted to education and extension work among farmers. He served as a member of the Rice Price Committee (1951), the Statistics Investigation Council (1952), the National Committee of Japan-UNESCO (1954) and the Delegation to the Fourth Session of the International Rice Commission (1954). The same year he became Director of the National Rehabilitation Council of Agriculture.
He was appointed a member of the Employment Council and Tariff Rate Council (1955) and the Japanese Delegation to the Ninth United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Conference in Rome (1957). In 1958 he was in delegations to the Sixth Session of the International Rice Commission and the Fourth FAO Asia and Far East Regional Conference. Appointed to the Overseas Immigration Council in 1959, he became chairman in 1962.
In 1961 TOBATA served as president of the National Life Improvement Policy Council, member of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Council and chairman of the Agricultural Policy Council. He became a member of the Electric Enterprise Committee (1963), Research Director of the Japan Economic Research Council (1963), Chairman of the Committee on Tax Systems (1964) and of the Commission on Medical Care (1965) and Vice-President of the Council on Asian Research (1964-68).
In 1960, to celebrate his 61st birthday, friends published a volume of essays written by his colleagues and disciples entitled Tobata Seichi Sensei Kanreki Kinen Rombunshu (given the English title Economic Development and Agricultural Programs), to which a bibliography of his writings was appended. Through this appendix TOBATA "could trace the very humble efforts I made, but, if I were asked whether there are any papers I want to pass on to future generations, I would not know the answer." In 1966 he was elected a member of the Nippon Gakushiin Japan Academy), an honorary organization which affords membership and preferential treatment to those who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of science and learning.
The TOBATAs had four children of whom one is deceased. Their eldest daughter Yuki, aged 43, is a housewife. Their second daughter, Asako, aged 37, is a lecturer at the College of Nutrition for Women. A prolific writer and author of several very popular books on subjects of diet, nutrition and cooking, she is currently the best known to the general public of the Tobata family. Their son, Ryusuke, aged 35, is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Literature of Keio University. They and their families either live with or are frequent visitors to the home of their parents.
TOBATA and his wife live in the same comfortably spacious old house with small garden on a narrow street in the Tokyo suburb in which they have resided for more than 40 years. When he is not at official meetings he is apt to be found in his library on the second floor reading and writing. His professorial air of slight detachment is still enlivened by a whimsical humor.
As a result of the practical application of his scholarship and his perseverance Japan has today trained people and institutions engaged in productive agricultural economic research of immense benefit to the nation.
December 1979 (This sketch covers Prof. Tobata's career only up to August 31, 1968 when he received the Award but was not completed until after publication of his biography in 1979.
Manila
REFERENCES:
Dore, RP. Education in Tokagawa Japan. Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1965.
______. Land Reform in Japan. London: Oxford university Press. 1959. Foreword by Seiichi Tobata, p. x-xii.
Ike, Nobutaka, Japanese Politics, An Introductory Survey. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. 1958 p.126-128.
Jansen, M.B. ed. Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization. New Jersey: Princeton university Press. 1965.
Japan Biographical Encyclopedia Who's Who. Tokyo: Rengo Press. 1958 and 1964.
Journal of the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs. Tokyo. March-August, 1962.
Lockwood, W.W. The State of Economic Enterprise in Japan. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1965.
Smith, T.C. The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 1965. Chap. 7: Agricultural Technology, p. 87-107.
Tobata, Seiichi. "Foreword, The Developing Economies. Tokyo: Institute of Asian Economic Affairs. March August, 1962.
______. "Foreword," Rural Economic Problems. Tokyo. Vol. 1, no.1, May 1964.
______. Japan's Agriculture: Farming Population. Booklet. Tokyo: Public Information and Cultural Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1956. 30 p.
______. An Introduction to Agriculture of Japan. Tokyo: Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Productivity Conference. 1958.
______. Japan and the North-South Question ," Japan Quarterly. Tokyo. Vol.12, no. 1 January-March, 1965. p.17-26.
______. ed. and author of Preface. The Modernization of Japan. Tokyo. Institute of Asian Economic Affairs. 1966.
______. Watashi no Rirekisho (My Life). Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha, 1979. (Much of the material on Tobata was taken from the transcription of the oral translation by Matsuyo Yamamoto of this biography, with permission of the author).
Interviews with persons acquainted with Seiichi Tobata and his work.
