Exceptionnelle rose japonaise : entre résilience et banalisation

In Japan, the production of cut flowers more specially cut roses, although very scattered on tiny farms, ensures the country’s self-sufficiency. Why does such a fragmented production persist and ensure the country’s self-sufficiency? In Japanese studies, the temptation is very much on insisting on cultural singularity and its capacity to domesticate external models as the foundation of the Japanese construction, and this since its antiquity. Other easy explanations would be to rely on archipelicity, nationalism or protectionism, which approach the truth but do not exhaust the truth. Indeed, this would be to forget political factors linked to the history of Japanese democracy which draw power relations between economic sectors and social groups. But this exception seems to be threatened by the decisions of the Abé government and its successors to liberalize the agricultural sector and open the borders to imports.