4-H’s education programs powered such rural-urban migration, not least through a bundle of “life reform” programs that promised to uplift women. After 1945, the three largest campaigns were kitchen improvement, better nutrition, and bookkeeping education. That these campaigns led to migration was not hidden either. Girls and young women were encouraged to “urbanize” (toshika) their homes, to eat like people in cities, and ultimately, to seek work as bookkeepers.
Their experience reflected a national trend: young women were the largest demographic cohort in early postwar urbanization. Once in the city, many then became “free” to work twice as much, adding formal employment, especially in secretarial and data-processing jobs, to housework if they married. They were also made “free” of assets, as many women left behind stakes in family businesses or land. These large transitions, though, were made possible by myriad smaller transformations, of the kind 4-H worked for daily.
The American and Japanese bureaucrats responsible for 4-H in this period recognized that its work powered out-migration and considered that a knock-on benefit. They believed it inoculated the countryside against communism if only a few highly skilled farmers remained, while everyone else moved to the city, starting with women.