It doesn't really lack large swathes of flat land. Sure it might not look like Texas, but if you're telling me there isn't enough room to be running combine harvesters over large areas of land you're wrong.

Anyhow, the land influences culture, so my point still stands, if the reason for their attitude to farming practices is because there is mountains, it doesn't make much difference, people don't know any different and that's how they have operated for millennia.

Japan’s rapid depopulation is overwhelmingly happening in the countryside, because it is all toil for less pay.

Right, like as if working in Tokyo is no toil for more pay? Sorry but you don't sound very well informed to me. In general, Japanese don't get well at all, I view Japan as much more of a socialist system than people realize.

Japan's aging population problem has nothing to do with whether you live in the countryside and grow your own veggies or not, it has to do with demographics and go visit any major city and you will find a lot of elderly people there too. Of course a small village is going to be more effected than Tokyo with 30+ million people when the population is shrinking. Either way, people from Tokyo eat sushi rice from rural areas.

It’s not exactly ideal to run ultra wide harvesters on narrow terraced fields.

Until the pandemic, the statistics show net population increase in Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Osaka and substantial declines in rural areas. The work’s not any easier, but you get paid more.

I’m not saying any of this is good, but let’s not get into weird exoticism and othering based on some idyllic vision of Japan.

So you know, I am from rural Japan, so I'm not coming at you with just an idyllic view and many farmers I know range from age 25-90. No one is doing it tough, or breaking their body here. Mostly it's a fairly relaxing lifestyle, especially in mid-summer while farmers are mostly just tending to crops.

Young people move to Tokyo because why not? However, you might be surprised to know that where I live there is actually a housing crisis because so many people are trying to find a house here after re-evaluating their life since the pandemic.

Also don't try and tell me everything is a rice terrace because it's not, there are plenty of crops being grown on large flat plains. That's just some kind of idealistic view you yourself have.

I do find this farming is just back breaking "toil" myth really interesting, it comes up a lot on HN, especially in the context of automation. Kind of the quintessential justification for everything. There is farming smart and there is farming stupid. Experienced farmers I know don't do a lot of work and are producing more food than they and their families consume.

My opinion, a lot of the farming horror stories come from uneducated populations having to farm without proper training and resources and farming in harsh environments.