"The hands of a twenty-one-year-old farm daughter in 1963. One can easily imagine the difficult work, both in the home and in the fields, that is etched in these lines. The photo attests to the continuity in rural society and farming technology from the early twentieth century through the 1950s. Not until the fruits of hight growth allowed farmers to mechanize their operations in the 1960s and afterward did the work routines of rural society change fundamentally."

From: Gordon, Andrew (Ed.). The Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.