Nou-huku-renkei is a rapidly emerging endeavor in Japan that attempts to link farming and social welfare programs. Despite its growing recognition in the country, this Japanese version of social/care farming campaign has rarely been investigated in social science literature abroad. This paper is intended to analyze the non-huku-renkei movement with the lens of “assemblage thinking,” which has recently drawn significant attention of rural sociologists and geographers to incessant processes combining diverse elements and actors including humans and non-human, transcending variegating spaces and domains, and creating temporal stability and re-assembling of elements. Methodologically, our study combines analyses of policy documents with case studies of nou-huku-renkei enterprises based on in-depth interviews with key-informants. Unpacking the historical trajectory that social or care farming endeavors in Japan, including the nou-huku-renkei have taken, the document analysis reveals that despite its simple term “renkei,” or linking, of farming and social welfare, the nou-huku-renkei campaign seems to imply and incorporate more. It now encompasses attempts to tackle a myriad of challenges facing Japan’s rural and social welfare sectors, such as dearth of younger workforce in farms, social exclusion of and scant employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities or other challenges. It therefore arguably transcends, connect, and assemble varying and even contradicting elements from different politico-administrative-institutional domains and agencies (e.g., Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery and Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare), spaces (e.g., rural and urban), and norms and values (e.g., neoliberalizm including entrepreneurship and self-help, and orientation to welfare-state and social inclusion). The analysis, in particular the case studies of organizations that hire disabled individuals for agricultural production, confirms that nou-huku-renkei endeavors are indeed assembling of a range of elements, institutions, and norms. For instance, disabilities and characteristics of hired individuals vary enormously; technical and financial supports for production and marketing of products as well as care for hired individuals come from different sources. While some nou-huku-renkei enterprises are to stay more or less competitive and entrepreneurial in market, other organizations pursue more care and social-inclusion. Although operations of the relatively successful cases seem stable, their activities are in fact incessant adaptation to changing elements. The assemblage thinking thus helps illuminate such bumpy processes (re)assembling variegating elements into social farming with temporal and apparent stability.
