(Kyodo) The pain of reforms advocated by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is quietly beginning to be felt by farmers who have to supplement their income with side jobs in an area of Niigata Prefecture facing the Sea of Japan once called the "kingdom of public works."
The area is the city of Ojiya in the Uonuma region, where Japan's longest river, the Shinano, runs between vast rice paddies.
It was the home district of the late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.