Though there are many studies on Japanese agricultural productivity, studies in relation to efficiency of Japanese agriculture are very few. In this study an attempt is made to measure the technical efficiency and technical change in Japanese agriculture from 1965 to 1995. Both data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) methods are used to measure the efficiency. We obtained a consistent result between these two analyses. We also found that a fair amount technical progress existed, but at the same time technical efficiency declined in these thirty years. Prefectures which have large-scale rice farming such as Hokkaido, Niigata, Ishikawa, and Toyama possess high technical efficiencies. Also, prefectures which are near big cities such as Tokyo, Kanagawa and Aichi possess high technical efficiencies. On the other hand, cold, mountainous and less populated prefectures such as Iwate, Tottori and Shimane possess low technical efficiencies. Also, we found that technical efficiency diverged rather than converged over these 30 years.