I mean… are we gatekeeping farms now?

Kind of. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's not quite the same thing. People I've met like that are really just rich retirees who want the cachet of being "farmers". If you successfully do subsistence that's not you.

The farmers where I live have got to be the most gatekeepy group I've ever met, BTW. I'm from a non-farming branch of an established farming family, and I get the cold shoulder - in general, not just on agricultural things.

though chickens are in the cards for next year

Do it. I had a backyard flock, they're pretty easy to manage on small scales, they'll eat many kinds of scraps and pests as a supplement, and they make more eggs than you personally can use very quickly. Do your homework first, of course, but it sounds like you get that. Honestly the most difficult part is keeping away predators, if they're in the area.

The best case scenario for being commercially successful in that way would be to network with chefs in the bigger cities

And when people make the bespoke-organic thing work, aggressive and skilled networking/sales is how they do it. It's just a really difficult, expensive way to make food, and people aren't going to appreciate that for the exact reason they think it's NBD as a career plan B. If you want to sell that stuff and make a profit you've got to be selling something else more intangible.

In Japan it might be different, though. I can't say.

The local government says I am, in any case (buying registered farmland in Japan is a process, lemme tell ya).

I bet. I'm guessing you must be ethnically Japanese for it to even be possible. If not, I can only imagine the local scuttlebutt going on about you.