Welcome to the blog of the research project “Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan”. This project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and started in October 2020. Professor Cornelia Reiher (PI) and her team from the Institute of Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin investigate the impacts of urban-rural migration on rural revitalization in Kyūshū, Japan’s most southern main island. In this blog, our group will give insights into the research process and progress, present first results, share information about our field sites and on related projects and publications. It also features guest contributions by students, PhD students, colleagues and practitioners from Freie Universität Berlin, Japan and universities around the world who work on related projects focusing on urban to rural migration and rural Japan. The editor of this blog is Professor Cornelia Reiher.
Across Japan, rural prefectures are searching for new residents. Decades of population decline, rapid ageing, and the migration of younger generations to metropolitan areas have left many communities struggling to sustain local economies and social life. Yet this demographic challenge is not only about shrinking populations. Rural regions have also experienced the disproportionate outmigration of young women, creating imbalances that affect labor markets, family formation, and the long-term vitality of local communities. In response, prefectural governments have increasingly promoted urban-to-rural migration as a solution, presenting the countryside as a place where people can build more fulfilling lives.
One way prefectures promote rural migration is through dedicated migration websites. Alongside practical information on housing, jobs, and financial support, these websites feature interviews with people who have already relocated. Their stories present rural life as an attractive alternative to the pressures of Japan’s major cities, characterized by meaningful work, close-knit communities, and a slower way of life. While they are undoubtedly promotional, they also offer valuable insights into the lifestyles and values that rural revitalization campaigns aim to promote. The interviews with women are particularly interesting because they bring together two broader developments. On the one hand, lifestyle migration is commonly understood as a voluntary move motivated by the search for a different quality of life rather than economic necessity (Klien 2020). On the other hand, expectations surrounding childcare, care work, and family responsibilities continue to shape women’s lives in Japan despite broader social and economic change (Ono 2015).
The migration stories published by Kōchi Prefecture offer an opportunity to explore how these two dynamics intersect: the pursuit of a new lifestyle and the persistence of gendered expectations. Kōchi Prefecture is a particularly suitable case in this context. Located on the island of Shikoku, it is one of Japan’s fastest-ageing and most rapidly depopulating prefectures (Statistics Bureau 2025). At the same time, Kōchi has invested heavily in attracting newcomers through relocation support and an extensive online platform featuring interviews with migrants. These interviews do more than document individual experiences, they present an image of the kind of life that rural Japan seeks to make attractive.
In the interviews, migration is rarely presented as an economic decision. Instead, the women describe leaving urban life because they wanted something fundamentally different. Long working hours, exhausting commutes, and rigid corporate structures are contrasted with greater autonomy, stronger community ties, and the opportunity to organize everyday life differently. Lower living costs are occasionally mentioned, but they remain secondary to broader aspirations for a more meaningful and self-determined life. Migration is therefore presented less as a change of location than as a conscious reorientation of lifestyle. A similar pattern can be observed in the descriptions of work. Rather than abandoning professional ambitions, the women often redefine them. Entrepreneurship, freelance work, portfolio careers, and the combination of several occupations appear as opportunities to pursue personally meaningful work while contributing to local communities. Professional success is measured less through upward career mobility than through autonomy, flexibility, and a stronger connection between work and everyday life.
Yet these narratives also reveal that changing one’s lifestyle does not necessarily mean leaving gendered expectations behind. Instead, they suggest that traditional roles are not simply rejected but renegotiated. For women with children, rural migration is frequently associated with creating a better environment for family life. One interviewee describes moving to Kōchi to raise her children closer to nature while gaining greater freedom in shaping their upbringing. At the same time, childcare and care work remain central to her everyday life, even as migration enables greater professional flexibility through self-employment. Here, migration expands personal agency without fundamentally replacing established caregiving roles. Other stories point towards different forms of transformation. One woman embraces activities such as hunting, while others pursue entrepreneurial projects or careers that challenge more conventional expectations of femininity. Nevertheless, these narratives consistently emphasize women’s contributions to community life, social relationships, and local revitalization. Rather than disappearing, gender expectations appear to be reshaped to fit the ideals of rural living: women are portrayed as independent and self-determined, yet also as active carers, community members, and contributors to local society.
Taken together, the interviews suggest that rural migration is neither portrayed as a complete break with traditional gender roles nor as their straightforward continuation. They do not depict rural migration as either a complete break with traditional gender roles or their straightforward reproduction. Instead, they present gender as something continually negotiated. Women gain greater freedom to shape their careers, everyday routines, and personal identities, while expectations surrounding family, care, and community remain remarkably resilient. Migration thus creates new possibilities without entirely escaping existing social norms. At the same time, these interviews should not be read as neutral accounts of everyday life. Published on an official migration website, they form part of Kōchi Prefecture’s strategy to attract new residents. At the same time, this makes the interviews valuable sources for understanding how rural migration is presented to potential newcomers. The interviews not only showcase successful migration experiences; they also construct an image of the “ideal” rural migrant. In doing so, they communicate a vision of rural Japan in which personal fulfilment, community engagement, and gendered expectations coexist. Looking beyond their role as success stories therefore offers valuable insight into how rural revitalization is imagined and marketed in contemporary Japan.
References
Klien, Susanne. 2020. Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-Growth Society: SUNY Press. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781438478074/html.
Ono, Mayumi. 2015. „Descending from Japan: Lifestyle mobility of Japanese male youth to Thailand.“ Asian Anthropology 14 (3): 249–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2015.1117220.
In April 2019, the Japanese government passed the Act on Promoting Measures to Realize a Society in Which the Pride of the Ainu People is Respected. The law marked the first official policy that legally recognized the Ainu as Indigenous people and that sought to improve the condition of the Ainu nationwide. This was intended to be achieved through the promotion of Ainu culture to increase tourism, especially through the construction of the National Ainu Park Upopoy. The strategy of marketing a local craft to stimulate tourism to struggling rural areas of Japan has been used for many years in the name of rural revitalization (Reiher 2010). Therefore, by promoting Ainu culture and building Upopoy, rural areas across Hokkaido with traditional Ainu villages may see an increase in tourism, thus working to revitalize said areas, improve the economic conditions of the Ainu living there and bring more people in contact with Ainu culture. However, the law’s sole focus on cultural promotion was perceived as a performative gesture ahead of the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo, to draw attention away from questions of legal rights for Ainu as legally recognized Indigenous people (Zaman et al. 2022: 10, Komai 2022: 158) Furthermore, the reliance on tourism to improve economic conditions has been an ongoing criticism for decades (Dubreuil 2007: 41). In this post, I will explore whether cultural promotion successfully leads to a more accepting society for Ainu and discuss why the cultural promotion policies fall short.
The Ainu are an Indigenous people native to northern parts of Japan, including Hokkaido, the north of the main island Honshu, and the Kuril and Sakhalin Islands. Due to the oppressive force of assimilation policies in the late 19th and into the 20th century, many Ainu today hide their heritage, which makes it difficult to estimate how many Ainu live across Japan today. This is due to the Former Natives Protection Act (FNPA) of 1899 effectively tying Ainu recognition to living in Ainu settlements in Hokkaido. The policy that replaced it, the Ainu Cultural Promotion Act of 1997, reinforced this belief of Ainu being a “regional issue”, as well as setting a narrow definition of what constitutes Ainu culture eligible for promotion. After the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was formally adopted in 2007, the Japanese government committed itself to drafting a new law for the Ainu. However, the 2019 Ainu Policy Promotion Act focused once more on culture and tourism above all else (Zaman et al. 2022: 10). Eleven of the 40 articles are concerned with the development and construction of the National Ainu Museum and Park Upopoy (Tsunemoto 2019). Notably, of the 660 million yen in grants tied to the APPA, 470 million yen were given to tourism and industrial promotion projects, while the promotion of understanding of Ainu culture and tradition, and the preservation of Ainu culture only received 20 million yen each.
The park Upopoy was planned to open alongside the Olympics, giving many the impression that the focus was more on tourism and presenting a favourable image to the world rather than celebrating Ainu culture. Interviewed prior to the opening, one Ainu worried Upopoy would become a theme park. If visitors were to see only art and performances, without being given context of Ainu history and oppression, “it would be like a zoo” (Asahi Shimbun 29.10.2019). The sanitized version of history presented at Upopoy and the complete lack of references to contemporary discrimination remain a point of criticism to this day. Kitahara Jirota of Hokkaido University argues in 2021: “Without necessary context, people just see something culturally interesting” (The Economist Asia 26.06.2021). According to its own website, the objective of the National Ainu Museum is to raise awareness of Ainu history and culture, which are supposed to be explored from an Ainu perspective (Upopoy 2019). Notably, the descriptions of Ainu culture and way of life focus heavily on the past, with no mention of contemporary Ainu lives, art or cultural developments in sight. This gives the impression that Ainu are separate from modern society. By analysing the language use, framing of the Ainu, and selective historical recounts on Upopoy’s website, one gets the impression that a purposeful effort is made to rewrite/reframe Ainu-Japanese history, while borrowing legitimacy by claiming to represent the Ainu’s perspective.
On the website, Ainu culture is repeatedly described as being “under threat” or “on the verge of extinction”, yet no mention of the reason for this – namely the assimilation policies of the Meiji era – is made. The comparison to the website of the previous Ainu Museum shows that the intention of Upopoy is not to present Ainu history from an Ainu perspective. The Ainu Museum Porotokotan was an Ainu-run museum at the same location, which closed in 2018 to make way for the National Ainu Museum at Upopoy (AMPK 2019a). Porotokotan’s webpage for Ainu history directly names the assimilation policies and talks about the “oppression and exploitation of the Ainu” during the colonisation of Hokkaido. Furthermore, it plainly states that “discrimination against the Ainu still remains today and has become a major social problem” (AMPK 2019b). Despite the claim that “the spirit of [Porotokotan] lives on in Upopoy and its core facility, the National Ainu Museum” (NAM 2019), Japan’s colonial history in Hokkaido is completely absent at Upopoy.
Rather than giving the Ainu a space to share their history and culture and allowing visitors to understand the influences that still shape Ainu culture today, Upopoy commodifies the Ainu to support “a national narrative of Japaneseness”, in which they are mere “relics of nature” to be preserved by the benevolent Japan (Zaman et al. 2022: 10). Upopoy works to legitimize a version of history that minimises or outright erases the harm done to the Ainu and thus absolves Japanese society of feelings of responsibility and the need for accountability. Visitors to Upopoy are able to partake in Ainu culture, enjoy the song and dance and marvel at the kotan, without needing to contend with the ugly history of colonisation and assimilation at the hands of the Japanese which still influences the ongoing struggles of modern Ainu. Cultural promotion can be – under the right circumstances – an important tool to foster understanding and raise awareness for Indigenous issues. However, as long as the Japanese government avoids acknowledging Japan’s history of colonisation of the Ainu and works to rectify the harm done, Ainu culture promotion policies will necessarily fall short.
References
AMPK (Ainu Museum Poroto Kotan) (2019a), „Ainu Museum“, accessed via https://web.archive.org/web/20190924204840/http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/en/study/eng15.html (Zugriff am 15.04.2026).
Dubreuil, Chisato (Kitty) (2007), „The Ainu and Their Culture: A Critical Twenty-First Century Assessment“, in: The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 5 (11) S. 1-56.
Komai, Eléonore (2022), „The Ainu and Indigenous politics in Japan: negotiating agency, institutional stability, and change“, in: Journal of race, ethnicity, and politics, 7 (1), S. 141-164.
Reiher, Cornelia (2010), “Selling tradition in Japanese rural tourism,” in: Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte 28, S. 121–151.
The Asahi Shimbun (2019), „Japan builds ‘Ethnic Harmony’ tribute to indigenous Ainu“, 29.10.2019, accessed via https://web.archive.org/web/20240123121441/https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13059978 (Zugriff am 17.04.2026).
Tsunemoto, Teruki (2019), „Overview of the Ainu Policy Promotion Act of 2019“, in: Foreign Press Center Japan, S. 1-4.
Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park (2019), „Facility Information – National Ainu Museum“, https://ainu-upopoy.jp/en/facility/museum/ (Zugriff am 15.04.2026).
Zaman, Mashiyat; Charbonneau, Leni; Maruyama, Hiroshi (2022), „Critiquing the Colonialist Origins of the New National Museum Upopoy“, in: FOCUS Asia-Pacific, HURIGHTS OSAKA 107, S. 15.
Jasper Domanowski is a student in the BA program in Japanese Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Japan has faced decades of sustained population decline and ageing in rural areas, a phenomenon referred to in Japanese discourse as kaso mondai (Okada 2022, p. 210). A central driver is the ongoing outmigration of young people to the greater Tokyo area, which continuously deprives rural regions of their demographic foundation (Masuda 2013). In response, the Sōmushō (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) introduced the chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai (COKT) program in 2009. It enables people from urban areas to relocate to rural municipalities for up to three years, take on revitalization tasks, and ideally settle there permanently. The program has grown considerably since its launch, from 89 participants in 31 municipalities in its first year to 7,910 participants in 1,176 municipalities in fiscal year 2024 (Sōmushō 2025a, p. 1). Yet these figures say little about what actually constitutes the success of the program. Existing evaluations have predominantly reflected the perspective of participants, without comparing the expectations and definitions of success held by other stakeholder groups (Kuwabara 2022, p. 119). In fact, the Sōmushō, the receiving municipalities, local residents, and participants all bring fundamentally different expectations and goals to the program, and depending on which group one asks, the answer to the question of success looks quite different.
As the national funder, Sōmushō defines the program’s success primarily in terms of a measurable contribution to reversing internal migration. Participants are expected to settle permanently in their host municipality after the program ends and to establish themselves economically (Sōmushō 2026, p. 1). Since this goal is most easily expressed in quantitative terms, the ministry relies on three indicators: the settlement rate, the business start-up rate, and program scaling. According to the most recent survey, 68.9 percent of participants who completed the program between 2019 and 2023 remained in the same region, with 55.7 percent staying in the same municipality, and around 46 percent of those who stayed starting a business (Sōmushō 2025b, p. 1). All three indicators are, however, are limited, because they capture neither the long-term stability of settlement, nor the viability of businesses started, nor whether the program has actually had any effect in the participating municipalities.
Municipalities have considerable freedom in how they implement the program, but remain bound by the Sōmushō’s overarching framework. There is no single definition of success at this level. Numazakura et al. (2015a, pp. 172–173) identify three basic types of expectations. Some municipalities primarily aim for permanent settlement, others hope for an energizing impulse from outside, and others want specific tasks to be fulfilled. In practice, these types frequently overlap, which means that success at the municipal level takes the form of a community-specific profile of differently weighted expectations. Particularly consequential is the fact that many municipalities never make their definition of success explicit. They take on participants without a clear sense of what they should be doing, and frequently deploy them simply as administrative support (Numazakura et al. 2015a, pp. 164–165; 2015b, p. 101). This is also reflected in the quality of support provided. While around 95 percent of municipalities regularly exchange information with participants during their placement, this happens only on a monthly basis in around 50 percent of cases. In around 15 percent of municipalities, activity reports or regular meetings between participants and the municipal administration do not take place at all (Kuwabara 2022, p. 116). Since success on the ground always emerges from the interplay of participants, local actors, and available resources, the municipality is not merely a standard against which success is measured but also actively co-responsible for whether its own definition of success is met (Numazakura et al. 2015b, p. 112).
Local residents are those most directly affected by the consequences of depopulation. Shrinking infrastructure, school closures, the loss of medical services, and the disappearance of the labour that sustains community life shape their everyday experience (Reiher 2020, p. 237; Reiher 2025, p. 5). At the same time, they have rarely been surveyed directly on the program (Kuwabara 2022, p. 119). Existing ethnographic research suggests that residents judge participants by whether they visibly contribute to the community. In a municipality in Ōita Prefecture, older residents responded positively to younger participants because they took on tasks such as organizing festivals, helping with funerals, and maintaining communal spaces that residents themselves could no longer manage (Reiher 2020, p. 237). By contrast, residents criticized participants who, in their view, were not taking on any community tasks despite being paid from public funds (Reiher 2025, p. 5). Activities from which residents do not directly benefit tend to be seen as less of a genuine community contribution (Qu et al. 2021, p. 39). But as long as residents are not systematically surveyed across Japan, a central actor in the program remains inaccessible to both research and policy.
Participants enter the program with individual life goals. They are motivated by the desire for a better quality of life and a more meaningful daily existence, often combined with the wish to start their own business or settle permanently in a rural community (Zollet and Qu 2024, p. 5). For them, the program is a success if it enables them to build a self-determined life in the countryside, and they approach it as a preparatory phase in which they get to know the community and can make an informed decision about settling there long-term (Reiher 2020, p. 238). What participants concretely expect from their time in the program, and how they evaluate it, can be traced through the annual surveys conducted by the Japan Organization for Internal Migration (JOIN), which collect data on the motivations, satisfaction, and expectations of active participants. These data consistently show that self-realization through the activity itself is weighted most highly, above both social integration into the community and the question of what life prospects are realistic after the program ends (JOIN 2025, p. 19; Kuwabara 2022, p. 117). For participants, living and working in the countryside is a value in itself, not merely a means to the end of settling down.
Comparing the four definitions of success makes clear that no group understands success in the same way, and that even where the same terms are used, different standards are being applied. Sōmushō counts business start-ups as evidence of economic viability, while participants pursue them as an expression of self-determination (Zollet and Qu 2024, p. 5). Settlement is understood by Sōmushō as a measurable outcome at a given point in time, by municipalities as taking root socially and economically, and by participants as a possible but not primary goal. A unified definition of success is therefore structurally out of reach, since each group operates under different conditions and brings different expectations to the program (Zollet and Qu 2024, p. 10). Most urgently, the perspective of local residents needs to be made accessible through active surveys. Until that happens, their judgement on the program, the judgement of those most directly affected by depopulation, will remain largely unheard.
References
JOIN (Japan Organization for Internal Migration) (2025), “Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai no genjō to kadai — Reiwa 6-nendo chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai ankēto shūkei kekka no gaiyō” [Current Status and Issues of the Chiiki Okoshi Kyōryokutai — Summary of the Fiscal Year 2024 Survey Results], Tokyo: Ijū-Kōryū Suishin Kikō, February 2025.
Kuwabara, Yoshiki (2022), “Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai no genjō to kadai / Current Status and Issues of the Chiiki Okoshi Kyōryokutai”, in: Nōson Keikaku Gakkai-shi [Journal of the Society for Rural Planning], 41 (3), pp. 114–119.
Masuda, Hiroya (2013), “The Death of Regional Cities: A horrendous simulation — Regional Cities Will Disappear by 2040, A Polarized Society will Emerge”, in: Discuss Japan — Japan Foreign Policy Forum, No. 17–18.
Numazakura, Hitomi; Imai, Futoshi; Shikita, Mai (2015a), “Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai no sugata — Taiin, shichōson, chiiki sorezore no mesen kara (chū)” [The Picture of the Chiiki Okoshi Kyōryokutai — From the Perspectives of Members, Municipalities, and Regions (Part 2)], in: Chihō Zaimu [Municipal Finance], 736, pp. 164–180.
Numazakura, Hitomi; Imai, Futoshi; Shikita, Mai (2015b), “Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai no sugata — Taiin, shichōson, chiiki sorezore no mesen kara (ge)” [The Picture of the Chiiki Okoshi Kyōryokutai — From the Perspectives of Members, Municipalities, and Regions (Part 3)], in: Chihō Zaimu [Municipal Finance], 737, pp. 92–113.
Okada, Norio (2022), “Rethinking Japan’s depopulation problem: Reflecting on over 30 years of research with Chizu Town, Tottori Prefecture and the potential of SMART Governance”, in: Contemporary Japan, 34 (2), pp. 210–227. https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2022.2131991
Qu, Meng; Coulton, T.M.; Funck, Carolin (2021), “Gaps and Limitations — Contrasting Attitudes to Newcomers and Their Role in a Japanese Island Community”, in: Bulletin of the Hiroshima University Museum, 12, pp. 31–46.
Reiher, Cornelia (2020), “Embracing the periphery: urbanites’ motivations to relocate to rural Japan”, in: Manzenreiter, Wolfram; Lützeler, Ralph; Polak-Rottmann, Sebastian (eds.), Japan’s New Ruralities: Coping with Decline in the Periphery, New York: Routledge, pp. 229–247.
Reiher, Cornelia (2025), “(In)visible newcomers: Foreign workers and internal urban-rural migrants in Japan’s countryside”, in: Journal of Rural Studies, 114, 103561. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103561
Sōmushō (2025a), “Reiwa 6-nendo chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai no taiin-sū nado ni tsuite” [On the Number of Members of the Chiiki Okoshi Kyōryokutai in Fiscal Year 2024], 4 April 2025.
Sōmushō (2025b), “Reiwa 6-nendo chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai no teijū jōkyō nado ni kakaru chōsa kekka” [Survey Results on the Settlement Situation of the Chiiki Okoshi Kyōryokutai in Fiscal Year 2024], 4 April 2025.
Sōmushō (2026), “Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai ni tsuite” [On the Chiiki Okoshi Kyōryokutai]. https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_content/001052332.pdf (accessed 30 March 2026).
Zollet, Simona; Qu, Meng (2024), “Revitalising rural areas through counterurbanisation: Community-oriented policies for the settlement of urban newcomers”, in: Habitat International, 145, 103022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2024.103022
Paul Noah Agha Ebrahim is a student in the BA program in Japanese Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.
The literature on urban-rural migration in Japan discusses various types of migrants, including people of all ages and genders, as well as Japanese and foreign migrants. It also covers return migrants who were born and raised in the countryside, moved away and later returned, as well as new residents who live in the countryside for the first time. While our project on urban-rural migration in Kyushu has focused mainly on working-age migrants, I also met many so-called retirement migrants during fieldwork. The majority of these retirement migrants in my field sites were return migrants. Born and raised in Kyushu, they left their hometowns at a young age to attend university in a larger city, before moving to Tokyo or Osaka to work. Upon retiring, they moved back to their hometowns and into their family homes. The elderly residents I met in my field sites at local festivals, in the streets, at concerts, their businesses or at the library were in good spirits and excited to talk to me. In this blog post, I will introduce a married couple of retirement migrants that I met and describe their everyday life after returning to their hometown.
In spring 2023, I met Shintaro and Kimiko for the first time at a soba-making workshop in a community center in a small town in Kyushu. Every month, ten elderly residents of the town gather in the community center’s large kitchen to make their own soba. All of the members of the soba club are over 70 years old and retired. Some had lived in their hometown their whole lives, while others had worked elsewhere before returning after successful careers in Tokyo. They worked in insurance, as flight attendants, in IT, and as teachers. Now retired, they stay busy participating in community activities, such as organizing festivals, teaching traditional crafts and cooking classes, going to concerts at the local concert hall, and attending other community events. Most also do some part-time farming for fun.
Shintaro is the instructor who teaches participants how to make soba. During the course, he showed me how to knead the dough. After rolling the dough out first into a circle and then into a square, we began cutting it. We used a large soba knife and a wooden tool to determine the thickness of the noodles. At first, my noodles were very thick, but I got better as I went along. I was very proud of my first homemade soba noodles. Afterwards, all the participants in the course ate together and then cleaned the kitchen. They happily chatted away. Since most of the participants had known each other since childhood, they teased each other and shared gossip about mutual acquaintances. After lunch, they showed me pictures and videos of their children, grandchildren, and the latest local festivals.
After the soba course, Shintaro and Kimiko invited me to their home. The couple owns two houses on the same property, which is surrounded by fields where they grow their own vegetables and rice. They send some of the rice to their adult children, who live in the Kanto area. The couple lives in the new house. Until recently, Shintaro’s mother lived in the old house, where he grew up. Sadly, she passed away at the age of over 100. Kimiko, Shintaro’s wife, makes bamboo baskets and stores them in the old house. She showed me all sorts of bamboo baskets and bowls that she had made while attending a class. Since the teacher recently passed away, she now leads the class. The course participants go out to cut the bamboo themselves to ensure the quality of the bamboo. As fewer people are taking care of the bamboo, it is growing wild and encroaching on houses. In some cases, it is even causing houses to collapse, so people in the area are happy when it is cut down.
Shintaro and Kimiko are from the same town and met in high school. Shintaro lived in a dormitory because his high school was too far away. Kimiko attended college in Kumamoto, while Shintaro studied in Kitakyushu. They got married at 24, moved to Kansai, and started working: he in IT and she as a teacher. They then moved to the Kanto area, later settling in Tokyo. Kimiko quit her job and they had two children. Later she pursued pottery as a hobby. Their house is filled with beautiful handmade ceramics. After Shintaro retired, they returned to Kyushu while their adult children remained in the Kanto area with their families. Shintaro and Kimiko built a house next to his parents’ home to take care of them. They are “retirement U-turners,” and farming and their other activities keep them busy with attending and teaching courses. Recently, they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.
Both Shintaro and Kimiko are happy to be back in their hometown. They enjoy the slow life amidst nature, and they have the means to do so. Their participation in community activities is important for maintaining these activities and the community itself. Return migrants in their 60s and 70s play an important role in preserving local culture and activities. Unlike elderly people who have lived in the countryside all their lives and are often not wealthy, the U-turn retirement migrants have financial and other resources they can share. And they are happy to contribute and give back to their rural hometowns.
I arrive in Monbetsu on the evening of the town’s annual obon odori. Dusk lingers over the Sea of Okhotsk late in August, and the parking lot at Okhotsk Hyōmon no Eki is packed with attendees for the festivities downtown. The roadside station occupies the town’s old train station, which served its last passengers in 1989 when the Nayoro line became one of the earliest victims of Japan’s National Rail privatizations. Today, the building’s central location ensures that even without trains, it still functions as a center of local life, hosting a sentō bath and a supermarket.
Monbetsu, located on Hokkaido’s northeastern coast, is home to 19,369 residents as of January 2026, down from a peak of over 35,000 in 1970. Although Monbetsu remains a sub-prefectural administrative center and holds on to its airport – with a single daily ANA flight to Tokyo-Haneda – it faces the same structural headwinds affecting rural Japan: labor shortages, school closures, and an ever-older population. Much of Japan’s rural revitalization playbook will be familiar to readers of this blog: relocation incentives, empty-house banks, and the chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai (regional revitalization corps). Tourism also provides a vital lifeline for the town: it is famous for ryuuhyō, the majestic winter phenomenon of drift ice, and Monbetsu Marine Park, which hosts Japan’s only rescue center for seals. Thanks to these efforts, Monbetsu is faring better than many of its peers in Hokkaido.
However, the city has also made significant efforts of its own, distinguishing itself as a leader in recruiting and incorporating foreign labor migrants into local development strategies. The driving force of this is in the region’s seafood processing industry, another anchor of the local economy. Facing severe labor shortages, Monbetsu was an early adopter of the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), a national scheme that allows employers to bring in foreign workers for limited periods under the banner of “skill transfer.” Local employers also eagerly accepted the SSW program, introduced in 2019. These schemes will soon be joined—and partially replaced—by the Employment by Skill Development visa, slated for introduction in 2027, which will gradually phase out TITP while attempting to address some of its well-documented problems (for a quick summary of existing programs in a regional context, see Chung and Tian 2025).
What differentiates Monbetsu is that national initiatives are implemented locally with significant support and input from local authorities. Two city-led programs have drawn praise from the Cabinet Office, national business federations, and the Hokkaido prefectural government: the establishment of a coordinator for promoting foreign talent employment (kaigai jinzai koyō suishinin) and an internship program that matches graduates of Japanese language schools in Yokohama with local employers (for example, see Nakazono 2020). Interestingly, Monbetsu’s multicultural coexistence policies are framed not merely as social inclusion measures but also regional revitalization strategies. In prefectural reports, the city’s initiatives, such as the creation of an “international exchange salon” and efforts to include foreign residents in local festivals and neighborhood associations, are listed alongside urban–rural migration and local development programs. In other words, integration policy is being reimagined as economic policy (Hokkaido Prefectural Government, 2021).
The story of the “international exchange salon” illustrates this well. Established in 2016 in a disused area of the Monbetsu Library, the salon emerged from both bottom-up and top-down observations. A Vietnamese interpreter suggested the need for a dedicated space, and the mayor noticed foreign workers gathering outside hotels and convenience stores—even during brutal winter days—to access internet that was not yet commonplace in their dormitories. Creating the salon not only offered internet access, language support, and a warm place to gather, but also assuaged local residents’ concerns that growing numbers of foreign workers could threaten public order. In 2022, the salon was replaced by the Monbetsu International Exchange Station “Smile,” located in a renovated three-story commercial building a few blocks away that was purchased by the city. Staffed by municipal officials and volunteers, the facility includes an open free space, language-learning materials, classrooms, and an auditorium. It hosts training sessions for foreign workers and their employers, as well as cultural exchange events for the wider community. Daily use by foreign residents has declined somewhat, which officials attribute to both the new location being slightly less convenient and also to expanded internet access in dormitories. Yet “Smile” continues to function as a symbolic and practical hub – a visible sign that foreign residents are part of the town’s future. Importantly, local support has remained high, in part because many of these internationalization efforts have been funded through Monbetsu’s furusato nōzei (hometown tax donation) program rather than through local tax increases: famous for its hotate scallops, Monbetsu consistently ranks in the top 10 largest recipients of furusato nōzei (Tian 2026). The results are striking for a city of under 20,000 people. As of August 2025, more than a thousand individuals, or five percent of Monbetsu’s population, now consists of foreign residents. For a town that has lost nearly half its peak population, this shift is not trivial.
Back at the obon odori, several dozen foreign residents, some dressed in yukata with the help of local volunteers at “Smile” and others in ethnic costume, join in the dance, following the rhythm of the drums. In the background, several groups of women wearing Indonesian tudong headscarves are gathering in the Indian restaurant on the corner, which serves halal dishes and has become a popular meeting spot for the city’s foreign residents.
Monbetsu’s challenges are far from solved. Labor migration programs remain temporary and tightly regulated, and policymakers have shied away from discussions of long-term settlement. Yet on this summer evening, the town feels less like a place in decline and more like a community in transition.
Hokkaido Prefectural Government. 2021. “Reiwa San Dōnai Niokeru Chiiki Sōsei No Torikumi Jirei Examples of Regional Revitalization Initiatives within the Prefecture, Reiwa Year 3.”https://www.pref.hokkaido.lg.jp/ss/csr/68850.html.
Nakazono, Kiryuu. 2020. “Chiiki No ‘ Ninaite’ Toshite Gaikokujin Ginōjisshusei Wo Ukeireru Jinkōgenshō Jichitai No Kokoromi [The Trial of Towns with Population Decline in Accepting Foreign Technical Intern Trainees as the ‘supporting Hands’ of the Region].” Shokokinyuu 2020 (2): 43–63.
Tian, Yunchen. 2026. “Multi-level Migration Governance Configurations in Japan’s Regions”, 8th Conference of the Asian Borderlands Research Network, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Yunchen Tian (or just Tian for short) is Program-Specific Associate Professor at the Kyoto University Faculty of Law. Their primary research interests include local revitalization and governance in Japan, migration governance and politics, the political economy of migration, and theories of the state. They were recently awarded the 2023 ISS/OUP Prize in Modern Japanese Studies for their article“Workers, Neighbours, or Something Else? Local Policies and Policy Narratives of Technical Intern Training Program Participants”.
After spending five months in Japan, I returned to Europe. A recent, quite normal dinner with my partner sparked a grumbly pining for Japan. He came to visit for a few weeks, and unexpectedly, he burst out with nostalgia, saying, “I really miss Japan!” His outburst sparked a long conversation about our experiences living in Japan, our encounters with people, hurdles, food, health, and travel. The conversation kick-started my writing and brought back memories of my experiences living, working, and being in Japan. After some necessary distance between my experience-self and my researcher-self, I finally started writing. Between March and August, I had crisscrossed the country, sitting in coffee shops, staying in share houses, riding horses in the sea, while searching for foreign digital nomads in rural areas to understand how their views of Japan changed once they moved beyond familiar tourist areas. That was easier said than done. I imagined digital nomads as being at the forefront of travel, similar to how Paul Hansen (2024) describes dairy farms in Hokkaido as being at the forefront of technology. Surely, digital nomads, not wanting to be associated with tourists (Cook, 2022), are at the forefront, able to experience Japan beyond what other visitors, immigrants, and even Japanese people may experience.
Of all the things that strike me about Japan, the contrast between rural areas and urban centers stands out the most. Anyone who has exited Tokyo Station is confronted by an enormous edifice. While not necessarily tall, its immense size bulges out in all directions, defying any sense of what could possibly be inside or how it could host so many people. Given that Japan’s rural areas are losing population, one might ask why such large buildings are being constructed. This growth is nothing extraordinary in Tokyo or Sapporo. After returning from a short trip outside Sapporo, where I was based during my research stay in Japan, I noticed a new building that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. The growth of Japanese cities seems inevitable. However, I cannot stop viewing urban areas as “capitalist ruins,” to borrow an expression from Anna Tsing (2015). Urban centers grow endlessly as monocultures, absorbing people and leaving rural areas empty. Yet, behind this seemingly inevitable flow, there are movements pushing outwards. Susanne Klien (2020) has highlighted the experiences of many Japanese individuals who have moved away from the city in search of new livelihoods. Rural identities cannot be cultivated in laboratories; they are shaping a new wave of living elsewhere. I will present three stories from my research on brief encounters at crossroads where new identities are formed through ideas and experiments and show how rural Japan can become a frontier of new imaginaries.
One summer evening, Korey (a pseudonym) and I sat on the rooftop of a co-living space a few hours from Tokyo. As a digital nomad, I thought Korey could contribute something to this rural town, so I asked her what she thought she could teach this small place. But she countered, “Why should we save this place? Maybe they don’t want to be saved!” I was stunned. Why should digital nomads like her, researchers like me, or anyone else assume that we have something to teach? Korey is from Taiwan and has worked as a teacher with indigenous communities in mountain villages. She recognized that, perhaps they should teach us how to live as we only visit residents’ lives for a short while before moving on to the next place. We should be the ones learning how to live together with them. My conversation with Korey has stuck with me. Her thoughts influence how I envision rural areas. Korey and I were both at a crossroads, searching for something different: a rural livelihood and new experiences. Although we didn’t have many connections beyond those at the co-living space, digital nomads like her prefer to live life through brief encounters. Korey and I met, our paths briefly converged, and then diverged again. We haven’t stayed in touch since. Still, I imagine a kind of kinship remains between us. On her last day, we made onigiri, rice balls, from leftover rice to use as snacks. She saved one for me and left a note in the fridge, knowing our paths might never cross again. The note simply said, “Have a good life.”
I met Hibiki (a pseudonym) at the share house where I was staying in Hokkaido. I had been away for some time when she arrived. The people were always changing, and at first, we barely spoke. But after a trip to the center of the island, we realized that we were on similar life paths, both trying to forge new connections. Over the past few years, Hibiki had traveled through every prefecture in Japan. She realized that she was looking for a new home outside of large metropolitan areas. Now, in Hokkaido, she was spending a month or more looking around, supported by a state-funded program aimed at encouraging people to leave big cities. But what she mostly wanted to move away from was the heat. Hibiki detested the summer heat in Japan. Even Hokkaido was unusually hot that year. She was longing for winter! Hibiki also wanted to connect with people. While few people seemed willing to leave urban life behind, Hibiki was one of them. For her, the question was not ambition or status, but survival. The type of work didn’t matter much as long as it could be done remotely. We drove around Hokkaido together. Every so often, she would say, “Maybe I like it here,” or “Perhaps that would be nice,” pointing at houses along roads winding through national parks. We went on walking trails and spoke about everything and nothing. I felt like we had known each other for a long time, even though we had just met. However, we didn’t speak about everything. I sensed that I had crossed a boundary when I started asking about her family life and she hesitated to say anything about it. We are leaving our old selves behind. After parting ways, we exchanged LINE contacts and LinkedIn profiles. Maybe we will meet again somewhere, but that remains uncertain.
All my life, people have walked up to me and told me their life stories without much prompting, which has been both a curse and a blessing. One such encounter occurred in an onsen located just down a long, straight road from Higashikawa in central Hokkaido. This onsen sits on a small hill in a flat landscape overlooking fertile fields and the central mountain range. While sitting in the corridor waiting for my friends to finish and already feeling boiling hot, I made eye contact with the only other foreigner around. Richard, as I call him here, approached me and started telling his story almost immediately. He had moved from England, didn’t miss home at all, and was now a stay-at-home dad while his Japanese wife worked remotely for a Tokyo-based company. His Japanese seemed limited, but he had lived there for four years, if I recall correctly. He told me that he had never returned to England and had no desire to. We spoke a bit. Many people have told me that Hokkaido is not “really” Japan. I strongly disagree. Hokkaido is what Japan aspires to be. As Richard described it, the rules are more relaxed, life is calmer, and the people are more welcoming here. Winters are harsh but beautiful, and summers, which are painfully hot elsewhere in Japan, are mild. Living in Japan felt liberating for Richard. He had everything he needed around him, and he and his family seldom went to urban centers. I had heard similar stories from others I interviewed, too. Richard insisted that we exchange numbers. We exchanged numbers and left, thinking we would meet again, but we never did. Although our paths crossed briefly, this sense of liberation defines Japan—a place at the frontier. I hope we meet again someday!
Rural life in Japan is a frontier of new imaginaries, which are the simplified narratives that circulate and repeat as we share stories about cultures (Salazar, 2012). These narratives are set in motion through new encounters. Together, foreigners and Japanese people are part of the making of Japan by pushing the frontier forward, forming connections that merge and split apart. These connections offer crossroads where attempts at new livelihoods unfold. Several imaginaries emerge in parallel, intersecting and breaking apart. What remains is rural change. After enduring economic downturns, Japan leaves the capitalist ruins behind and shapes its future. In my search for digital nomads, I crossed paths with Korey, Hibiki, Richard, and many others who, in different ways, were searching for something different from home. These individuals were searching for places of belonging (ibasho) (Klien & Eriksson, 2025). Rural Japan teaches the world about living with new imaginaries—places of new encounters and ongoing searches through intersecting paths. Japan’s rural areas demonstrate what alternative futures could look like—not only for Japan, but also for those of us who could follow paths leading elsewhere.
References:
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton University Press.
Hansen, P. (2024). Hokkaido dairy farm: cosmopolitics of otherness and security on the frontiers of Japan. State University of New York Press.
Salazar, N. B. (2012). Tourism imaginaries: A conceptual approach. Annals of Tourism research 39(2), 863-882.
Klien, S. (2025). Post-pandemic developments in lifestyle migration in Japan: From back-to-the-land to urbanrural? Journal of Rural Studies 114, 103505.
Klien, S. & Eriksson, A. (2025) Ibasho tourism: Rural areas as pockets of resilience or risk? Wakayama Tourism Review, 7
Axel Eriksson is a postdoctoral researcher from Sweden who recently graduated at Mid Sweden University. He was rewarded a JSPS short–term postdoctoral scholarship to be in Hokkaido University in Sapporo conducting ethnographic research across Japan to understand how digital nomads connects to rural Japan. His research focuses on how groups meet and renegotiate their livelihoods, especially through tourism and new foreigner residents.
In October, my dear friend and geographer Yoko Iijima invited me on a trip to Hokuto in Yamanashi Prefecture. She often takes her students there on geography field trips (junken). We met in the morning at Shinjuku Bus Terminal and then took the bus to Kōfu, the capital of Yamanashi Prefecture. In Kōfu, we rented a car to get to Hokuto. Hokuto is a place that is very popular with city dwellers looking to escape the urban environment. I was excited about this trip because I had previously read an article about urban-rural migration to Hokuto (Takahashi et al. 2021). After lunch featuring the local specialty hōtō, a noodle soup and popular regional dish from Yamanashi, we drove on to discover what makes Hokuto so appealing for city dwellers.
On our way to Hokuto, we first stopped in Kiyosato, a formerly popular resort town with many fairytale-like buildings, many of which now stand empty. If the weather had been better, we might have been able to see Mount Fuji from Kiyosato, but unfortunately it was cloudy that day. At the station, we discovered displays of characters from the manga and anime “mono,” which is set in various locations in Yamanashi Prefecture. Therefore, the Yamanashi Prefecture Tourism Association has incorporated the anime into its tourism promotion campaign and organized tourism events centered around the characters, such as hikes, stamp rallies, and merchandising items in collaboration with the anime series.
Hokuto is located on the border with Nagano Prefecture, and as the weather cleared up, we crossed the prefectural border to visit the famous lettuce fields on the Nobeyama Plateau. The average altitude of 1,000 m on the Nobeyama Plateau allows for favorable conditions to grow vegetables. It increases the temperature difference between day and night, and plenty of sunlight falls on the open ground. The lettuce and celery grown in this environment have the highest market share in Japan and are also highly praised for their quality. Local farmers maintain traditional farming methods on the plateau, growing vegetables and maintaining pastures in this high-altitude environment. In addition to vegetables, sheep are also raised on the Nobeyama Plateau.
After visiting Nobeyama Plateau, we headed to our accommodation for the night in Hokuto. Passing second homes where city dwellers had arrived to spend their weekend outside the city and had already lit their campfires and barbecues, we drove through Hokuto. The accommodation we stayed in was a lodge for residents of Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward. Many of Tokyo’s 23 wards own hotels, lodges, or cabins in the countryside, often referred to as “residents’ health villages,” which can be rented at low cost by residents of the ward or city (Hoy 2018). We stayed in a large 1980s hotel with a swimming pool, onsen, and other amenities on a spacious site in the mountains. Together with the predominantly elderly guests, we enjoyed the delicious yet inexpensive meals, the peace and quiet.
On the second day of our excursion, we visited a sake brewery and a winery in Hokuto. The sake brewery is located on the Koshu Kaido, one of the famous five routes connecting Edo with the outer provinces. The brewery has been producing one of Japan’s finest sakes for 300 years. The high quality of the sake is due in particular to the clear water of Mount Kaikoma, one of the highest mountains in the Southern Japanese Alps. As Yamanashi is Japan’s most traditional and well-known wine region, we also visited a winemaker, where we were able to tour the winery and taste the wine. Before returning to Kōfu Station to catch our bus back to Tokyo, we visited Senga-taki, a waterfall in the north of Kōfu. This impressive waterfall surrounded by high mountains was a fitting end to our trip.
In summary, Yamanashi Prefecture, and Hokuto-shi in particular, are interesting places with countless points of reference for comparative studies on urban-rural migration and rural revitalization initiatives in the areas of tourism and agriculture. The scenic beauty and proximity to Tokyo are just two of many reasons why Hokuto in particular is popular with urban-rural migrants and second home owners. The good water quality and favorable weather also play an important role. The above makes Hokuto especially attractive for urban migrants in their 30s and 40s who value the city as a favorable child-rearing environment. (Takahashi et al. 2021). Thank you, Yoko Iijima, for taking me there!
References
Selena Hoy (2018),“Countryside Lodges in Japan: Holidays Subsidized by Your Ward Office,” November 15th, 2018 | in Tokyo Cheapo, https://tokyocheapo.com/travel/holidays/cheap-country-getaways-tokyo/
Takahashi, Yasuo, et al. (2021), “Diverse values of urban-to-rural migration: A case study of Hokuto City, Japan,” Journal of Rural Studies 87, 292-299.
Step into a world where everyday rituals, local dialects, and the untold stories of rural Japan are preserved, celebrated, and brought to life. Welcome to the Tohoku Digital Archives, a groundbreaking project designed to safeguard the rapidly disappearing folk culture of northeastern Japan, beginning in Akita Prefecture: Tohoku digital archive homepage
Akita Prefecture, nestled in the scenic Tohoku region, faces a profound demographic challenge: it has the lowest birth rate and the highest aging population in all of Japan, with 38.5% of its total population over 65 years old. As young people migrate to metropolitan areas like Tokyo and Sendai, local folk culture—the festivals, crafts, language, and rituals that define daily life—is increasingly at risk of being forgotten. Younger residents often comment that their hometown has “nothing (nani-mo-nai),” feeling disconnected from their heritage. While many existing digital archives in Japan prioritize “high culture” (like Noh, Kabuki, or Ukiyo-e), less attention is paid to the informal expressive culture experienced in small groups—the folk culture that is the backbone of communities like Akita. Our project specifically addresses this gap, focusing on the everyday practices and beliefs of local community. The Tohoku Digital Archives is not just a repository of images; it is a participatory platform built on a philosophy of direct voices and collaborative creation.
The archive prioritizes the direct voices of local residents—the informants—over external interpretation. This is crucial in a region where different generations and groups often hold diverse, even conflicting, interpretations of their own traditions. One example is the the Kanto Festival. While some older participants adhere to the traditional belief that women should not touch the Kanto pole, fearing misfortune, younger voices are questioning the practice in the face of dwindling participation. By presenting these divergent accounts side-by-side, the archive promotes a more balanced power dynamic between researcher and research participants or between older and younger generations. The archive is also a means of empowerment. Including first-hand narratives, often accompanied by the informant’s name and picture (with consent), is a practice designed to foster a sense of identity and pride in their culture, mirroring the successful approach of institutions like the National Ainu Museum in Hokkaido.
The archive is actively created by undergraduate students from courses on gender and Japanese society. This participatory process encourages students to conduct interviews and analysis, fostering a sense of community contribution and helping them discover the value in their “forgotten” hometown. The long-term goal is to develop an educational model for elementary and high school students that uses the digital archives to improve English language acquisition and promote well-being by fostering local pride and identity. The Tohoku Digital Archives is an evolving project that seeks to move beyond traditional, static preservation. By embracing diverse voices and participatory methods, we aim to build a dynamic, inclusive system that not only preserves the cultural past of Tohoku but also shapes its future. Please visit our website and explore Tohoku Culture!
Kaeko Chiba is an Associate Professor of International Liberal Arts at Akita International University and an anthropologist specializing in Japanese culture, with a focus on class, gender, and traditional arts like the Tea Ceremony and Ikebana. Her research currently centers on the Tohoku Digital Archives to utilize participatory and methods for digitally preserving endangered folk culture and local identity in rural Japan.
Since 2010, I have been researching creative migrants—artists and craftspeople whose mobility is often guided by the pursuit of meaningful work and life. My focus has been on studio potters, practitioners who carry out all stages of production themselves, from preparing clay to firing, thus contrasting with the division of labour typical of traditional craft industries. Their impact on their host communities has led me to explore the potential of such migrants for rural revitalization in Japan and beyond.
During my master’s, I researched the life stories of two Japanese women potters who moved to Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, motivated both by dissatisfaction with the status quo of ceramics in Japan – where traditional craft fields have been male-dominated – and by a sense of adventure and curiosity about the “New World.” They were part of a larger postwar movement of Japanese artists and craftspeople to Brazil, and a case of what Benson and Riley (2009) call “lifestyle migration”, motivated by the pursuit of quality of life and self-realization, rather than economic or political reasons. Because these women worked with Japanese-style wood-firing – a process using traditional kilns that can last up to several days – they settled in rural areas of Brazil that offered easy access to clay and wood, and fewer concerns about smoke disturbing neighbours. Beyond making pottery, they engaged with Brazil’s long-standing Japanese community, taught ceramics to Brazilian youth, and founded institutions for the dissemination of craft culture (a field historically undervalued as “low-skilled labour” in Brazil). Their activities helped create communities of practice centred around Japanese styles and wood-firing, contributing to attracting tourists, ceramic practitioners, and new residents.
A parallel, albeit tiny, movement has developed in Japan since the 1960s, when Western representatives of counterculture and artists began to view non-urban areas and “the East” as sources of cultural knowledge and inspiration. As part of my doctoral thesis, I interviewed Europeans, Americans, and other non-Asians who had come to Japan to study or work with ceramics. Half of them eventually settled in rural areas of the country, often in regions with a long history of pottery. Aside from the influence that the state-promoted image of Japan as a “land of craftsmanship” had on these migrants (which illustrates the importance of traditional craftsmanship to Japan’s soft power to this day), I noticed that some of them were involved in grassroots initiatives aimed at designing a future for their communities. Leveraging local craft history, collaborative production, and transnational networks, these projects have attracted visitors, built relationships, and even encouraged migration to the Japanese countryside.
One such initiative is the Shiro Oni Artist-in-Residence (AIR), founded in 2013 by American artist Kjell Hahn in the former town of Onishi (now part of Fujioka City, in Gunma Prefecture). Hahn first came to Japan through the JET Programme in 2002, later returning to study ceramics and cycle around the country. During this time, he was introduced to Tokyo-born multimedia artist Chiaki Horikoshi, who had built a traditional anagama kiln in a mountain in Saitama, right on the border of OnishiDue to his playful and experimental approach to firing in a primitive Japanese kiln (the history of the anagama kiln dates back to 5th-century Japan, but its recent revival in Japan and beyond has strong ties to the counterculture of the 1960s), Horikoshi’s “kiln parties” became gathering places for artists, students, and people seeking an alternative lifestyle; some eventually moved to Onishi, as Kjell did.
After Horikoshi’s death, Hahn took charge of the firings in the anagama, which has now been repurposed for the Shiro Oni AIR. Although the program accepts artists working in any media (priority is given to those who can work with the local community), there are two sessions specifically for firing ceramics in the anagama kiln, and demand has been growing every year. The process, which involves close attention to the rhythms of the fire and feeding it on the clock, takes a total of five days, making it a necessarily collective activity. Artists take shifts on the site, while locals come to help, chopping wood, preparing food, driving the artists up to the kiln site (located in a mountain forest otherwise only accessible by hiking), or simply providing company during the long nights and days.
Several Shiro Oni artists return for a second or even third residency, forming deep and lasting bonds with local residents that often continue well beyond their stay – and in a few cases, even lead them to relocate to the region. Through the Shiro Oni AIR and the Kanna Art Festival (established in 2014), Onishi has come to be known as an “art town”, drawing not only visitors from Tokyo and neighboring cities but also domestic in-migrants who contribute to the revitalization of the community by opening new businesses. Together, they have fostered what Tanaka (2017) describes as a “relationship population” (kankei jinkō): individuals who sustain ongoing ties to a rural place through repeated visits, regular engagement, and continued support.
Shiro Oni is one of the case studies in my comparative research on the formation of cosmopolitan craft communities in Portugal, Brazil, and Japan. All cases revolve around Japanese-style wood-firing, a subculture defined by collective effort, experimentation, and a DIY ethos. Although the project is ongoing, the example of Onishi – and others like it – suggests a possible path for rural futures in Japan and beyond: the emergence of fluid, open communities that bring together people from diverse cultural backgrounds around shared acts of craft making that engage with the locality.
While such small-scale initiatives may not be able to halt depopulation (kasoka) or prevent the eventual disappearance (shōmetsu) of some rural settlements, they may transform how decline unfolds. Rather than being defined solely by loss, these projects can nurture new forms of conviviality that render rural degrowth – at least for a time – lively (nigiyaka) rather than desolate.
References:
Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2009). Migration and the search for a better way of life: A critical exploration of lifestyle migration. The Sociological Review 57 (4), 608–625.
Morais, L. (2025). Craft as a Tool for Individual and Collective Empowerment: A Japanese Woman Ceramicist in a Rural Brazilian Town. In D. Wood (ed.) The Politics of Global Craft. Bloomsbury (forthcoming).
“Shiro Oni Artist in Residence,” Shiro Oni Studio, accessed October 3, 2025, https://shirooni.com.
Odagiri, T. (2024). Nigiyakana kaso o tsukuru: Nōson saisei no seisaku kōsō [Creating Vibrant Depopulation: Policy Concepts for Rural Regeneration]. Nōsan gyoson bunka kyōkai.
Tanaka T. (2017). Kankei jinkō wo tsukuru: teijū de mo kōryū de mo nai rōkaruinobēshon [Creating a related population: local innovation, not settlement or exchange]. Kirakusha.
Liliana Morais (Ph.D.) is a Specially Appointed Associate Professor in the Faculty of Sociology at Rikkyo University. Her research explores the intersections of craft, transnational migration, and, more recently, rural revitalization, with a focus on Japan from a transnational perspective, based on ethnography and oral history. Before Japan, she was based in Brazil, where curated the exhibition From Japan to Brazil: The Journey of Oriental Ceramics (2012) and published the book Cunha Ceramics: 40 Years of Noborigama Kiln in Brazil (2016, in Portuguese). More recently, she has published articles on the uses of craft for regional revitalization in Japan (“Spicing Up a 150-Year-Old Porcelain Factory: Art, Localism and Transnationalism in Arita’s Happy Lucky Kiln”, 2020), Portugal (“Entangled Ruralities: Remaking a Portuguese Mountain Hamlet Through Craft and Translocalism”, 2025) and Brazil (“Craft as a tool for individual and collective empowerment: a Japanese woman ceramicist in a rural Brazilian town”, forthcoming by Bloomsbury). She is a contributing writer for Garland Magazine and a board member of the Knowledge House for Craft.
In September, I had the opportunity to visit the 2025 Osaka Expo, which took place from April 13 to October 13 under the theme “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” While world exhibitions mainly showcase nations, Japan’s municipalities and prefectures also presented themselves at the Osaka Expo. I missed the “Local Japan Exhibition” in July, which featured 43 participating prefectures and municipalities from Tohoku to Okinawa, but there was still plenty to discover.
On the day I visited the Expo, it was incredibly crowded and hot. Unfortunately, I didn’t have reservations for the pavilions, so I walked around the wooden Grand Ring and admired each country’s pavilion from the outside. Designed by architect Fujimoto Sou, the Grand Ring was constructed using a mixture of modern building techniques and traditional nuki joints, which are also used in the construction of Japanese shrines and temples. Thus, the Grand Ring itself was a tribute to traditional Japanese woodworking and was quite impressive.
Fortunately, some of the pavilions could be accessed without reservations. Among them were pavilions displaying local crafts, as well as those representing various municipalities and prefectures. First, I visited the “Earth at Night” pavilion, which displayed a giant globe made of Wajima-nuri lacquerware from Ishikawa Prefecture alongside other traditional crafts from the region. The impressive globe has a diameter of 1 m. It is a “’symbol of reconstruction’ that miraculously remained undamaged in the Noto earthquake on January 1, 2024. It is imbued with the hope of ‘conveying to the world the importance of thinking about others beyond conflict and division’.” (Japanese Association for the 2025 World Exhibition 2025).
In the Kansai Pavilion at Osaka Expo, the nine prefectures of Shiga, Kyoto, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama, Tottori, Tokushima, Fukui, and Mie had separate rooms and exhibited their diverse attractions of history, culture, sights under the theme, “The Brilliance of Kansai’s Rich History and Its Present Day”. The individual exhibits all showcased the scenery of the different prefectures, traditional crafts or local agricultural products. Shiga Prefecture brought its heritage to life through large video displays and virtual tours, featuring Shigaraki pottery, centuries-old weaving, sake brewing, and the famous fireworks over Lake Biwa. Mie highlighted its renowned Matsuzaka cotton, fine ink traditions, and local specialties such as beef, eel, and pickles. Wakayama offered a glimpse into its refined lacquerware, while Tokushima captivated with Otani ceramics and exquisite woven textiles. Together, these exhibits painted a vivid picture of Kansai as a region where history and craftsmanship are deeply interwoven with everyday life.
I also visited one of the buildings in the “Signs of Life” (Dialogue Theater) pavilion (inochi no akashi), which was produced by Kawase Naomi, the famous film director from Nara Prefecture. Two closed wooden school buildings from Nara and Kyoto Prefectures were brought to Osaka and converted into three pavilion buildings. The actual idea of the Dialogue Theater is to bring two strangers together to start a dialogue on various topics on stage. Although I was unable to attend the actual dialogues, one building was dedicated to presenting various places in Nara Prefecture. Traditional handicrafts such as porcelain, wooden sake cups, and kaya, a traditional mosquito net fabric, were on display. I learned that the history of kaya fabric in Nara dates back about 1,700 years and was brought to Japan by craftsmen from China. Kaya weaving continues today, with the fabric being used for everyday items such as multi-layered dish towels.
In the pavilion, representatives from various municipalities in Nara Prefecture distributed flyers and brochures about the sights and history of their respective municipalities. And just like at the Furusato Kaiki Fair I had visited in Tokyo a week earlier, there was information material for potential new residents. In addition to pictures of beautiful lakes and forests, arts and crafts, and local foods, these brochures contained information about financial and other support for potential urban-rural migrants. The pavilion was well attended, and visitors seemed to enjoy the pictures and objects on display and talking to the representatives of the various towns and cities from Nara Prefecture.
Overall, the display of Japanese craftsmanship and local diversity was a great opportunity for municipalities and prefectures in Japan to showcase themselves to visitors from around the world. It was also an occasion for the Japanese audience to learn about the hidden gems of their own country.
