By Vincent Heuser

As Cornelia Reiher mentioned in an earlier blog post , the small town of Arita in Saga prefecture is known as “Japan`s birthplace of porcelain”. Despite the ceramics industry being in decline for almost three decades since its prime, Arita porcelain has been maintaining its world-wide fame for centuries. In 2016, Arita porcelain celebrated its 400^th anniversary since its foundation in 1616. Three years prior to this milestone, a Creative Industries Agreement was signed between the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo and Saga prefecture. The main purpose of the settlement of this agreement was the launch of the 2016/project, which aimed to rebrand Arita ware by connecting international design and art studios with local potteries and trading companies [1].

The main part of this project consists of the artist-in-residence program (Creative Residency Arita) which was also implemented in 2016. The idea behind this program is to give artists and designers (referred to as artists from here on) from abroad the opportunity to live and work in Arita for a three-month period. The artists all have their own project related to the production of ceramic work and during their stay in Arita, they work on that project together with locals from the ceramics industry. Generally, the artists are required to finish their project before leaving Arita and a presentation is held by the end of the term at which all the artists that participated in each session introduce the results of their project to the public.

Since the project is sponsored by the Dutch government, Dutch artists and artists who are based in the Netherlands have been most frequent to participate in the Creative Residence Arita program. However, through the open call program, artists from other countries have participated in the past as well, contributing to a further internationalization of Arita town as well as to a greater variety of countries that the ceramics industry in Arita cooperates with.

Since the program started, a total of 25 artists from nine different nations have participated in the Creative Residence Arita. There is a great variety in style and purpose of the ceramic pieces of art that the different artists have produced during their stay in Arita. A feature that most pieces have in common though, is that you can tell that the artists were inspired by their experiences in Arita or generally in Japan as well as the different styles of Arita ware itself.

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the Creative Residence Arita program has been interrupted since last year. Since Japan currently does not allow foreign nationals except those with a registered address in Japan to enter the country, no new artists from abroad were able to enter the program even though the number of applicants has remained steady since the launch of the program. However, preparations to resume the program are currently in progress and hopefully the program will be restarted in the near future once it becomes possible again for the new artists to enter the country.

With the beginning of the new fiscal year in April, the administration of the program was shifted from the Saga Prefecture International Division to the Arita Town Hall Commerce and Tourism Division. The fact that all parties involved in the process of organizing and managing the Creative Residence Arita program are now based in Arita makes it possible to keep an even closer connection between the artists, the organizers and the local partners from the ceramics industry. Hopefully, these close connections will lead to an even deeper exchange between the local ceramics industry and artists from all over the world.

[1]
Creative Residency Arita, https://cri-arita.com (last viewed on June 23, 2021)

Vincent Heuser received his bachelor’s degree from Hamburg University with a thesis on “Japan after the triple disaster 2011: The revitalization of the Tōhoku area”. He currently works as coordinator for international relations (CIR) in the JET-Program at the municipal hall of Arita-chō.

by Antonia Vesting

During the winter semester of 2019/20, I studied at Waseda University’s “Transnational and Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Innovation Program” (TAISI Program) in Tōkyō and conducted fieldwork for my upcoming bachelor’s thesis. I conducted interviews with lifestyle migrants living in Miyama town, Kyōto Prefecture and one expert interview with researchers at the DIJ in Tōkyō.

Lifestyle migration can be broadly defined as “the relocation of people within the developed world searching for a better way of life” [1]. In Japan, one further distinguishes between U-turn migration (returning to one’s rural hometown or area) and I-turn migration (moving to a place far away from one’s hometown or the home of one’s parents). In my research, I focused on l-turn migrants.

In 2016, I had spent three months studying Japanese at a Japanese Language School in Kyōto. Through my landlady, who is a Miyama l-turner herself, I was able to visit Miyama several times and was impressed by the innovativeness of individuals and groups who addressed problems such as abandoned woodlands, spreading monocultures and local infrastructural deficiencies. Thus, I became interested in the interconnection of sustainability and innovation of lifestyle migrants in Miyama and later chose this as a topic for my bachelor’s thesis.

My former landlady and friend introduced me to three Miyama I-turners and one I-turner and her friend, a long-term visitor reorienting herself after taking a break from work. After getting in contact with possible interlocutors, during a trip to Miyama in early February, I came back to conduct interviews in March 2020. I was accompanied by my professor for rural development at Waseda.

The results of my research confirmed many findings of the existing literature about lifestyle migration to rural Japan. When it comes to the relocation process, surprisingly, social media did not play a major role for my research participants. For them, connections to locals, as well as other I-turners, companies and other institutions in Miyama were more important. One also received financial support. Adjusting to simpler living standards was not easy for everyone and I wondered whether this is especially the case for older lifestyle migrants.

The interviews also showed that social networking and good relations with locals are the key for a successful life in Miyama. The newcomers actively try to participate in community life by presenting their ideas and visions. They think about their own future and the future of their community and actively and creatively engage in solving problems, often taking sustainability into consideration. However, obstacles remain as newcomers struggle to present their ideas to locals and implement them.

Migrants not only make use of local (traditional) resources and use them in new ways to create a path to the future, but they also use resources from the cities, thus building networks between rural and urban areas. At times they are entrepreneurial and innovative, but in most cases, it is not discernable that their entrepreneurial activities promote social change. Nevertheless, I-turner contribute to sustaining their community.

If I-turners choose to remain in one location in the long-term depends on how long they have already been settled there and how the region and living conditions change in the future. Miyama attracted new residents through its relative proximity to Kyōto – even though it is only accessible by car or bus – and rich natural and cultural amenities suggesting a specific way of life. But depopulation, neglect or climate change affect the satoyama landscape. There is still a lot to be done to preserve Miyama’s attractiveness.

[1]
Benson, Michaela / Karen O’Reilly (2009): „Migration and the search for a better way of life: a critical exploration of lifestyle migration”. In: Sociological Review 57 (4), p. 609.

Antonia Marie Vesting is a MA student in Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She received her bachelor’s degree from Hamburg University with a thesis on “Lifestyle-Migration, Sustainability and Innovation in rural Japan: An Exemplary Case Study of a Community in Kyōto Prefecture.”

by Jyoti Vasnani

Vacant houses, or akiya, are one of the ways that Japan’s shrinking population has become visible in its landscape. This is especially so in rural areas, and this visibly empty space highlights the need for revitalisation in rural Japan. 

Akiya have been increasing across Japan over the years. Although the term “akiya” encompasses vacant buildings such as homes for sale or rent, it is akiya which have been essentially abandoned altogether that are a point of concern for both policymakers and citizens. Often, homes become vacant due to the death of the owner. If there is no one indicated clearly as an inheritor, or if the inheritor lives elsewhere and fails to maintain the building (due to the distance, expense, or lack of interest, for example), the home falls into disrepair and becomes a problem for the community. This is common in rural areas. 

Such unmaintained akiya can be a liability to the municipalities they are in, due to the financial costs and impact on third parties (such as the residents in the neighbourhood) of having a precarious house in the area. Not only are they dangerous and a potential spot for pests, they also may affect the scenery, which can deter people from moving in to the neighbourhood.  

Most municipalities, from small villages in Kyushu to the wards of Tokyo, have schemes to help mitigate the rise of akiya. This includes financial support for renovating and selling the structures, as well as the maintenance of so-called “akiya banks,” or databases of vacant houses. Some communities, however, have also begun to think of community-related solutions to the akiya ‘problem’. For example, in Yoshino, Nara, the akiya bank works with the “Live in Yoshino” project (sunde yoshino jigyō), which promotes migration to Yoshino*. It also works in conjunction with a resident group that runs a guesthouse that provides “trial living” to people interested in moving to Yoshino.  

In this manner, rural municipalities convert a problem: the increasing number of vacant houses, into a solution for another problem: attracting newcomers as a countermeasure to depopulation.  

Take, for example, Amakusa City, a remote municipality on the western edge of Kumamoto, which was formed by the amalgamation of the city of Hondo and a number of small fishing villages in 2006. It currently has a population of 78,820 [1], and is best known for Sakitsu, a picturesque hamlet designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2018 along with other sites of Japan’s Hidden Christians in Nagasaki, and which attracts tourists.  

Amakusa City hosts a website devoted to attracting new residents [2]. In fact, it is one of the more robust local government-led websites that can be found on local efforts to use akiya to attract new community members. The website’s akiya bank lists available properties (not limited to residences), and it features successful stories of people who have moved to Amakusa, some of whom have started businesses using vacant shops. Such efforts help relieve the worries of potential residents who may not know what to expect from the rural lifestyle. All of these are part of the efforts that Amakusa is taking to encourage people to permanently migrate to their city.   

When I visited Amakusa in 2018, I visited a shop (Figure 3) which was remodelled from a vacant house. It seemed to have been run by a local—nevertheless, it had media coverage and was widely visited, showing that it is possible for a successful business to run out of a vacant property [3]. When I spoke with the owner, he mentioned that he scouted the property and renovated it himself. The owner of Amakusanta, another store located in a remodelled akiya in Sakitsu, learned about the property via a friend who was maintaining it. This could point towards an alternative method of making use of akiya—finding out about it through local, informal means in addition to the information available online officially via the akiya bank—that is not visible to a researcher without fieldwork and getting to know the locals. 

*For more information on Yoshino: http://www.town.yoshino.nara.jp/chosei/keikaku/akiyaproject/

[1]
Amakusa City (2020). Amakusa-shi Tōkeisho (Reiwa 2 nendo) [Statistical Documentation for Amakusa City (for 2020)]. Retrieved from https://www.city.amakusa.kumamoto.jp/kiji0036844/index.html

[2]
Amakusa Web no Eki (n.d.). Amakusa Raifu [Amakusa Life] (Accessed 9 June 2021). Retrieved from https://inaka.amakusa-web.jp/

[3]
Shimoda Kōhī-ten (n.d.). In Facebook [Business page] (Accessed 9 June 2021). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/shimodacoffee/

Jyoti Vasnani was a BA student, who graduated from the National University of Singapore in January this year. She has a strong interest in akiya and what communities are doing to make the best out of these spaces, and wrote her thesis on the topic of akiya and place-making.

by Sachiko Ishihara

Hej from Sweden! This is Sachiko Ishihara here, a PhD student at Uppsala University, researching about moving to the countryside in Japan, focusing on two remote islands, Yakushima (Kagoshima prefecture) and Goto (Nagasaki prefecture).

I have just gotten back from another visit to Värmland. One of the rare personal benefits for me from the pandemic has been to be able to spend more time in the countryside. Not in Japan, as I had planned for my fieldwork, but in Sweden, at my partner’s family country house in Värmland, in the western side of Sweden. Throughout this pandemic year, we have gone to do work online from the countryside, parallel to the discussions of teleworking in Japan [1].

In my research, I have been interviewing people who moved to Yakushima and Goto. Now that I can’t be in Japan to have a personal experience of Yakushima and Goto at the moment, I think about my own experience of being in Värmland in a new light. Perhaps I can get new insights and have more to relate to them from my experiences here? Although the contexts are different, I am from the city going to the countryside by choice, too. I am not moving there permanently, but more going back and forth, like the idea of kankei jinkō that Maritchu Durand introduced in an earlier blog post.

A barrier: dialects. Even though my conversational Swedish is quite good when talking to people from Uppsala and Stockholm, I notice that I can barely have a short conversation with the neighbors, struggling to understand their Värmland dialect. I remember that my interviewees, coming from outside the regions of Yakushima and Goto, told me that they also occasionally had trouble understanding local dialects once they moved there. For me, this hinders me from trying to communicate with the neighbors. I wonder how my interviewees in Japan deal with this.

In the winter when we were there in Värmland, we used the woodfire stove to cook. For me, it was the first time and it was something I wanted to try since I had stayed with a family in Yakushima during my fieldwork who only used woodfire stoves to cook. In the house in Värmland, they had preserved the old stove, but for daily cooking we used the electric cooking stove.

It was fun to cook with firewood, although needless to say, it is quite a lot of work to do every day. While we were there, news came from Texas about their blackouts [2]. No power in the freezing winter meant that some people froze to death. Since I grew up my initial nine years in Texas and my brother and his partner still live there, this news hit close to home. And although the Texas issue involves complexity I cannot unpack here, for me the woodfire stove symbolized securing resilience, to be able to keep warmth and to cook, even if the larger system fails somehow.

In May, we also started planting some vegetables in the garden. As many of my interviewees in Japan also engage with farming, I think of more questions to ask next time that relate to concrete farming practices, the many decisions you make from tilling, buying seeds, composting and fertilizing, and beyond.

*

These are only fleeting reflections about my life in rural Sweden during the pandemic, but maybe they will bring me closer to my interviewees and to Yakushima and Goto somehow. Even if I am on the other side of the world.

[1]
Japan Times (2021, May 3): “Japan to promote relocations outside Tokyo without changing jobs”, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/05/03/business/relocations-outside-tokyo/ (accessed June 1, 2021).

[2]
The guardian (2021, February 18): “Anger mounts over Texas power blackouts as icy cold maintains its grip”, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/17/texas-power-blackout-weather-cold (accessed June 1, 2021).