by Chris McMorran

Kurokawa Onsen is a rare bright spot in Japan’s countryside. Since the mid-1980s, it has become one of the country’s best-known hot springs resorts. Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19 and its disastrous impacts on tourism worldwide, this tiny village of a few hundred permanent residents annually welcomed nearly a million visitors who soaked in the springs, purchased souvenirs, stayed at inns (ryokan), and enjoyed the rural landscape.

Located in the center of Japan’s third-largest island, Kyushu, Kurokawa features a few dozen inns, shops, cafes, and homes gathered along the Tanohara River. There is no railway access, so all guests arrive by car or bus on winding mountain roads. Depending on the season, Kurokawa is covered in snow, exploding with the colors of flowers and foliage, or cooler than the sweltering cities below. For most of the year, however, it floats in a sea of green. Straight rows of plantation forests, primarily Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica, or sugi), line the hillsides, while in the heart of the hamlet, mixed deciduous and coniferous species stand amid flowering shrubs that envelope structures and decorate roadsides. Dark wooden signs with Japanese and English script point to businesses, and all buildings follow a similar pattern: built one to three stories high and painted beige or dark mustard, with black roofs and trim. The overall effect gives Kurokawa a timeless quality; vaguely traditional, but not from any specific era.

Most visitors begin at the tourist information center, where they collect maps and ask which outdoor baths to try. Since the late 1980s, the resort’s unique selling point has been a wooden pass, called nyūto tegata, that allows entry to three outdoor baths (rotemburo) at any of the 25+ inns. Between baths, visitors stop by the shop selling locally distilled spirits or café that sells cream puffs, all while photographing themselves next to the tree-lined river and in front of the picturesque inns and shops.

In addition to tourists, Kurokawa has attracted academics, planners, landscape architects, designers, and this Geographer. From 2006-07 I worked at a handful of inns (ryokan), washing dishes, scrubbing baths, and vacuuming tatami mats. In fact, I often welcomed guests and accompanied them through this landscape for the first time. At one inn I drove guests from the bus stop to our inn. My passengers frequently commented that Kurokawa was so nostalgic (natsukashii) and that it felt wonderful to be surrounded by nature. At another inn I swept the paths and parking lot and greeted guests. As I carried luggage through the tunnel of trees to the lobby, guests remarked how lucky I was to work in this beautiful landscape.

In 2007, Kurokawa even received the Japan Institute of Design Promotion’s “Good Design Award,” in recognition for its nostalgic village landscape that “at a glance appears undesigned” (S&T Institute of Environmental Planning and Design 2008, p. 34). In fact, this landscape has been carefully designed to give this effortless appearance. And the efforts are continuous, through activities like tree-planting and design principles established and followed by local business leaders. I have written about these efforts elsewhere, including how, through their active landscaping, local residents embody the rural ideal they aim to produce for tourists (McMorran 2014).

I consider this landscape evidence of the potential of rural Japan to revitalize and thrive in the future. At the same time, I find this landscape problematic for how easy revitalization seems. I put it this way: “Kurokawa’s landscape narrative implies that Japan’s twentieth century story of rural depopulation was not the result of the systematic prioritization of urban development at the expense of the countryside, and that any rural village could be revitalized if only residents were sufficiently cooperative, interdependent, hard working, and innovative” (ibid., p.13). The reality, of course, is that not every village that hopes to revitalize can reproduce Kurokawa’s success. Every place will face unique challenges and must design its own future, and larger structural forces – continued out-migration, demographic decline, increased risk of natural disasters due to climate change – will make revitalization increasingly difficult.

References

McMorran, C. 2014. “A Landscape of ‘Undesigned Design’ in Rural Japan,” Landscape Journal. 33(1), pp. 1-15.

————– 2022 (Forthcoming). Last Resort: mobilizing hospitality in rural Japan. University of Hawai’i Press.

ST Kankyō Sekkei Kenkyūjo. 2008. Kurokawa Onsen no fūkeizukuri (Total landscape design of Kurokawa Onsen).” Fukuoka: ST Kankyō Sekkei Kenkyūjo.

Chris McMorran is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore. He is a cultural geographer of contemporary Japan who researches the geographies of home across scale, from the body to the nation. His is the author of Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan (2022, University of Hawai’i Press), an intimate study of a Japanese inn, based on twelve months spent scrubbing baths, washing dishes, and making guests feel at home at a hot springs resort. He also co-produces (with NUS students) “Home on the Dot,” a podcast that explores the meaning of home on the little red dot of Singapore.

by Shilla Lee

In this blog post, I wish to share a story about a person that I met during my fieldwork.

My first day in Tamba Sasayama was in the middle of a hot and humid summer. Although it was a momentous day that set off my official fieldwork after months of preparation, I was sober from any emotional moments. The intense sunlight hit on everything from gray pedestrian roads to plastic benches at a bus stop, and as I stood under the steamy sun waiting for the host of my first two weeks stay at a central town area, my dreamy thoughts about life in rural Japan were melting on the ground.

A kei-tora (light truck) stopped just before the bus stop. An old lady with long-braided hair wearing an interesting combination of patterned shirt with patterned pants jumped out of the car. “Sheera-san”, she called me. I replied, saying her name with a question mark. 

It was a short ride about 15 minutes to her house, but she was already giving me so much information about the region such as places to eat out and visit. I told her how everything seems yukkuri (restful) as I stared at the tranquil views of vast fields and mountains outside the window. However, she was too honest a person to agree with everything I said, although I was a guest. She said that such a first impression does not last long if one tries living in this beautiful landscape. She was originally from a big city in the Kansai area before relocating to a small neighborhood close to the Sasayama Castle area three years ago, and it seemed that she had already gone through a phase of ‘de-idealization’ of rural life.

Her place was an old house built in the Showa period which, according to her, was almost 100 years old. However, there was no sign of rustiness. Flowers and trees at the entrance were in perfect shapes and the house seemed like a replica at museums. I sat in a tatami room on the first floor. She offered me a cold drink with tsuke-hana (pickled flower leaves), saying that it will cool me down. The first few days at her place were by no means easy. The house got dark around six or seven in the afternoon and fuzzy lightbulbs could not keep up with my late-night activities. In the morning, I was awake before the sunlight fully entered my room due to the sound of sweeping in the front yard.  

Apart from a new routine that changed my body rhythm, her old house felt comfortable enough to help me focus on my research. I was her first guest and she sometimes offered me things that I would not expect from a host of a guesthouse. I was fed full Japanese breakfasts, a cup of tea, and snacks, which were all free of charge. She treated me like her niece and took me to local sites or get me old books that she thought might be helpful for my research.

On a Monday, she suggested giving me a ride to Tachikui, a pottery village in the South-west of Tamba Sasayama. By then, we had formed a good relationship over rounds of beer talk at night, and our conversation was much livelier and more open. While driving, I asked her what it is like to live in Tamba Sasayama as an outsider. She said that inaka (countryside) life has not been treating her so well. She had a part-time job at a local grocery store that sells homegrown agricultural products. Although her work was quite demanding and the pay unimpressive, she was content with her current economic activities. However, having a social life was a challenge for her. The fact that she is an unmarried single woman in her 60s living alone in a big house of her own had somewhat prevented her from building a neighborly relationship with her next doors. She said that people think there should be a reason behind her relocation to the countryside, something uncanny and unconventional. She could not understand why people are so prejudiced about an old female migrant living alone and refered to them as heisai (closed). She said that it has been long enough since she moved into the neighborhood, but she still has no one around that would celebrate her birthday. I knew that she was exaggerating to a certain extent since she did have a group of friends in town. However, her feeling of loneliness seemed to derive not from the physical absence of friends but the general social atmosphere in the area that excluded anyone with a background like hers.

When my two weeks stay was coming to an end, she asked whether I would want to stay longer. I was tempted but I knew that I had to move to a new place where public transportation services were more convenient, and I eventually left her house after finding an apartment close to the train station. She drove me to my new home, and I promised her to visit her from time to time.

A few months later, on one quiet day at the end of December, she invited me to a year-end gathering at her house. I put on one of my best clothes and walked to her place thinking that I might be drinking more than usual. At the kitchen table were different kinds of appetizers to go with beer and they seemed enough for a group of people, but I soon realized that I was the only one invited. I asked whether she is seeing her family or friends. She shook her head. But we had enough stories to consume all the food she prepared. She had much to share about her life experiences and thoughts, and I was there to listen.

I was invited to her place several times afterward for drinks or to help her with her customers who did not speak Japanese. However, as I was getting busy with increased contacts with other informants, I could not visit her so often, or even if I did, I could not sit long enough to have a long conversation. What I regret the most is not being able to say my last goodbye to her in person, as I was overwhelmed with administrative tasks to wrap up at the end of my fieldwork. She did not reply to my last message, and I only found out later that she had shut down her guesthouse business.

However, this lady is not representative of the so-called urban-rural migrants that I met in Tamba Sasayama. Most of the newcomers were welcomed by the locals and were engaged in community events: retirees from adjacent cities that opened shops or restaurants in town; U-turn migrants that worked for local industries; and young and enthusiastic newcomers that started new businesses in the region. They were considered as positive stimuli to the local economy and were offered various public and private support systems. They were treated with care since they carried out the kind of economic and social activities that the locals expect from them. The old lady, on the other hand, did not receive the kind of hospitality when she first arrived in her neighborhood but instead was challenged with misconceptions based on her age, gender, and marital status. Although she was also venturing her creative energies in the region like any other urban-rural migrants in developing a beautiful retro-styled guesthouse, she was outside the local public spotlight. My days at her house lasted a little longer than two weeks, but her stories remained deep inside me throughout my fieldwork.

Shilla Lee is a PhD candidate at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. Her research focuses on the notion of rurality and creativity in regional revitalization practices and the cooperative activities of traditional craftsmen in Japan.

by Cornelia Reiher

It’s been ten months since our project started under Covid-19 conditions and although the situation in Germany has improved a lot due to high vaccination rates and low numbers of infections (at least for now), Japan’s borders are still closed to foreigners.

After reading literature on urban-rural migration and rural revitalization for the project and writing literature reviews with the core research group for the first six months, in March 2021, we launched this blog and started a study group. In biweekly meetings, team members and guests presented their work. What had started out as a group of five people in October 2020 developed into a constantly growing international and interdisciplinary group of students and scholars from Europe and Asia.

Over the course of the summer term, we heard presentations about newcomers to small islands, sustainability and in-migration in a village in Kyōto prefecture, in-migrants’ engagement in local crafts, organic farmers and newcomers in Kansai, human-nature relations of newcomers in Miyako-jima, the Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai program and the central government’s Comprehensive Strategy. We had inspiring discussions about local differences and our methodological approaches and shared readings with the other group members. Through my own online presentations in Paris, Zurich and Vienna during the summer term I reached out to researchers interested in rural revitalization and urban-rural migration and advertised our blog and study group in our academic community.

One of the highlights of our study group was Susanne Klien’s presentation in late June. We all had read her book Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-Growth Society and were excited to meet the author. Susanne did not only present and discuss her book and answered our questions, but also talked about her follow-up research in rural Japan and how Covid-19 impacted her research. Susanne’s experiences with informal rules concerning Covid-19 in the countryside in Japan particularly helped us to rethink our own future fieldwork and to develop strategies to respond to local residents’ fears and expectations.

For our own fieldwork, we have arranged affiliations with universities in Japan, contacted all the municipalities we want to conduct field research in and hope that visa applications to Japan will be possible again, now that we are all fully vaccinated. And while getting ready for fieldwork we have been constantly thinking about a plan B and therefore conducted first online interviews, searched through myriads of blogs, videos, policy documents and social media accounts of municipalities and prefectural offices. We are grateful for the opportunities the digital world offers, nevertheless, more than anything we hope to engage in onsite fieldwork this year and to meet our research participants in person.

by Susanne Klien*

Hi from Hokkaido! I recently wrapped up my follow-up fieldwork in Tokushima Prefecture. Originally scheduled for 2020, I had to postpone it because of the pandemic. In spring 2021, the infection rates seemed low enough in Kamiyama, a town with 5000 residents in the mountains. However, the decision to go ahead was difficult since my place of living, Sapporo, had high rates of infection, at times outnumbering Tokyo. Also, like most rural places, my field has an extremely high rate of residents older than 65 (50%). A close contact in town warned me that it may be difficult to pursue conventional fieldwork as many events have been cancelled and individual attitudes to the virus vary. Yet, he also shared that there were non-local visitors and some residents went on business trips. I eventually decided to go ahead, but also felt that extreme caution was required as not to risk anyone’s health including my own. Wearing a FSC.F-99 mask at all times, prioritizing outdoor activities and interviews was basic fieldwork etiquette.

During the first five days after my arrival I kept my activities low key, focusing on archival work. In contrast to my worries before departure, I felt my fear of catching COVID-19 dwindle every day – more pressing worries were how to cope with centipedes, giant spiders and heavy pollen exposure. Apart from a few public places that required measuring one’s body temperature, it was almost as if the virus did not exist. Some elderly neighbors who came for a chat were not even wearing masks. A local lady in her 70s whom I interviewed at her house said that I did not need to wear my mask during our conversation. Among the dozens of urbanite settlers I interviewed, only one asked me whether I had taken a PCR test.

That being said, however, there have in fact been a few infections in town. I talked to a settler in her late 20s who caught the virus, having brought it from outside. She said that even after her recovery, she was told by a shop owner to keep away. Social stigmatization has been reported as a huge issue in rural places that seems to outweigh the low risk of catching the virus there.

Most of my interviewees from four years ago were still in town, even those who had stated that they may move to other places. Check out my recent monograph Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society (Albany, NY: SUNY Press 2020) if you are interested in their stories. Some collaborators have started entrepreneurial activities – in fact, my accommodation was a guesthouse opened by one of my interviewees, a woman from the Tokyo area in her early 30s.

Others were still searching for their ideal lifestyles, just like four years ago. It was reassuring to see so many familiar faces, yet it was all so different. There were many new arrivals. Having featured widely in various media, Kamiyama has gained a reputation as a place for fashionable individuals with special skills: designers, chefs, creatives, IT engineers.

Some long-term migrants observed that these newcomers are not really interested in deeper engagement with the local community; they just want to realize themselves by pursuing activities that make sense to them.

The pandemic seems to have legitimized the lifestyle choices of migrants as rural life as strategic both with regard to infection rates and food access. A couple in their 30s who have lived in Kamiyama for six years joked that their parents in Tokyo had always questioned their decision to leave their corporate jobs until the pandemic, when all of a sudden, they were praised for having made the right choice.

With inquiries about relocation having increased notably since the pandemic, Kamiyama – and many rural towns – have clearly seen a rise in interest by individuals from all walks of life.

*Susanne Klien is associate professor at Hokkaido University. Her main research interests include the appropriation of local traditions, demographic decline and alternative forms of living and working in post-growth Japan. She is the author of Urban migrants in rural Japan: Between agency and anomie in a post-growth society (State University of New York Press, 2020).