by Sarah Bijlsma

Demographic issues like aging and depopulation in rural Japan are intertwined with the geographical features of remote areas. In most cases, the less accessible a region is, the more pressing the situation becomes. This is particularly striking in remote island regions (ritō). Small island populations are highly dependent on the educational, economic, and healthcare facilities of other areas, but their mobility is limited due to high costs and long travel times. Therefore, revitalization policies treat remote islands as a separate category. The framework of “remote islands” was first introduced in 1953 in the context of the Remote Islands Development Act (Ritō shinkō-hō), hitherto the most important set of legislative measures aiming to support remote island regions in overcoming their disadvantages and barriers to development. The Act is revised every ten years, with recent revisions emphasizing the urgency for the development of human resources in addition to advancing tourist services and public works [1].

One of these remote islands is Miyakojima, located in between Okinawa Main Island and Taiwan. Over the past few years, the local government has approved a number of large-scale construction projects, like the Irabu Bridge (2015), Shimojishima Airport (2019), a munitions storage facility for the Japanese Self Defense Forces (2020), and a new government building that will be finalized later this year. These public works projects are an addition to the continuous construction of beach resorts on the island [2].

The reality of this situation is explained to me by Masato Tokura [4], a man in his late fifties who moved from Yokohama to a small village on Miyakojima. Masato worked his whole life for a major pharmaceutical company, decided to invest in the Chinese stock market at age 35, and retired early when he was 47 years old. He tells me he and his wife traveled the world to do free diving, which is what they love to do the most. Yet, as they did not find a sea more beautiful than the one surrounding Miyakojima, they decided to emigrate in 2013.

But Miyako changed tremendously in the years that followed. Where in 2013, annual visitor numbers were ca. 400,000, they topped one million in 2018 [3]. Also, while the island turned into a construction site, there were not enough local workers to carry out all of the work. Therefore, the Japanese construction companies that are largely in charge of the projects flew in their own employees. At first, the workers were hosted in vacant apartments, but soon all properties became occupied. Masato tells me that while it is illegal to raise rent with more than a certain percentage of the previous price, that is exactly what property owners did as construction companies pay for the housing of their employees in any case.

With the sharp increase of Japanese tourists, workers, and other migrants, local media introduced the term “Miyako Bubble” to capture the negative consequences of this trend. In 2019, the price of a rental unit on Miyako was about the same as in Tokyo, while local wages were less than half of the national average. As a result, many local residents were forced to leave their houses throughout the previous years. Masato tells me that especially young single men found themselves in great financial difficulties. Many of them left to one of Japanese metropoles, where rent is the same as on Miyako but at least salaries are higher.

Hence, the social fabric of Miyako-jima is not the same anymore as when Masato arrived. But to him, an even more pressing issue is the way how the environment of Miyako has been changing. He tells me that tourist resorts have the habit of discharging used water into the ocean that is full of chemicals and other toxins. Further, many tourists touch the corals or step on them when entering the sea. Masato gets obviously upset when he talks about how he witnessed the sea dying within a period of only five years. “I know many eco tourist initiatives in other countries, and the most important thing is always to keep the environment as it is. But in Japan, people only want to make money, even though everything will be destroyed in the end. Even if then, nobody will come to Miyako. It makes me so angry, I just do not want to see that anymore.”

Masato has been taking that last point literally; a year ago, he decided to buy a new apartment in Yokohama and moved back to his previous hometown. Now, he spends half of his time in the city, and half of the time on Miyako, in what he now calls his “holiday house.”

My conversation with Masato made me think of whether there is something like too much rural revitalization. In the case of Miyakojima, revitalization attempts did not just attract tourists and urbanite migrants, as in other areas in Japan. They also forced local residents out of the island. This illustrates, I believe, that rural revitalization is not just a matter of attracting human and financial capital, but also of fostering social and ecological equity. As such, it makes me wonder whose future it actually is that is being promoted through Miyakojima’s development strategies.

References
[1]
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism. 2016. Ritō shinkō-hō/ritō shinkō-hō sekō-rei [Remote islands development act/order for enforcement of the remote islands development act]. Retrieved from https://www.mlit.go.jp/kokudoseisaku/chirit/kokudoseisaku_chirit_fr_000003.html

[2]
Japan Times. “Worker influx ignites Miyakojima rent bubble.” 22 April 2019, pp. 3.

[3]
Miyakojima City. 2020. “Miyakojima-shi no nyūiki kankōkyakusū suikeichi” [Estimation of Miyako Island’s incoming tourist numbers]. Via https://www.city.miyakojima.lg.jp/gyosei/toukei/files/R31201.pdf

[4] Masato Tokura is a pseudonym.

by Cornelia Reiher

Rural areas in Japan are connected with transnational networks in multiple ways. This transnational connectedness is not static, but can change over time as the example of Arita’s porcelain trade with Europe in the 17^th and the 19^th century shows. Transnational networks of the past can become an integral part of rural places’ history and identity and are often employed for the promotion of tourism and other revitalization strategies in the present [1]. In addition to these historical transnational connections, many non-Japanese citizens dwell in rural Japan. Some just stay there for a short period of time to study or work in Japan’s countryside, while others settle down, renovate abandoned houses, get married and raise children. Previous blog posts have already mentioned artists in residence from Europe, technical interns and members of the Chiiki okoshi kyoryokutai program from South- and Southeast Asia or Buddhist priests from England who reside in rural Japan. They all contribute to the revitalization of rural Japan in various ways and connect Japan’s rural towns and villages with other parts of the world.

But this is not the only way migration connects Japan’s rural areas transnationally. Many of the U-turn or I-turn migrants (and of course many of the long-term rural residents) have travelled and/or lived abroad before moving to the countryside. In her book on urban-rural migration, Susanne Klien [2] mentions that twenty of the 118 urban-rural migrants she worked with had lived abroad before. During my own research on urban-rural migration in Kyushu, I made a similar observation. One woman who now lives in Oita prefecture, for example, studied in Italy and fell in love with an Italian man. When their children were about to enter elementary school, the couple decided to relocate to Japan, because they wanted them to grow up in Japan. Although the Japanese wife is from a big city, they decided that they wanted to live closer to nature and relocated to a small town in the countryside where they now run an Italian restaurant, thereby contributing to the culinary diversity of the area.

Other urban-rural migrants are former members of overseas volunteer programs. These include programs initiated by the Japanese government like the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) or by non-Japanese NGOs that provide assistance to developing countries via local projects. As of 2020, JOCV had dispatched 45,776 young Japanese between the ages of 20 and 39 to 98 countries for a period of two years [3]. Experiences abroad can contribute to greater awareness of social problems and inequality and to engagement for social change and a better world after volunteers’ return to Japan [4]. Based on this experience, some former volunteers want to contribute to the revitalization of Japan’s countryside. While participating in such volunteer programs in developing countries is evaluated as positive for the individual experience and growth of young Japanese adults and Japanese society, volunteers struggle with finding employment when they return to Japan [4,5]. This is one reason why many former volunteers move to the countryside and join another government sponsored program, the Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai (COKT), that hires young adults who work in the countryside in Japan for three years and support local governments in activities aimed at rural revitalization [6].

These examples show how the mobility of people, their experiences and skills can impact Japan’s countryside, create and deepen transnational networks, inspire ideas and introduce new practices to the countryside. Instead of only focusing on urban-rural migrants and the migration from urban areas to rural areas within Japan, research on urban-rural migration should pay more attention to previous mobility experiences of urban-rural migrants to fully understand their impact on rural Japan and their migration trajectories.

References

[1]
Reiher, Cornelia (2014), Lokale Identität und ländliche Revitalisierung. Die japanische Keramikstadt Arita und die Grenzen der Globalisierung [Local Identity and Rural Revitalization. The Japanese Ceramic Town Arita and the Limits of Globalization], Bielefeld: transcript.

[2]
Klien, S. (2020), Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-Growth Society, New York: SUNY Press.

[3]
JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) (2020), JICA Volunteer Program: Leading the World with Trust, https://www.jica.go.jp/english/publications/brochures/c8h0vm0000avs7w2-att/jica_volunteer_ en.pdf, last accessed October 30, 2021.

[4]
Iwai, Y. (2010), “Borantia taiken de gakusei wa nani o manabu no ka: Afurika to jibun o tsunageru sōzōryoku” [What Students Learn through Social Service Experiences: Awareness of the Connection Between Themselves and Africa], Hosei daigaku ningen kankyō gakkai [The Hosei Journal of Humanity and Environment] 10, pp. 1–11.

[5]
Kawachi, K. (2013), Constructing Notions of Development: An Analysis of the Experiences of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers and the Peace Corps in Latin America and Their Interaction with Indigenous Communities in Ecuadorian Highlands, University of Texas [PhD dissertation].

[6]
Reiher, Cornelia (2020), “Embracing the periphery: Urbanites’ motivations to relocate to rural Japan”, in Manzenreiter, Wolfram, Lützeler, Ralph and Polak-Rottmann, Sebastian (Eds.), Japan’s new ruralities: Coping with decline in the periphery, London: Routledge, pp. 230–244.

by Wendy Wuyts

My Japanese and Belgian friend Miwako came to visit me in Nagoya in January 2018. She lived mostly in Belgium, but she was visiting family and friends in Tokyo and decided to visit me on her way to Onomichi, a place that I had not heard of before. Miwako is a filmmaker, whose short movies are about identity, home and family. Her personal documentary project was about the history of an empty family house in Onomichi. She showed me photographs of this beautiful traditional house and mentioned that it was used for commercials (as Onomichi is apparently a town with artists and filmmakers). She also told me about the town. Onomichi is a rural town characterized by industry and art.

Ten days later, my friend greeted me in the train station of Onomichi. We walked in different alleys, some of which she did not know yet, and we peeked inside long abandoned houses. It was strange to walk in these wastescapes. It almost felt apocalyptic. By walking there, I could understand why people would not remove these empty constructions, because some houses were not accessible via roads suitable for motorized vehicles. The paths were narrow, steep and partly stairs.

We had lunch in a renovated house which was abandoned before. I heard about an NPO and activist movement that reclaims abandoned houses, the cultural heritage and identity of this place. I contacted them; but they had no time and asked me to come back later. That would be the start of getting to know this place and its lived experiences of the circularity potential of wastescapes for the next 1,5 years.

When I first visited Onomichi, I had already lived in Japan for almost four months, more specifically in Nagoya, one of the largest, more conservative cities in Japan. To most people outside of Japan, Nagoya means nothing, so I usually introduce it as the city of Toyota. I spent three years in Nagoya working on my PhD in sustainability. Due to my encounter with Onomichi, the wasted potential of short-lived and vacant houses became the focus of my project which I approached through the concept of circular economy. Circular economy is an umbrella term for practices, principles, and ideas that ensure that we keep materials in society for as long as possible and that the value or functionality is preserved for as long as possible [1].

In Nagoya, my professor was researching empty houses as well, but his focus was rather on the reuse of abandoned houses’ materials, also called urban mining [3]. However, what I came to realize was that urban mining would not be the most desirable strategy: repurposing the houses, preferably for the intent they are made for, would be more circular, and would also be better in terms of identity, belonging and other social impacts. When my friend Miwako introduced me to Onomichi, which seemed to be an appealing place for her as an artist to learn more about identity, I was intrigued. The geographer in me was interested in the context of Japan and what circularity could mean in reality and which social impacts, for example on identity, it can have. Often, we talk about circularity as an abstract concept, but what exactly are the lived experiences of circularity [4]? What does it mean for people who really reclaim empty houses? What are the barriers and challenges in Japan?

Later, during a revision of my PhD thesis, one of my supervisors asked me about the motivation of selecting Onomichi as a casestudy. “I did not choose it, it just came to visit me”, I wanted to say. The same is true for another study in Gifu that I will introduce in my next post. As a researcher, we have our networks and other resources, and this influences our knowledge production (and biases) a big deal, while allowing to illustrate the plurality of Japan in research.

References:
[1]
Kirchherr, J., Reike, D. and Hekkert, M., 2017. Conceptualizing the circular economy: An analysis of 114 definitions. Resources, conservation and recycling, 127, pp.221-232.
[2]
Tanikawa, H. and Hashimoto, S., 2009. Urban stock over time: spatial material stock analysis using 4d-GIS. Building research & information, 37(5-6), pp.483-502.
[3]
Wuyts, W., Sedlitzky, R., Morita, M. and Tanikawa, H., 2020. Understanding and Managing Vacant Houses in Support of a Material Stock-Type Society—The Case of Kitakyushu, Japan. Sustainability, 12(13), p.5363.
[4]
Wuyts, W., Marjanović, M. The Development of Spatial Circularity Discourse in Japan: Ecomodernist, Territorialised, or Both? The Story of Onomichi’s Wastescapes. Circ.Econ.Sust. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43615-021-00146-6

Wendy Wuyts, originally from Belgium, received her PhD in environmental science from the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University. She currently works as researcher in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research interests include (social impacts of) circularity, sustainable transitions and territorial ecology.