Part 2: (Im)Mobilities and economic risks

by Johannes Wilhelm

In rural Aso, the pandemic was initially perceived as a problem of urban areas, but the then unknown disease frightened many. The initial impact in Kumamoto was most noticeable in schools, where graduation ceremonies and new enrollments for the new school year around March/April 2020 were cancelled. Events around the cherry blossom season – such as the beautiful village festival in the 9th district of Kugino – did not take place in most cases. One exception was the hifuri no shinji at Aso Shrine on March 18, 2020, a festival in which hay bundles are tied to a rope and twirled around the shrine’s entrance area. In a sense, the festival marks the beginning of the agricultural year, which is symbolized by a cultic marriage of two deities. Interestingly, the festival almost always coincides with the beginning of the cherry blossom season, an old woman told me. The sandō path to the shrine was lined with numerous people following the festival after dusk, since it is one of the most important holiday ceremonies at the sacred site.

The steadily growing number of so-called inbound tourists from abroad until the turn of the year 2019/2020 – in Kyūshū’s case mainly from China and Korea due to the relatively short distance –came to an abrupt stop with the country’s closure to foreigners. Japan’s entry restrictions had a huge impact on the tourism sector. Aso was no exception. As a resident, this had some advantages such as fewer cars, for example. Before the pandemic, tourists suddenly stopped and parked their car somewhere along a serpentine and even wandered around at times to take photos with their cell phones for social media. One day in May 2020, I had an interesting encounter in Uchinomaki. I was invited by a local group as a guest to stay overnight at the beautiful Sozankyō guesthouse. Throughout its history, the old guesthouse has accommodated famous people like the well-known poets Yosano Tekkan and Akiko. On the way back from breakfast, I unexpectedly met a middle-aged German who had made his way to Japan after an odyssey from Polynesia, where he wanted to wander around as a tourist for as long as possible. Well, each to his own, I thought .

Less tourism also has its advantages, but for those in Aso whose jobs depend on tourism, the pandemic has been a disaster with an unclear end. Y., an employee at the so-called Shokuan (Shokugyō antei-sho, commonly known as “Hellowork”) told us that the number of job seekers was skyrocketing. Since she was also responsible for non-Japanese clients at the “employment office,” she was also able to tell me more about the many foreign helpers, especially in the agricultural sector (Nōgyō jisshūsei, i.e. officially “agricultural interns”). Many among the latter found themselves in an absurd situation, a pandemic limbo, because on the one hand it was not possible for them to leave Japan or enter their home countries. Meanwhile, they ran the risk of overstaying their residence permits and thus slipping into visa crime. By the time the relevant authorities were able to offer a solution to this very problem, the immigration authorities were completely overrun. I experienced this firsthand, when I had to extend my visa in March 2020.

The case of four siblings from the Philippines shows how migrants were affected by this situation. They originally came to Japan as interns and were later hired as helpers by the landlord of my regular pub, where small jazz sessions were held. But the pub had to be constantly closed for a certain period of time and the landlord finally had to file for bankruptcy in April 2021, leaving the siblings more or less out in the cold. The employment office worker told me about nursing schools that were suddenly overrun with women from the Philippines seeking to retrain in nursing despite their lack of Japanese language skills. These schools, in turn, urgently needed support staff and funding to teach basic language skills in the nursing sector.

In contrast to urban areas, the risks of infection in rural Aso were initially manageable. As a result, young urban families and freelancers (e.g., in the digital sector with no local ties) began to move to the countryside. This was actually quite similar to what had happened after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The new concept of working holiday was gratefully received and also propagated by numerous media-savvy academics and government agencies (abbreviated as wā-hori it should not be confused with the same abbreviation for workaholic), which in turn led to subsidy programs for office conversions for numerous hostels. Let’s see how long this trend lasts, I thought. At the same time, these new migrants seemed somewhat selfish to me, especially since – in most cases – they ignored the local residents and local conditions to some degree. They did not want to give up their urban lifestyles and do ‘their thing’. Such an attitude, together with a lack of integration efforts by the local authorities tied to Corona measures, was doomed to fail. That locals were hardly willing to make their partly empty properties available was may be a sign of resistance. In the spring of 2020, the waiting list counted more than 200 households who wanted to move in from urban areas to Minamiaso-mura.

Soon, however, the pandemic will also reach rural areas as we have learned from the so-called ‘Spanish flu’. More on this in the following parts of the report.

[… to be continued …]

Johannes Wilhelm is an independent researcher and is affiliated with Vienna University. His main studies focus on the relationship between nature and society. His interests include fisheries, pastures in mountainous regions, and rural areas as much as general phenomena in society such as radicalism, migration and social vulnerability.