by Lynn Ng

Last December, the Japanese government announced a new incentive for people to move out of metropolitan Tokyo: Starting April 2023, families who move into Japan’s countryside can expect to receive one million yen (about 7,000 euros) per child (under 18 years of age) in support of their relocation. This is a stark increase from the previous amount of 300,000 yen (about 2,100 euros) [1]. This announcement is a small part of Japan’s much larger push for people to relocate into the regions. Among many other incentives and regional promotion activities extensively explored through this blog, Japan has also been increasingly hosting migration fairs (IjūTeijū Fairs) for regional promotion. Within my short time in Japan, I have had the luxury of visiting three such fairs. My focus was on Fukushima, so one can only imagine the many other fairs taking place for other regions.

One of the first fairs I attended in Tokyo for Fukushima.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2022

These fairs are very informative: the booths are manned by staff of the municipal offices, Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai (COKT) participants, as well as people who recently relocated to the countryside. These individuals are eager to promote their towns, explain about trial stays and tours, answer questions, and offer advice on support schemes you might be eligible for. The structure for all the fairs I attended was similar, albeit of different organizational teams. One registers for the fair online beforehand (or risk standing awkwardly in line filling up questionnaires by hand), enters with a QR code, and receives a stack of five “personal information sheets.” These information sheets are your name cards for the day. Every booth you visit will first and foremost ask for your sheet, scan through the details, and interview you on your interests and background, before suggesting the best schemes you could apply to for your potential relocation.

You scan your entry QR code and receive a set of five information sheets to hand out to the booths.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2023

The organizers of these fairs probably don’t expect visitors to visit more than five booths per day, as I spent about an hour at each booth (with most of that time spent explaining the individual criteria for their far-reaching funding plans). Since my visits were focused on Fukushima, these staffers also pulled out lots of binders of radiation-related data for me. In the unlikely event that you have a lot more energy than I did to go through the dozens of booths in one day, there are also copiers at the fairs that you can use to print out additional copies of your information sheet for the booths.

There are many brochures and freebies (note the Eco-bag) available for free.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2022

I found these fairs great, not just because they were a huge information pool, but also because they are a large web of networks. At these three events, I met the same faces and received the same brochures, yet the content of the visits mattered less than the connections I made. At the most recent fair, I stood quietly by the corner, tiredly wondering if there could be any new information at all I could get. But it took only a while before staff from a booth walked over – a person whose booth I had spent over an hour at the previous time. We spoke candidly. He asked about my research progress: slow. I asked about his visit count: also slow. That brief moment was precious, for he would tell me how, despite being a migrant to Fukushima, he had in fact spent much more time outside of the region in order to promote it. Given the irony of being a mobile migrant into the regions, he wondered for himself then, what it actually means to “migrate (ijū).”

The most recent fair I attended was a general relocation fair for all regions of Japan. Despite the large number of exhibitors, perhaps for its location at Odaiba, the crowd was much smaller than at the Fukushima-specific fair.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2023

This informal conversation with him would become a greater discussion for later. But for now, I reflect on the experiences of the three fairs – the high frequency at which they take place and the structures in which they are organized. These fairs can indeed prove effective, on top of the government’s many other incentives and schemes, as a one-stop source of information for those who are considering relocating to the countryside.

[1] Nikkei News. December 28, 2022. Tōkyō kara ijū de ko hitori ni 100 man en seifu, 23-nendo kara zōgaku [Government to increase support to 1 million yen per child for migrations from Tokyo from fiscal 2023]. Available online: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA280720Y2A221C2000000/