by Cecilia Luzi and Frank Tu (Ngo Tu Thanh)

Rural areas in many places around the world are struggling with economic and demographic problems and are often faced with the migration of rural populations to urban centers. This is particularly true for communities in rural Japan, which have been affected by declining birth rates, aging and out-migration for decades. Over the past decade, however, there has been a sharp increase in both the number of people interested in moving from urban to rural areas in Japan and the number who actually move. A distinctive feature of Japan is the numerous programs and subsidies initiated by various actors to encourage people to move to or return to rural Japan in order to revitalize the local economy and agriculture. Shortly after the Japanese government launched new financial support measures in early 2023 to encourage people to leave Tokyo and move to the countryside, the symposium “Urban rural migration in Japan and Europe: Transnational and comparative perspectives” was held on February 2-3, 2023 at the Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB). The aim of the symposium, organized by Cornelia Reiher (Free University of Berlin), was to compare empirical results from her DFG project “Urban-Rural Migration and Rural Revitalization in Japan” with urban-rural migration within and outside Japan and to analyze connections between urban-rural migration, revitalization practices and support measures. Anthropologists, architects, area studies specialists, consultants, geographers, municipal officials, political scientists, and sociologists from various European countries and Japan took turns on the panel to discuss the challenges of urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan and European countries, highlighting similarities, differences, and transnational trends.

The audience at the Japanese German Center Berlin (JDZB)
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2023

After the opening speeches by Tokiko Kiyota (JDZB) and Cornelia Reiher, two keynote presentations focused on counter-urbanization in Japan and Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Susanne Klien (Hokkaido University) focused on self-determination and subjective well-being, but also on loneliness and precarity in the lives of migrants after relocation to rural Japan. Introducing the term “urban rural,” she emphasized the increasing hybridization of urban and rural areas, especially at a time when people can transcend space through digital media. Keith Halfacree (Swansea University) presented the case of rural England and Wales, emphasizing that the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit, and the food production crisis will have long-term effects on these areas. While counter-urbanization can provide an opportunity for rural revitalization and renaissance, it can also widen the gap between urban and rural areas.

Speakers and Chairs of the Symposium
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2023

The first day ended with a roundtable discussion led by Cornelia Reiher. The two keynote speakers were joined on stage by consultant Taichi Goto (Region Works LLC Fukuoka) and Annett Steinführer (Thünen Institute for Rural Studies). After their brief opening statements, the discussion focused on the impact of the Covid pandemic on rural areas in Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom; the challenges and promise of urban-rural migration and counter-urbanization for rural revitalization in the three countries; and addressed issues such as housing, relationships between locals and newcomers, and how to create places where diverse rural residents can meet. Panelists emphasized that there are more dividing lines than those between “locals” and “newcomers” and that research should pay more attention to more fluid forms of migration and mobility, such as second-home owners or people with multiple residences trying to enjoy the best of many worlds.

The panel discussion on the first day
Copyright © Maritchu Durand 2023

The second day comprised four sessions, each with three presentations. To allow for cross-national comparisons, each panel consisted of a presentation on Japan, a presentation on Germany, and a presentation on a European country. The first session, devoted to the experiences of urban-rural migrants and their contributions to rural areas, was opened by Wolfram Manzenreiter (University of Vienna), who presented findings from collaborative research on community well-being in Greater Aso. He focused on the notion of belonging and the importance of personal background for community engagement. Tim Leibert (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography) presented the example of the district of North Saxony, showing the influence of individual social networks on the decision of urban residents to move from Leipzig to rural areas. To conclude the first panel, Anja Decker from the Czech Academy of Sciences presented her research on urban-rural migrants in western rural Czechia and on cooperations and conflicts between newcomers and the local population facilitated by alternative food practices.

Panelists of the panel “Urban rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan”
Copyright © Maritchu Durand 2023

In the second panel, the DFG project “Urban rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan” was presented. First, Cornelia Reiher, the project leader, introduced the research project in general and reported some preliminary findings from her own field research in two communities. She spoke about topics such as the role of local governments in migration decisions and rural revitalization, changes brought about by new practices linking online and offline spaces, and increasing diversity in rural Japan. The project’s two research assistants then presented their research. Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu) discussed the case of Buzen City from a public policy perspective, emphasizing the important role of international migration and cooperation in rural revitalization. Cecilia Luzi also spoke about Buzen City, but from the perspective of urban-rural migrants. She showed that rural revitalization is not a uniform process, but a multifaceted phenomenon that takes different and sometimes contradictory forms.

Panelists of the panel “Urban-rural Migration and Rural Revitalization in Japan”
Copyright © Maritchu Durand 2023

The third panel focused on the role of politics and policies in urban-rural migration and rural revitalization. Participants included both scholars and practitioners. Ken Hijino (Kyoto University) provided information on general trends in policies to attract new residents to rural areas in Japan and the role that depopulation and attracting new residents play in mayoral elections. Mayor Dietmar Henrich from Hamm (Sieg) in Germany presented his municipality and the challenges it faces due to population decline, and discussed creative solutions to promote in-migration. Finally, Angel Paniagua Mazorra (Spanish Council for Scientific Research), who participated online, spoke about his twenty years of research on natives and newcomers in remote rural areas in Spain, addressing some methodological challenges and personal perceptions of change in these areas, including infrastructure improvement.

Panelists of the panel “Urban-Rural Migration and the State: Policies and Politics”
Copyright © Maritchu Durand 2023

The fourth panel focused on the future of rural areas and urban-rural migration. Tadashi Saito (Yamaguchi University) introduced a new research method called “Verbs-Extracting Research Method, VERM” to analyze and explore new opportunities for tourism in rural Japan by focusing on the actions of research participants. Annett Steinführer discussed terminologies and presented findings on the reasons, motives and social structure of people who move from urban to rural areas in Germany. Finally, Susanne Stenbacka (Uppsala University) discussed three aspects of migration in rural Sweden, namely the increase in international migration, the immigration of socio-economically weak households, and the increased demand for vacation homes and permanent housing in rural areas.

Panelists of the panel “The Future of Rural Areas and Urban-Rural Migration”
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2023

In the final discussion, Cornelia Reiher, Susanne Klien, Tim Leibert, Anja Decker, and Keith Halfacree reflected on the issues discussed during the symposium. The central themes they identified were the incompatibility of local needs and national funding plans for rural areas, the incongruence of administrative and social boundaries, and competition between local governments. Conflicting representations of rural areas, access to land, land prices, finding suitable housing, and building a home were important issues for newcomers and long-term residents of rural areas that led to conflicts and political disputes in both Japan and European countries. The main target group of policies for developing rural areas and attracting new residents were surprisingly similar in all countries, where young families were to be attracted to move to the countryside through relocation fairs, financial incentives and the provision of housing. Panelists discussed whether attracting new residents is really a solution to rural problems, and suggested that depopulation could also be seen as an opportunity from a posthuman perspective. Considering all these aspects, depopulation in rural Japan seems to be more serious than in other countries, but perhaps it is not so unique after all. Overall, the symposium encouraged all participants to continue this conversation, to pay more attention to more unstable types of mobilities, and to reflect more on the terminology used when discussing mobilities to rural areas.

by Shunichi Ito

Hello to all in the “Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan” Blog community! My name is Shunichi Ito, and I am very happy to be able to participate and share my experiences working and researching the Japanese countryside with you all.

That’s me!
Copyright © Shunichi Ito 2023

To introduce myself, I am currently leading a nikyoten seikatsu (a two location lifestyle) between Chiba Prefecture as a soon-to-be second year graduate student at Sophia University and Shimane Prefecture as a member of a RMO (regional management organization) for a small town called Omori-chō (大森町). As for my personal background, all I can say is that I have lived a quite mobile life. I was born in Los Angeles, but immediately moved to Japan until 4^th grade, then moved back to the US (New Jersey), then to California for college. After graduating, I moved to Shimane Prefecture and lived and worked in a town called Omori-chō for three years, then moved to Chiba for graduate school, and here I am.

My graduating thesis at UC Berkeley was “Reimagening a New Generation of Hopeful Lifestyle in Japan: An Ethnographic Study of How a New Generation is finding Alternative Lifestyles in the Countryside” which I admit is quite a mouthful of a title. In the thesis, I conducted ethnographic research of I-turners and U-turners in my field site of Omori-chō. Specifically, on the conditions that acted as the push and pull incentives for moving, as well as their personal experiences comparing their lifestyles in urban Japan and now in the countryside. I was always interested in what constituted as a mainstream and hopeful lifestyle in contemporary Japan and how people who were disenchanted or could not realize those lifestyles were getting by in life.

My graduating thesis on “Reimagening a New Generation of Hopeful Lifestyle in Japan”
Copyright © Shunichi Ito 2023

I would now like to introduce my field site of Omori-chō to you all. To be more formal it is Omori-chō, Oda City, Shimane Prefecture （島根県,大田市,大森町）

The streets of Omori-chō
Copyright © Shunichi Ito, 2023

The village is surrounded by mountains on both sides forming a valley, where houses are stretched vertically along a straight road and the Ginzan River that runs through it. The valley, which is 3.1 kilometers long, is dived into two sections with the first 0.8 kilometers called the machinami or the townscape, and the rest of the 2.3 kilometers leading into the mountains is called the Ginzan District. This informal division of the town represents where the samurai bureaucracy/ commercial district was and where the silver miners lived during the Edo period.
Omori-chō is where the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mines is located, which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. Heritage tourism make up a large part of its economy as upon its initial designation, close to 800,000 people visited the village in a year. The main location of visitation is Ryugenji Silver mine, which is a silver mine tourists can enter at the top of the Ginzan District.

The Silver mines
Copyright © Shunichi Ito 2023

As of 2022 there are 393 people living in the village, where 40% of its population is over the age of 65, 9.67% between the ages of 20-30, and 14.76% are under the age of 14. While Omori has maintained its population of around 400 for the last 10 years, it is part of the population decline and super-aging society like the rest of Shimane and rural Japan. A unique characteristic of Omori-chō is that there are two companies in the village which employ around about 100 residents who live in Omori-chō. One is a clothing and apparel and lifestyle brand called Gungendo, and the other is a prosthetics maker called Nakamura Brace. These companies also finance the rebuilding of many Japanese folk houses called kominka for its employees to live in.

Rice paddy in Omori-chō
Copyright © Shunichi Ito 2022

For my masters I am interested in conducting research on RMO’s (chiiki unei soshiki) or regional management organizations, which are organizations of proactive local self-governance run by residents of the town. This is an important area of study because RMO’s can act as a hopeful civic space of strategic planning coupled with implementation towards an uncertain/ precarious future. This is in contrast to the more nostalgic functions of rural as furusato by Marilyn Ivy [1], or the “Treasure Hunts” of neoliberal decentralization of responsibility by Bridget Love [2]. Omori-chō has created a RMO of its own two years ago called Iwami Ginzan Mirai Consortium and current is going through a period of critical self-analysis where residents are reconceptualizing their position and identity as a town in postgrowth contemporary Japan. I am hoping that my research will reveal how the rural is becoming a location of postgrowth values through the critical engagement with the future, rather than simply protecting or rediscovering the past.

I’m looking forward to continuing sharing my research, as well as my “day in my life” in Omori-cho on this blog, thank you!  

[1] Ivy, M. (1995), Discourses of the Vanishing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[2] Love, B. (2013), „Treasure Hunts in Rural Japan: Place Making at the Limits of Sustainability”, American Anthropologist 115, 1, S. 112–124.

by Cornelia Reiher

After a year of online research, I was glad to be back in Japan to do on-site research, and I was fortunate to have so many people to show me around. Thanks to them, I was able to find many differences, not only between the two towns I am researching, but also within the towns. Using my field notes from a Saturday in October, I would like to introduce some of these differences in terms of infrastructure, built environment, and temperature. For this Saturday, I had planned to meet up with a friend and spend the entire day with her. She had told me we were going to the mountains and asked me to bring a sweater because “it’s cold up there”. I was surprised because it was still 25 degrees, but packed the warm clothes anyway.

Impression of the cityscape in the city center
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

First, we stayed in the compact old town and walked to a restaurant I had visited before when I was in town a few years ago. The place used to be a public bath and is now used as a café, restaurant and gallery. Diners sit in the former pool of the bath or in the gallery, where new artwork is always on display. The operators had closed the place during the Corona crisis, but recently their café was featured in a television program about original cafés in unusual places and has been doing quite well ever since. My friend had invited the owner of a cab company and real estate firm who is also working to revitalize the city. He told us that he has problems finding cab drivers. But many old people depend on cabs when they need to go to the doctor or shopping. The municipality subsidizes cab rides for the elderly.

Lunch in a former public bath
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

After a delicious lunch, we took the car and I quickly realized that you need a car to get around the town. Our next stop was an exhibition opening at the gallery I featured in my last blog post. To get there, we drove for about twenty minutes through pre-harvest golden rice fields before turning into a small hamlet with an old shrine and many abandoned houses. It was a stark contrast to the beautifully renovated town center with its stores, restaurants, cultural institutions and supermarket within walking distance of the train station. Due to a municipal merger during the Great Heisei Merger (heisei no daigappei), the town’s area is now very large and it is difficult to reach all the hamlets without a car. The towns and hamlets have also preserved their local identities and customs. This was evident when we saw the preparations for the various Kagura performances that took place at the local shrines on the same weekend, organized by local groups. And even the music that comes from the public loudspeakers in the morning and evening is different in each district.

The Kagura stage in a small shrine in one of the hamlets we visited that day
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

Our next stop after the opening was my friend’s house, which is in another part of town in the mountains. It was another fifteen-minute drive. The sky looked beautiful on this still very warm day, but when we stopped at my friend’s small house and exited the car, I was shocked at the difference in temperature. I was glad I had brought the sweater, but my friend warned me that it would be even colder at our next stop: a campsite up in the mountains. On the way to the campsite, we saw the mountains, passed greenhouses, cattle pens, and vegetable fields. When we pulled into the camp ground parking lot after another twenty minutes of driving, the sun was just setting behind the mountains.

The plateau and the mountains in the background form a beautiful scenery
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

The campsite is located in a flowery meadow on a plateau with a breathtaking view of the mountains. We had come to meet a friend who had organized a lantern festival at the campsite. Although, as my friend warned me, it was even colder up there, the camp ground was full of tents and cars from all over Japan. Guests were camping out and had brought their lanterns and mini kerosene stoves. The lanterns were set up on a platform and lit. When we arrived, most people were sitting in front of their tents eating in the glow of the lanterns in the twilight. The darker it got, the more beautiful it looked. We were allowed to look inside many tents. Some were set up like a real living room, with record players and speakers, and the true meaning of glamping became clear to me.

The campground is located in a flowery meadow on a plateau and people lit up their lanterns when it got dark
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

When it was completely dark and all the lanterns were burning, the temperature had dropped to twelve degrees. Since we were completely frozen, we decided to go to a hot spring to warm up. The full moon and stars provided little light, and we needed a flashlight to find my friend’s car on the way back. After another twenty-minute drive, we arrived at the onsen. We bathed in the hot water of the outdoor pool, from which we could see the full moon, and struck up a conversation with an old lady. When my friend drove me back to the town center, I noticed that it was much warmer there. Nevertheless, we bought oden, a typical winter food, and found that it was the perfect ending to this adventurous day.

by Sarah Bijlsma

When I ask urban migrants on Miyakojima about the differences between the island and mainland Japan, I often hear that everyone on Miyakojima owns a car. There are no trains, and busses rarely run, so people rely on their own vehicles. This particular feature of daily life is said to be the main reason for the existence of ‘Okinawa time’ (uchinaa taimu). According to migrants, time flows differently on Miyakojima because people’s lives are not dictated by the strict timetable of the railroad companies. In a blog post, someone describes the situation in Tokyo, “Even at parties, people drink while keeping track of the time, because they are constrained by the last train,” to say that people in the capital can never fully relax [1]. I will share some insights about how I experienced ‘Okinawa time’ when I spent two months on Miyakojima last year. The way people get around on the island seems to affect their perceptions of this particular time, and it definitely affected me, as I don’t have a driver’s license and couldn’t get around by car, which was quite a challenge. Nevertheless, I found other ways to move around and experience “island time.”

Biking through the sugarcane fields while aiming to protect myself against the sun
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2022

One of the first things I did upon arrival was paying a visit to the newly opened Don Quichote store, where I bought a bicycle. In the one-hundred-yen store I found a plastic basket, which I attached to the back of the bike with black tie-rips and immediately filled with six bottles of mineral water, because it was in the middle of summer and incredibly hot. With that in mind, it might not be surprising that I was usually the only one biking out on the streets. It must have been a funny picture; a tall blond woman, heavily pregnant, wearing a big hat against the strong sun on bicycle that was too small. Sometimes I was really hindered by the absence of a car. For example, the day I rode my bike to one of my informants’ homes, but misjudged the distance and arrived after nearly two hours completely dehydrated and sunburned. Or the time I couldn’t participate in a beach cleanup because I couldn’t bike to the location. But I also noticed that the people I met appreciated my efforts, and I often heard that someone had seen me biking. So biking proved to be a good starting point for a conversation about cultural differences and environmental attitudes in daily life.

Moving apartments by bike amidst a typhoon
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2022

Twice a day, a bus went from my apartment in the south to the city hall in the more built-up area. One day I took it to go to Ikema-jima, a small island in the north of Miyako connected by a long bridge. I sat in the very back of the bus. Three elderly locals sat in front, with a young, fashionable couple in between, talking in Kantō dialect.  When we arrived at the Ikema Bridge, the boy and girl got up from their seats and started taking pictures of the bright blue sea. They shouted repeatedly, “kirei!” (beautiful) and “sugei!” (amazing) in their excitement until the bus left the bridge at the other side. I was surprised by their strong reaction, especially since the people in front of the bus did not even bother to look outside. It was one of many occasions when I could observe how differently people treat nature. I wonder what the locals would think of the three misfits in the back seat? Did they share their excitement about the blue water? Were they proud of their environment or did they wonder why tourists were always interested only in the sea?

The bridge that connects Miyako with Ikema-jima
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2022

In addition to my bycicle and occasional bus rides, I was often able to ride with my research participants. Sometimes I also got rides from locals. One day, when I missed the afternoon bus, a man who worked for an advertising company offered to give me a ride home. He had been born on Miyako, but had lived in Tokyo between the ages of 19 and 29. He told me that Miyakojima had changed a lot since he had come back 15 years ago. Back then, there wasn’t a single beach umbrella on Yonehama Beach – now it’s full of people and stalls. Like many locals I spoke with in those months, he believes tourism is a good opportunity for economic growth in Miyako. He was also quite positive about Japanese migrants, but told me that locals and migrants live very separate lives. “You know what’s funny?” he said to me. “A lot of people get tired of Tokyo and then decide to move all the way here. But now they just hang out with people from Tokyo.”

In a small airplane to Tarama-jima
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2022

Before I came to Miyakojima, I often heard that you absolutely needed a car to move around. While it wasn’t always easy to get around without a driver’s license, it mostly meant that getting around became an important part of my fieldwork. Riding my bike through the sugar cane fields, riding along with the people, and even once taking a small plane to a remote island all deepened my understanding of how the slowness of daily life is experienced on Miyako.

[1] https://shimareal.com/utinatime/

by Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu)

In this blog post, I will introduce Hasami, one of our project’s four field sites. While Cecilia wrote about online representations of the town in one of her previous posts, I focus on my experiences during fieldwork in Hasami in September 2022.  Hasami is a small, mountainous town located 65km north of Nagasaki and 25 km east of Sasebo, the largest and second largest cities in Nagasaki Prefecture respectively. The town is surrounded by mountains. In 2022, Hasami’s population was 14,283. Hasami is well-known in Japan as a pottery town (yakimono no machi). It is important to note that, despite having a long tradition of making ceramic products, Hasami pottery just began to gain popularity in recent years, thanks to a movement to promote Hasami yaki initiated some years ago. In the past, due to a division of labor with the neighboring Arita, pottery produced in Hasami was sold under the name of Arita pottery. Hasami’s traditional industries are agriculture and ceramics. Nowadays, ceramics is also the town’s largest industry.

Hasami: A picturesque pottery town
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

As expected from a pottery town, during my fieldwork, I noticed a strong influence of ceramics in Hasami. There are also many ceramic shops around the town. According to my interview with the vice director of the Hasami Ceramics Promotion Association, as of 2022, there were as many as 111 ceramics companies organized in the cooperative (kumiai) involved in different stages of making and selling Hasami yaki, including 5 mould-making (katazukuri) companies, 40 shape-making (kijizukuri) companies, 40 kilns (kamamoto), and 26 retail companies (shōsha). The Hasami Ceramics Promotion Association acts as the mediator between these different stakeholders and the municipal, prefectural, and national governments.

Hasami Ceramics Park is one of Hasami’s famous tourist destinations
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

In Hasami, one can find many tourism amenities that capitalize on Hasami ceramics. One is the Hasami Ceramics Park (Yakimono no kōen), where both the Hasami Ceramics Promotion Association and the Hasami Tourism Association are located. Hasami also hosts an annual ceramics festival at the Hasami Ceramics Park. The town also transformed a former municipal primary school into a public hall to exhibit Hasami ceramics. The hall has been recognized as a tangible cultural property of Japan. 

However, the vice director of the Hasami Ceramics Promotion Association also told me that the ceramics industry of Hasami is facing several challenges. The biggest problem is the lack of manpower to carry on with the production of ceramics. To counter this, he believed there should be structural transformations to ensure the sustainability and efficiency of production. He suggested several ways such as to digitalize and automize production processes, i.e., using AI to replace administrative jobs. He also thought it would be better to minimize unnecessary decision-making and implementation processes, by cutting down steps to connect potters with sales companies for example. However, he acknowledged that it would take time for such changes to take place, given the dominance of existing conservative mindsets among both local business leaders and workers in the ceramics industry, who might resist changes and innovations.

The primary school that was turned into a public exhibition hall
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

While ceramics has been playing an important role in Hasami’s development, there are also concerns regarding an economy solely dependent on ceramics. For instance, the vice director of the Hasami Ceramics Promotion Association said: “If the population of Japan will decrease to 100 million in the future, ceramics production will naturally have to decrease as well […] So, do you think that potteries and trading companies should just reduce the amount they sell, or should they do something different to support their employees without having to lay off employees? We have to do something about this” (interview September 29, 2022). This concern was also shared by a municipal politician who believes that Hasami lacks other services and has no products to offer other than ceramics. He is concerned that this lack of alternative business activities may hinder Hasami’s development efforts. At the time of my interviews, the respondents said Hasami was still trying to identify new ways to proceed. Thus, I am curious to follow up on future developments.