by Edzard Haschka

Although I have never set foot in Fukushima Prefecture myself, it, or rather the events that brought the region tragic global attention in 2011, is closely linked to my personal life story.  From 2009 to 2011, I had the great opportunity to study at Takushoku University in Tokyo. Actually, I planned to study in Tokyo until I graduated in 2014, and who knows, maybe I would have stayed in Japan forever after that. When the earth began to shake at 2:46 p.m. on the afternoon of March 03, 2011, I was in the library of Takushoku University’s Bunkyo campus. At first, the ground began to vibrate slowly, as I had experienced from countless earthquakes, but after a few seconds, the shaking became stronger until I was the first person present to stand up and slowly walk toward the exit. The librarian noticed my worried look and said as the intensity of the shaking increased, “Maybe everything will be okay.” I quickened my pace and replied, “Maybe not.”

Takushoku University Bunkyo Campus, next to the Entry to the Library, Tokyo
Copyright © Edzard Haschka 2009

At that moment, about 15 seconds after the onset of the first tremors, Japan was shaken by the strongest earthquake since records began. As I ran outside, I saw some bookshelves collapse, cracks appear in the concrete of the floor and in the facade of the university, and the glass panes of the buildings caused a deafening clang. Shocked, we watched on a television screen an hour or two later as whole swaths of land not even 100 km from us were destroyed by the strongest tsunami mankind has ever seen. But it was the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant that triggered the consternation in me, and especially in my family, that made it necessary to abandon my enthusiastically pursued plan to stay in Japan and start the journey home – a decision I still don’t regret today.

So much for my personal Japan story, which ended on March 14, when I left Japan as a “flyjin”. Back in Germany, however, the catastrophe never left me. I followed with concern about the attempts to contain the nuclear catastrophe and the helplessness with which mankind faces the threat of radioactive contamination. This invisible threat, against which people can protect themselves only at an extremely high cost and only for a short time, led to the establishment of exclusion zones in the region around Fukushima, a measure that left thousands of people homeless.

View towards Korakuen from the rooftop terrace of Takushoku University’s main building on the Bunkyo campus, Tokyo
Copyright © Edzard Haschka 2011

Given these circumstances, it is noteworthy that the efforts of Japanese institutions to revitalize regions in Japan that are threatened with depopulation also extend to the Fukushima region.  In my research on efforts to revitalize remote regions, I came across a very interesting website run by Fukushima Prefecture. The website, https://fukushima-ijyu.com/, is the official website for those seeking assistance in resettling in Fukushima Prefecture.  The website explicitly promotes resettlement to the region based on specific exemplary migration stories and interviews. The website features (as of June 26, 2023) interviews with 30 ijūsha (internal migrants) who have moved to the Fukushima region for various reasons. Some of them are from Fukushima and lived temporarily in one of the major Japanese cities, while others are from other areas of the Japanese archipelago. The selection of ijūsha gives the impression of a representative cross-section of the population, as both men and women, single people and parents of families from different regions are presented. As different as the circumstances and reasons for migrating to the Fukushima region may be, what all migrants have in common is that the decision to migrate was made out of an inner drive and was voluntary and positively inclined.

Through images similar to this one, the Fukushima Prefecture administration describes the site as an uncontaminated rural idyll, Fukushima Prefecture
Copyright © Rikako Matsuoka 2020

Services offered on the website include answers to frequently asked questions, contact forms to counseling centers, and referrals to support services. I was surprised, however, that the nuclear disaster and its impact on the region are not mentioned on the website, not even in an appeasing way. Even for unconcerned newcomers to the region, learning a few things about radiation might be significant. I also expected to find some information for refugees such as displaced people who need to resettle quickly. So I wondered how the post-disaster evacuation and the new attempts to attract migrants to Fukushima are connected. Who are the relevant target groups for promoting the region as a destination for migrants, and why would people consciously choose to migrate to the Fukushima region? In my opinion, this raises interesting research questions and challenges to be addressed with regard to migration to the Fukushima region.

References
Dambeck, Holger (February 28th, 2012): “Japans Regierung fürchtete Evakuierung Tokios”, Spiegel Online: /https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/fukushima-katastrophe-japans-regierung-fuerchtete-evakuierung-tokios-a-818084.html (last viewed on June 23rd, 2023).
Kan, Naoto, and Jeffrey S. Irish (2012). “My Nuclear Nightmare: Leading Japan through the Fukushima Disaster to a Nuclear-Free Future”. Cornell University Press.
Official website of Fukushima Prefecture for those interested in relocating to this prefecture:  https://fukushima-ijyu.com/interview (last viewed on June 28th, 2023).

Edzard Haschka is a student in the BA program in Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin

by Cornelia Reiher

After three months of teaching, some of my memories of fieldwork have already faded, but by integrating the topic of urban-rural migration in Japan into one of my courses this semester, I was able to share my fieldwork experiences with students. In a BA course on mobilities, ten students examined the internal and transnational migration of Japanese citizens and the technologies that enable migration, new lifestyles and new forms of work. Students read and translated academic articles, Japan’s latest digital strategy for rural areas, blogposts from urban residents who have moved to the countryside and articles from Turns, a magazine that focuses on rural areas, urban-rural migration and rural revitalization. We also watched promotional videos by prefectures, municipalities or individual migrants.

Some of the students from the BA course on mobilities at the Japanese Studies Institute at FU Berlin
Copyright © Cosmo Hümmer 2023

In class, we discussed many phenomena related to urban-rural migration, paying particular attention to mobilities other than human. With a focus on technologies, we explored how digital transformation has enabled urban-rural migration and changed rural lifestyles. Students were particularly interested in new forms of work such as digital nomadism, remote work and workation, as well as the digitalization of agriculture. We also looked at social media as a means that migrants use to stay in touch with their friends and families in their former place of residence, but also with each other. Looking at the different types of social media networks that migrants use to stay in touch and support each other by sharing information, but also by positively portraying themselves and their experiences in the countryside, provided many interesting starting points for discussions with the students, who could easily connect migrants’ experiences and use of social media with their own life worlds.

Issues of the magazine Turns we read during class
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2023

In addition to reading and discussing the various sources, I also wanted to encourage students to write about what they had learned. But instead of simply writing a term paper that only I would read, I asked students to write posts for this blog based on the course readings. So in the following weeks, this blog will feature posts from BA students in the Japanese Studies program at Freie Universität Berlin who participated in the course on mobilities.

The rural idyll in Japan many urban-rural migrants are looking for
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2023

All the contributions are about urban-rural migration in Japan, but the topics of the contributions are very different. They range from traditional crafts to digital transformation in agriculture. One paper discusses what rural areas are, while others focus on the migration experiences of individual migrants and their families or on new forms of work such as remote work and workation. All contributions are based on Japanese sources that were read, translated and summarized by the students. In some cases, the contributions were inspired by the students’ own experiences in the Japanese countryside and also tell personal stories. I hope readers will enjoy students’ perspectives on urban-rural migration!

by Kazuyoshi Kawasaka and Ami Kobayashi

Rural areas in Japan (inaka) are often thought of as homogenous and “authentic Japan” when compared to metropolises such as Tokyo and Osaka. Metropolitan cities are associated with more diverse and rapidly changing ‘young’ lifestyles, but rural areas in Japan have been also changing due to various reasons. One factor, which we regard as a trigger of societal change in rural areas, is the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET program).  The JET program was introduced by the Japanese government in 1987 in order to internationalize Japanese society, including rural areas. According to McConnell (2000), the JET program is Japan’s unique top-down attempt to create “mass internationalisation.” The JET program aims to cultivate international awareness and understanding of cultural diversity in Japan’s local communities through inviting applicants from abroad as assistant language teachers, coordinators for international relations or sport advisors across Japan. Japanese officials called it “the greatest initiative undertaken since World War II related to the field of human and cultural relations,” designed as an international exchange program to change Japanese people’s attitude towards foreigners and foreign cultures by grassroots personal interactions (McConnell 2000: x).

A typical scenery in rural Japan.
Copyright © Ami Kobayashi 2016

Although it was not its intention, the JET Programme has also influenced LGBTQ+ activism in Japan. For example, JET participants organised ‘Stonewall Japan’ in 1995, which was one of the earliest LGBTQ+ groups in the public education sector in Japan and is still active. Although Japan welcomes thousands of young graduates from all over the world for the JET Programme every year, previous studies rarely discussed the difficulties they face in Japan’s rural communities. Some publications discuss the conflict between the “locals” and “foreigners” from a rather dichotomous perspective, but they do not pay attention to the heterogeneity of foreigner’s experiences, especially those caused by their race, sexuality and gender identities.

ALTs teach English in Japanese elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.
Copyright © Tono Education and Culture Foundation 2015

In order to examine the difficulties that JET teachers with minority backgrounds face, we conducted semi-structured interviews with former and current LGBTQ+ JET teachers in 2021. They all have worked in rural areas and many of them could not speak fluent Japanese. None of our interviewees had access to local LGBTQ+ communities, and none were actively open about their gender and sexual identity, since they feared that their identities would make their lives more difficult. One of the striking points is that depending on the skin colour and ethnic identity of LGBTQ+ teachers, the problems they faced and how they coped with those situations differed significantly. While white interviewees did not mention their ethnicity, interviewees of colour often referred to their ethnicity as an additional factor entangled with their sexuality that made their work at Japanese schools even more difficult.

One female ALT told us: “I think the, there was a lot of, like, race involved as well. My, the other JETs in the area were all like, you know, blue-eyed blonde and everyone was very friendly with them. But I would like, go to a café with my friend who was black and (…) they’re looking at us like ‘nani (…)’ like ‘what, what is this’, you know. (…) And that’s like not something that I can talk to my coworkers about at all, but also wasn’t something that I can talk about with my, like, JET peers, because they were all white.”(Former ALT, Hispanic, Lesbian woman). But despite the challenges and most of the teaching plan being fixed, most of our interviewees have found ways to make LGBTQ+ visible and tried to tackle heteronormative and sexist presumptions in schools. Through their outlook, worksheets and additional information for English classes, they have negotiated the existing gender and sexuality norms within and outside of the classroom.

In some rural areas in Japan, ALTs are the first foreignerschildren meet and their activities often go beyond simply teaching English.
Copyright © Tono Education and Culture Foundation 2015

In rural areas, there is generally less privacy and people are less tolerant of cultural and sexual diversity, while in big cities, many LGBTQ+ people and foreigners have established their own communities. Japanese LGBTQ+ studies have just started to include LGBTQ+ lives in rural areas into their research and to overcome their metrocentrism as the recently published book “Chihō” to seiteki mainoritī [The “Countryside” and Sexual Minorities] by Sugiura Ikuko and Maekawa Naoki shows. In this sense, the subtle activities of LGBTQ+ JET teachers to expand diversity in rural areas need to be evaluated and further explored. In addition, effective measures should be taken to ensure their safety and mental health in Japan’s rural schools and communities.

References
McConnell, David L. (2000), Importing Diversity: Inside Japan’s JET Program, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sugiura Ikuko and Maekawa Naoki (2022),“Chihō” to seiteki mainoritī [The “Countryside” and Sexual Minorities], Tōkyō: Seikyū-sha.

Dr Kazuyoshi Kawasaka is principal investigator of the DFG-funded project “Sexual Diversity and Human Rights in 21st Century Japan: LGBTQ+ Activisms and Resistance from a Transnational Perspective” at the Institute of Modern Japanese Studies at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.
Dr Ami Kobayashi teaches at the Institute of Modern Japanese Studies at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and at the Institute of History of Education at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau.

The authors have just published an article about the topic:
Kawasaka, Kazuyoshi and Kobayashi, Ami (2023), “Surviving Under the ‘Hidden Curriculum’: The struggles of LGBTQ+ JET Teachers in Japanese Rural Areas”, Studia Orientalia 124, pp. 145-161.

by Sarah Bijlsma

For the past few months, I have paused my doctoral research due to the birth of my daughter last December. It took me some time to adjust to this new reality, as I went almost directly from fieldwork on Miyakojima to days spent feeding, changing diapers, and reading picture books. Besides this weblog and the occasional academic papers I read, one channel that keeps giving glimpses of life in the Japanese countryside is the Netflix series “Love Village” (“Ai no Sato”).

Watching “Love Village” while the baby takes a nap
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2023

“Love Village” aired in early May and has 18 episodes at the time of writing. The show contains some elements common to modern dating shows. For example, eight single men and women are given a living space outside their normal lives where they get to know each other on a day-to-day basis. When someone falls in love, they ring the “love bell” (ai no kane), confess his or her love and leave either together or alone if rejected. What is new, however, is that the participants of “Love Village” are between 35 and 60 years old, so they have all passed 30, which is about the average age of marriage in Japan [1]. A second new element of the show is that the contestants do not live in a stylishly furnished apartment, but in a 152-year-old kominka (traditional Japanese house). While living in the countryside, the contestants are tasked with growing their own vegetables and renovating the house together during episodes of the show.

Watching “Love Village” makes me miss the Japanese countryside
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2023

These two unique elements – the age of the participants and the task of restoration – are fascinating to me because they directly reflect the two major problems facing Japan today. The first is the aging of the population. With 28.4% of older Japanese in 2018, Japan has the oldest population in the world [2]. The second problem is the shrinking population, especially in rural areas. As several authors have pointed out in this blog, the restoration of akiya (vacant houses) by urban Japanese newcomers is a new trend used as a strategy to combat rural migration [3]. Accompanied by a soundtrack of high-energy Backstreet Boys hits from the 1990s, “Love Village” portrays life in the countryside as great fun. Members cut bamboo in the forest and eat flowing noodles (nagashi sōmen), they happily remove spiders from bedrooms and they simply move their dinner inside when it starts to rain. In addition, daily life seems both convenient and cheap: many vegetables are picked directly from the field, and there is a grocery delivery service that brings the rest of the food into the house. Restoration also seems to be going on without much of a hurdle, and week after week one can see members successfully restoring the wooden floor and shoji paper windows in the house. Most importantly, the restoration of an old Japanese house actually turns out to be a recipe for finding true love.

Under construction: it takes some time to renovate an old country house
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2023

**the next paragraph contains spoilers**

The first “Love Village” couple is Junpei and Okayo. Junpei is 42 years old and has lived his life as a free spirit both in Japan and abroad. After his father’s death, he returned to Shizuoka to take over his carpentry business and is now looking for a woman to help him. Okayo, 39, works part-time at a grocery store. After the two spend days together renovating the woman’s room, Okayo confesses her feelings to Junpei. She emphasizes how important it was for them to work together on the sleeping area and that “I wanted to help someone I liked in my own way” [4]. Although Junpei admits that he was initially more attracted to another female roommate, he chooses the introverted Okayo and leaves the show with her. According to their Instagram profiles, the two are still together. Many viewers have wondered where the kominka from “Love Village” is in Japan, which has led to heated discussions on the Internet. The most widely accepted theory is that it is located in Minamiboso-shi in Chiba-ken. This conclusion is drawn because viewers have found that two company names dropped in the broadcast could belong to a restoration company and a real estate company, both of which operate in Chiba-ken. In addition, the website of each real estate agency notes that they currently sell only traditional houses in the Minamiboso-shi area.

Many newcomers renovate abandoned houses in rural Japan like this one
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2023

I like Japanese dating shows because they are so real. A European version would focus mainly on the arguments during the long working days and the jealousy among the contestants. Love Village, on the other hand, shows everyone cheering each other on and working together in many ways. As I myself float on a pink cloud during these months, it’s nice to see relationships forming between people who had long given up on love.

References
[1]          https://www.statista.com/statistics/611957/japan-mean-age-marriage-by-gender/#:~:text=Men%20and%20women%20in%20Japan,when%20they%20first%20got%20married.
[2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/15/national/elderly-citizens-accounted-record-28-4-japans-population-2018-data-show/
[3] See or example this blog, “Vacant houses in rural Japan: From empty space to potential places for newcomers” by Jyoti Vasnani (2021), “Renovating old houses: Between Japan and France” by Maritchu Durand (2021), and “A gallery in the middle of nowhere: reusing abandoned houses as art spaces in Japan’s countryside” by Cornelia Reiher (2023).
[4] Love Village, 2023, episode 8.