by Anne-Sophie L. König

The cold was slowly creeping through my jeans on a cold February day in 2023 as I tried to keep my balance sitting on a bridge railing, while writing down field notes. I had just come from an hour-long interview with the chairman of the village assembly of Minamiyamashiro in Kyōto Prefecture and I did not want to forget anything he had said. As part of my doctoral thesis on the phenomenon of candidate shortage (narite busoku) in local elections, I wanted to find out why there is a shortage of candidates in all towns in the area except for Minamiyamashiro.

I first came across Minamiyamashiro when I checked the voter turnout in the towns and villages of Kyōto Prefecture during my research stay in Japan from 2022 to 2023. Looking at the map of Kyōto municipalities, I noticed a pattern. The shape of the prefecture looks like a European dragon, with Kyōtango city in the southwest as the dragon’s head, then in the stubby tail that stretches far into the mountains between Nara, Shiga and Mie prefectures in the northeast lies Sōraku district with Minamiyamashiro. In this spur, there are a number of towns where uncontested elections were held due to a lack of candidates, and at the border of the prefecture is Minamiyamashiro, the outlier. Between 2011 and 2024, there were five uncontested elections in Ide, one in Wazuka, four in Kasagi, while in Minamiyamashiro, voter turnout was between 69 and 81 percent over the same period. I found that strange. Why does the village furthest from the urban center have such a high voter turnout, while the neighboring communities struggle to hold an election at all? This is why I decided to contact all municipalities, and went to Minamiyamashiro and Kasagi for interviews. I reached the municipalities via train in about 2 and a half hours from Demachiyanagi station in Kyōto. In Kizu I boarded a cute little train running once every hour. Historically, all of the towns and the village focused on agriculture and forestry. One famous export product was tea, but tea production and agriculture remained as a main industry only in Minamiyamashiro. From the train following the flow of Kizu river the change from rice paddies to steep tea plantations is clearly visible. In summer, the producers offer a tea plantation experience with a guided tour through the processing facilities.

In Kasagi, many people began to commute to the larger town of Kizu or further afield to work in the industry. Ecotourism also gained traction with a larger campground and climbing areas at the famous boulders located at the mouth of a gorge carved by the Kizu River. Kasagi used to have a different clientele, as evidenced by the closed onsen hotel uphill from the boulders, but those days sadly seem to be over. There is a good network of hiking trails in the mountains that follow the stream of Kizu River, and on winter mornings you have a breathtaking view of the so-called unkai – the sea of clouds – that covers the valley. When I climbed up to Kasagi Temple, the sun was bright in the sky and I could clearly see Kasagi from above. The temple is really worth a visit because of the impressively large Buddhas carved in stone and the beautiful rock formations.

In the low season, the communities in Sōraku are a little short of cafés and restaurants. This is why I decided to start writing down my field notes on a bridge in the cold February. Later, I found food and a warm spot in a bentō delivery store run by a U-turn migrant who used to work for the Kyōto city government. He wanted to leave the bustling city and do something meaningful in his hometown. After work, he sat down with me while I ate and talked about life and politics in the village and in Sōraku district. He did not understand why his fellow villagers were so fired up at election time. Instead, he showed me some footage from the local TV station about migrants like him and pointed out that it’s not just about politics and tourism. Apart from his bentō business that caters to administration, tea producers and the elderly, there were some recent college graduates who had set up a wildlife farm to capitalize on the new culinary trends in the Kansai region. He wondered if people in Minamiyamashiro are simply more invested in village politics, as they are mostly tea farmers. Working and living in the same place as opposed to commuting, he assumes, naturally creates interest in affairs village.

In my doctoral thesis, I will dig deeper into the puzzle of the Sōraku district. As the district’s municipalities are quite small and their population is only in the low four-digit range. Therefore, the lack of candidates for political positions is a major problem. However, the communities are not only interesting case studies for my dissertation, the visit there also gave me interesting insights into life in the countryside, the challenges faced by the communities and the unpredictability of fieldwork. I can highly recommend a visit if you are interested in rural Japan, as the district is easily accessible even without a car. Moreover, if I somehow tickled your interest in the candidate shortage issue, I recommend staying tuned for my doctoral thesis!

References:

Seijiyama Minamiyamashiro (2024), Minamiyamashiro, https://seijiyama.jp/lgov/26/263672/

Kasagidera (2024), Kasagidera Temple, https://kasagidera.net/  

Anne-Sophie L. König is a doctoral candidate in Japanese Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a research associate in the DFG project “Demography and Democracy: How Population Ageing Changes Democracy – The Example of Japan”. Her research interests include politics in Japan with a focus on democracy studies and local politics. She can be reached at an.koenig@lmu.de.

by Lise Sasaki

In a rapidly ageing and depopulating society, Japanese women are facing unprecedented challenges to maintain their economic and social status. Their situation has worsened due to the increase in female unemployment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Exacerbated by the pandemic, derailing career paths are typical experiences for women in Japanese society. On top of this, political and societal pressure to perform as working women and to fix the declining birth rate can be overwhelming for many women. In 2018, my engagement as a research assistant led me to Tosa-chō in Kōchi Prefecture, where domestic migrants (ijūsha), among them many women, have settled, started families and developed a sense of belonging. In a rapidly depopulating post-pandemic Japan, where women face the brunt of economic decline and are less likely than ever before to start families, I have been eager to understand why migrants move to rural areas to raise children. 

Tosa-chō is a town in Kochi Prefecture with about 3,500 residents. 40% of the population is aged 65 or older, and the population has declined by 50% over the past 40 years to 3,803 people (Tosa-chō 2020). This rural mountainous area is remote, with the nearest city, Kōchi City, one hour away. Tosa-chō’s population is widely scattered across the town’s 15 districts.Some of the more remote villages have fewer than 15 inhabitants. It is almost impossible to access some of these villages without a car, as they are located deep in the mountains, far away from the more populated villages in the valley. It can take more than one hour by car from some of these villages to a public facility such as a post office or town hall.

I have become close with a few ijūsha women who have moved to Tosa-chō for various reasons like seeking refuge after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, pursuing serenity amidst the pressures of urban living, and desiring healing within the lush green and the flowing waters of Tosa-chō. The town is known to have one of the most beautiful rivers in the country. While none of these ijūsha women expressed they had ‘lost’ themselves in their past urban city lives, it seemed Tosa-chō served as an avenue to cultivate an identity they were in search of. It became evident that their sense of belonging was nurtured through strong interpersonal connections. Ijūsha women viewed rural lifestyles as ideal, and while they envisioned a hybrid, tranquil lifestyle, they set out to connect to the land and the locals. This ideal life was most evident when I observed their kitchens, where migrant women chose old-fashioned kitchens over contemporary system kitchens. Utilizing the Kamado (Furnace Stoves) instead of gas stoves and handed down wooden cabinets instead of contemporary all-in-one cabinets exemplified their carefully constructed living spaces and atmospheres through cooking and homemaking.

Embraced warmly by older residents of the town, the newcomers are initiated into a culture rooted in communal care and mutual support, exemplified by practices such as osusowake (sharing food) and village rituals. I wondered whether their quest for belonging extended beyond mere communal ties to encompass a more profound yearning for love, nurturance and care bestowed by others. A recent conversation with a close friend who moved to Tosa-chō ten years ago to raise her children emphasized the importance of physical closeness in experiencing love. For her, love is felt deeply when you can touch and feel it, so that you sense intimacy and warmth. “In cities,” she said, “where is the time for each of us to feel this warmth between us?” In an increasingly digitalized society, she believes the virtual world somehow lacks emotional connection, perhaps because it is a physically individual activity that is not shared. But in Tosa-chō, the human-to-human connection remained and she was able to experience physical connections and empathy every day. At the same time, she also pointed out the tensions between the young ijūsha and the locals: “I love it here, I really do … but now that I’ve been here for almost 10 years, I sometimes feel the need to breathe.”  This statement and my own experiences in Tosa-chō made me think about the permanence of these social bonds. I experienced the rapid spread of information by word of mouth myself. If I ran into a friend at the market, a mutual friend would often check in with me a few minutes later and kindly remind me that the vegetables I had bought were cheaper at the farmer’s market three miles away. Stories and information seemed to spread faster and further, and I remember a sense of invasion of my personal space. Against this backdrop, I am curious to explore how ijūsha women achieve a balance between connectedness and autonomy as they navigate the complexities of belonging in Tosa-chō. I am particularly interested in the shifting forms of belonging in this digitalized society, to explore the ways in which rural life is dissolving into new ways of living that provide a sense of healing for ijūsha women.

References

Kōchi Prefecture Tosa-chō Home Page (2020). Tosa chō. Retrieved from http://www.town.tosa.kochi.jp/ Last accessed May 2024.

Lise Sasaki is a freelance researcher who has worked on projects at UCL Anthropology and Osaka University. Her research explores the redefinition of female identity and its implications for motherhood in contemporary Japan.

by Cecilia Luzi

Despite similar structural conditions, rural Japan is incredibly diverse, and the encounter between a place and a migrant can create unique opportunities that are influenced by the socio-economic and historical context of the place, as well as the individual inspirations and personal connections of the migrants. I will illustrate this with the example of Hannah’s migratory experience. I met Hannah on a cloudy afternoon under the cherry blossoms in Hasami Public Park in the spring of 2023. We were organizing a hanami with our children, and she joined us after picking up her daughters from kindergarten. Originally from Germany, Hannah came to Japan over ten years ago to learn pottery and improve her skills in Arita, the neighboring town of Hasami.  She has not left Kyūshū since. While at school, Hannah met Isamu, a fellow student from Kumamoto Prefecture, who later became her husband. Together they moved to Hasami, where she began working in the workshop of a renowned potter in the arts and crafts district of Nakaoyama. Today, she runs a very successful small ceramics studio in Hasami together with her husband.

Like Arita, Hasami has a rich history of industrial pottery production that has profoundly shaped the town’s socio-economic structure. Older residents, aged 80 and above, recall times when pottery permeated every aspect of town life, from the extraction of kaolin to the decoration of the finished pieces. Unlike the high-quality porcelain of neighboring Arita, Hasami’s ceramics have always been intended for everyday use. As a result, identical designs were produced by numerous kilns scattered throughout the municipality, encouraging cooperation rather than competition between kilns. Even today, smaller family-run kilns exist alongside larger companies, forming a tight-knit community around ceramic production. This environment offers both the population and institutions the opportunity to support small and young artisans so that they can maintain their activity. Also, and more importantly, it has laid the ground for the creation of a basic working infrastructure in recent decades, such as the akikōbo bank, a website similar to akiya banks that provides information on free workshops or other business ventures, or the Ceramic Research Center of Nagasaki Prefecture (Nagasaki ken yōgyō gijutsu sentā) among many exposition venues and shops.

It was therefore easier for Hannah and Isamu to set up their own workshop and settle in Hasami after completing their studies in Arita. They set up their first pottery workshop with the help of the akikōbo bank. In Hasami, I met other migrants who had similar experiences. In our conversations, I often felt how big Hannah’s decision was and how determined she was to pursue her dreams in Hasami, even though it is so remote. Over the past few years, Isamu and Hannah have managed to purchase a plot of land, build their new house and recently inaugurated a new workshop directly below their house on the same plot of land they purchased. As we talked, Hannah reflected on how her life had turned out, occasionally wondering how it would have turned out if she hadn’t held on to her dream of becoming a potter in rural Japan. Nevertheless, she decided to make Hasami her home.

I think it’s more than just the furusato idea and the rural idyll that romanticizes rural Japan as a nostalgic space that attracts young, determined people today. The migrants I met are very self-aware and self-reflective; when they move, they know that life in rural Japan is a challenge and that it will not be easy there. Yet each place in their stories represents different dreams. The communities they eventually move to have great significance for them and their lives. Sometimes they pay great attention to the choice of place and associate it with hopes for their future lives, even if they do not plan to stay forever. For them, rural Japan is not just an indeterminate space or a furusato in itself, but each place represents the potential for a future life. In this sense, Hasami has a special attraction for potters and all activities related to pottery and pottery tourism.