by Arne Bartzsch

In 2021, the municipality of Minakami in central Japan has signed an agreement for a joint project of machizukuri (community planning) with a real estate company (Open House Group), a financial institution (Gunma-Bank), and a university (Tokyo University). This cooperation of business, administration, academia and finance (sankangakukin) has gained attention as a notable example of machizukuri in Japan. General topic is the revitalization of the central spa resort area, Minakami Onsen, with the project’s actual focus on the Yubara district. This project illustrates characteristics of Japanese resort towns and collaborative approaches to tackle their specific problems. In summer 2024, with the project’s planning and execution in full progress, I had the opportunity for extensive on-site research in Minakami. I participated in activities and talked to responsible persons and many citizens. Since I lived in Minakami Onsen for a couple of years, I was able to make sense of these developments to some extent. Certainly, it would need more in-depth research to get a proper understanding, especially about the formal planning process. However, I was able to gain valuable insight into realities of contemporary machizukuri in Japan. In the following, I would like to introduce Minakami and the problems the town has been facing in the past decades before I describe Minakami’s machizukuri activities in my next post.

Minakami is located 175 km from central Tokyo in the north-western corner of the Kantō-region, in Gunma prefecture. Only tunnels for railways and highway, plus a single state road lead to Niigata on the other side of the 2000 m high mountain ridge. Widespread natural forests serve as the source of Japan’s longest river, the Tone. Several dams collect water for Tokyo and the Kantō area, and the whitewater rivers provide tourist attractions. In winter, clouds from Niigata leave behind vast amounts of snow. In 2017, the area was designated as the Minakami UNESCO Eco Park. And there are a large number of onsen. Onsen (hot springs) are plentiful in Japan. Many have been developed into resort-spots, attracting people for wellness and tourism or for business and work. Onsen-gai (-streets) or onsen-machi (-towns) have a typical structure, determined by specific architecture, infrastructure and social composition. Often situated in genuine natural environment and depending on a rather uniform economy (tourism, wellness), an onsen-gai or onsen-machi forms a characteristic urban space. Minakami Onsen is such an urban space.

The name Minakami Onsen originally has been a synonym for Yubara (“field of hot water”), the central district of old Minakami, before its merger with its former neighboring communities Niiharu and Tsukiyono in 2005. After the merger the name accentuated the old Minakami, in contrast to the enhanced town of new Minakami. However, present local planning and promotion seem to tend to the original use, and I am following here in accordance. While all parts of Minakami (new) have several onsen, Minakami Onsen (Yubara) has the most prominent onsen-gai. Here, the building density is comparatively high, with large-scale hotels, guesthouses, commercial facilities and residential houses. The railway station and a touristic local shopping facility (michi no eki) are in close distance, and almost integrated parts. Contrasting the built environment, the Tone River cuts through a scenic gorge alongside Yubara, and steep slopes of forest rise on both sides.

These favorable settings of abundant nature and numerous onsen, plus easy accessibility from Tokyo via rapid train, brought Minakami Onsen a certain prosperity since the 1960s. Direct connections via Shinkansen and highway contributed to this in the 1980s. However, by the turn of the century the “golden years” had ended (as for Japan in general), and a steady economic decline began. Fewer tourists came and a good number of hotels, ryokan, and guesthouses were forced to downsize or close. Other touristic facilities, like souvenir shops, restaurants or bars, were affected as well. The number of closed or abandoned facilities in Minakami Onsen became significant, producing the atmosphere of a “ghost town,” which again reduced the town’s attractiveness. The result was a vicious circle that led to economic decline and a shrinking population.

To counter these negative developments, the administration of Minakami had to find effective measures. One attempt was the “Project for Townscape and Environmental Improvement” (machinami kankyōseibi jigyō), initiated in 2005, with special focus on Yubara. In cooperation with the Waseda University Goto Laboratory (for urban and rural landscape) detailed local surveys, public discussions, workshops and other formats were conducted. The project resulted in a catalog for design improvements on buildings and infrastructure, and in provisions for citizens’ participation. Many of the suggestions have been realized afterwards. However, there were fundamental structural problems still remaining. The Minakami Urban Planning Masterplan of 2020 has declared the Minakami onsen-gai of Yubara with its connecting areas as a central touristic base, assigning special importance for development. This follows considerations for a structural segmentation of the full community territory. Facilities of administration, for example, shall be concentrated in the Tsukiyono-area, or natural farming projects in the Niiharu-area. Concerning Minakami Onsen, the existent touristic infrastructure shall be redesigned and revitalized, so that it can serve as an attractive spot for visitors and citizens, and as a connecting hub to other areas of Minakami.

I will introduce this project in more detail in my next post. To be continued …

Arne Bartzsch graduated as M.A. of Information Science and Japanese Studies from Freie Universität Berlin. He is researching topics of cultural information and local development. In Japan, he has taken part in various machizukuri activities. Knowledge transfer between Germany and South Korea about re-unification and transformation was another long-term project.

by Lynn Ng

I have a love-hate relationship with fieldwork. I’m sure many researchers can relate to this, and previous authors of this blog have reported on their ups and downs in the field and after fieldwork (Klien, 2023; Luzi, 2024). I was no different. I started my research in the area of the former Fukushima nuclear exclusion zones in 2019 and have followed the lives of many of my research participants over the past five years:  I observed the early courtship of a young couple in 2019 and congratulated them on their second child last Christmas. I listened to an enthusiastic civil servant explain his vision for Fukushima and watched him retire in the spring of 2024. I watched the demolition of abandoned houses and the construction of new buildings and saw the unexpected departure of old entrepreneurs and the exuberant entry of new entrepreneurs.

Throughout these events, however, I was always aware of my status as an outsider observing the field and its people and taking notes. Field researchers often reflect upon positionality and ethics: we discuss whether you should be friends with your research participants and how much you should interfere in their lives (see for example McLaughlin, 2020). I would think about whether these questions are rhetorical: Can one really examine the field without befriending the field? Nevertheless, these questions and boundaries have haunted and exhausted me over the years. I attended local barbecues and dinners of my research participants just to try to take as many notes as discreetly as possible. My research participants, of course, knew me as “Lynn, the researcher.” I never tried to hide the fact that I was researching them, although I often wished I wasn’t. I often wanted to just be their friend rather than write a dissertation about them. I often wished I could enjoy the moments without the worries of research hovering over me.

Thus, in March 2024, as my flight departed Japan for Germany, I breathed a deep, long sigh of relief – my time in the field, albeit fragmented, had finally come to an end. The long flight was of bittersweet significance as I emotionally drew closure to my position as a researcher of Fukushima and Japan. I was ready to switch off research-mode and begin writing my thesis. And after the thesis? I would return to Japan as a visitor enjoying all Japan and Fukushima offers. In the summer of 2024, however, I was unexpectedly presented with a chance to revisit my field through the university’s summer school program in collaboration with IRIDES at Sendai University. Amidst all the internal emotional conflict with the field, I joined the summer school. For ten days, I visited places new and old and listened to intellectual debates on the recovery and revitalization of Tohoku after 2011. Despite my apprehension, I was again filled with curiosities for the field – the same curiosities that first drove me to research Fukushima in 2019. New observations had led to new questions and the urge to seek answers. I was eager to learn more, to ask more questions, and to experience more of the field.

In the end, ten days was too short. On my flight back to Germany, I wondered when I would be able to return to Japan to get my new questions answered. In the end, I wonder if I will ever be able to finish my work as a field researcher. In the meantime, I am trying to finish my PhD and use the positive energy of this last and unexpected visit to my field to look at the data I collected before from a new perspective. And hopefully I will return to Japan soon, both as a friend and as a researcher.

Reference:

McLaughlin, Levi (2020), “How to do fieldwork: Studying Japan in and outside of Japan,” in: Kottmann, Nora and Reiher, Cornelia (eds.), Studying Japan: Handbook of Research Design, Fieldwork and Methods, Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 157-168.

by Cornelia Reiher

After studying urban-rural migration in Japan over time, I realized that the mobilities of urbanites in the countryside and beyond are very dynamic. Over the years, I met people who moved to a rural town, stayed there for a few years and then moved to another rural area within Japan. There were also migrants who moved back to the city they came from, while others moved abroad. Still others have never confined themselves to one place of residence and lead a mobile life between two or more places. Even the Japanese government has recognized more mobile lifestyles and supports the promotion of kankei jinkō. The term has been awkwardly translated into English as “relationship population” and refers to a group of highly mobile people who regularly spend time in the countryside (Dilley et al. 2024).

In this article, I introduce Yuri, who first came to the countryside for a workation, returned several times and later moved to a rural town where she now lives part-time. I met Yuri in the fall of 2022 in a small town in Kyūshū where she currently rents a room in a sharehouse. She is a photographer and web designer in her early thirties who lived in Kansai and spent her second workation in Kyūshū when we first met. Workation combines the words “work” and “vacation” and means working remotely from a location of your choice rather than from home. When their work is done, workationers can explore their destination. In Japan, workation is closely linked to initiatives by local governments in rural Japan to attract people to visit, work and ideally settle in their communities (Matsushita 2022; Yoshida 2021). When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Yuri was able to work remotely and went on workations to different parts of Japan. In Okinawa, she met a girl who had been to Kyūshū and had helped to renovate a sharehouse. Yuri visited the sharehouse’s social media account and decided that she wanted to go there right away because the photos made her feel “at home” (atto hōmu na kanji). In 2022, she lived in the sharehouse, helped with renovations of another sharehouse and worked remotely. In January 2023, she relocated and moved into the sharehouse she had helped renovate, continued her remote work, and found work as a freelance photographer.

During our first meeting, we connected via social media. On social media, urban-rural migrants often use arrows between two place names to show where they have moved from and where to, but usually the arrow is pointing in only one direction. But some people like Yuri use arrows pointing in two directions to show that they are highly mobile individuals. In addition, many use the hashtag “nikyoten seikatsu” (living in two places). Yuri’s social media accounts document her travels all over Japan. She shows beautiful rural landscapes alternating with portraits of people and products. She describes her lifestyle as temporary migration (ichijiteki ijū) and enjoys her life between Kansai and Kyūshū as much as traveling within Japan for several months per year. The sharehouse itself is a place where people often only stay temporarily and Yuri enjoys meeting new people. In the spring of 2023, I lived with Yuri in the sharehouse and found her well-integrated into the community of urban-rural migrants, but she had also become friends with her elderly neighbors. Within the few weeks I spent with her, she had jobs in Kyūshū and went to Kyōto, Ōsaka and Okinawa. Although she rents a room in the sharehouse, the small town is more of a temporary base for her.

The reasons why people leave and move on are diverse, but for most of my research participants, the COVID-19 pandemic was a reason to choose a more mobile lifestyle. Yuri, for example, told me how free she felt when she was able to work remotely when the pandemic started in 2020 and her work style changed. Before the pandemic, she barely had time for anything other than her work because of the long commute. When she was able to work from home, she finally found the time to focus more on photography – a long-held wish. In addition, she was able to work all over Japan. Telecommuting offered the opportunity to work anywhere and made urban-rural migration and workation more attractive. Workation offered Yuri a new mobile lifestyle that would eventually lead her to move to Kyūshū. Generally speaking, remote work and workation increased the number of short-term visitors and kankei jinkō in the countryside (Dilley 2024; Matsushita 2022; Yoshida 2021), and some of these short-term visitors, like Yuri, decided to stay longer. Thus, changing work styles go hand in hand with mobilities and bring about change in rural Japan.

References:

Dilley, Luke, Menelaos Gkartzios, Shogo Kudo, Tokumi Odagiri (2024), “Hybridising counterurbanisation: Lessons from Japan’s kankeijinkō,” Habitat International 143, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102967.

Matsushita, Keita (2022), “How the Japanese workcation embraces digital nomadic work style employees,” World Leisure Journal 65 (2): 218–235.

Yoshida, Tatsuya (2021), “How Has Workcation Evolved in Japan?” Annals of Business Administrative Science 20: 19–32.