by Melanie Steinbrugger

If you have ever taken a train late at night through Japan’s countryside, you might know the feeling of stepping off at a nearly empty station in the freezing cold, unsure if you have arrived in the right place. That was exactly how I felt when I first arrived in Aso City. It was winter, and I had just taken a train from Kumamoto to reach this scenic region known for its caldera, vast farmland and beautiful hot springs. I was a bit worried about whether I would be able to conduct enough interviews for my master’s thesis on the professional identity of caregivers in rural Japan. My host, the owner of a guesthouse, kindly picked me up at the station, we stopped by a Family Mart to grab a quick bite (because the supermarket had already closed) and then headed to a cozy yet very cold guesthouse. Even though I was nervous about the next few weeks I would spend in this region, the kindness of the local people quickly put me at ease.

One of my most memorable visits was at a day centre, where I met a 106-year-old man. The staff told me he had no family left in Aso, so being at the centre was his main source of contact with others. When they introduced me to other patients, I was surprised by how interested they were about Austria, my home country, and they loved the Mozartkugeln (a traditional chocolate souvenir) I brought. Moments like this made me realize that even though Aso is famous for having the largest caldera in Japan, its true heart lies in personal connections. But not every visit to the various care facilities went smoothly. One day, an older woman slipped in the bathroom and needed urgent help, so we had to cancel our interview. Seeing how quickly the caregivers reacted reminded me that unexpected emergencies are a normal part of life in small, rural facilities with limited staff.

During my fieldwork, I sometimes worried about taking up too much of the caregivers’ time because they already worked long hours under a lot of stress. I usually travelled by public bus, which was difficult due to limited bus schedules, but the caregivers always welcomed me warmly. Some of the locals showed me around the caldera and explained how houses in Aso are often far apart, which creates extra travel time, especially when providing home care. One caregiver said she had to drive along long winding roads just to see a single client. In winter, heavy snowfall makes this even harder. But if they do not go, nobody else will. This sense of duty is common in rural caregiving in Aso, especially as many younger people have moved away to find jobs in bigger cities. A few caregivers told me they suffer from constant back pain caused by years of lifting and carrying patients. They worried about how much longer they could do this job once they reached their sixties. While some urban care facilities have advanced technologies, care centres in Aso typically do not. One caregiver, who came from a big city, also criticised the lower pay and fewer resources in Aso.

Generally, the caregivers were worried about the long-term impact on their bodies. One caregiver mentioned that despite enjoying some aspects of the job and making a lot of meaningful connections, she’s not sure if she would pick the same profession again if she could go back in time. The physical work is not the only challenge. Emotional labour also plays a big role in caregiving. Many elderly people in Aso have no family nearby, so caregivers become trusted companions to listen to concerns and combat loneliness. One caregiver said he locks away his own problems before work to stay cheerful for his clients. Another said she had become “like family” to a person who had no one else in town. While this closeness can be rewarding, it can also be emotionally draining. Some caregivers said they felt lonely themselves and needed small tokens of gratitude from their families and patients to keep going.

Despite these challenges, many caregivers are proud of their work. At one day centre, they organized quizzes, dancing, and karaoke so that the older patients could have some fun. It was touching to see moments where the caregivers and patients would laugh and chat happily with each other. These moments gave some lightness to the stress of juggling other parts of the job like handling heavy lifting, bathing schedules, and health checks for everyone. One caregiver said that the care profession acts as a “bridge of the community.” I indeed felt a strong sense of community in Aso. One of my research participants even drove me around when the bus did not come, and it seemed like everybody knew everybody else. This close network is important for helping elderly people in remote areas. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, had temporarily interrupted events in care facilities to bring together younger and older residents. Even during my fieldwork in 2023, a few interviews had to be cancelled when there were new COVID-19 infections in care homes.

After my field research, I wish more young people lived in places like Aso. Salaries may be lower and public services less than in cities, but there is also a strong sense of solidarity there. Many interviewees said they were very concerned about the future of the nursing profession and they wished there were strategies to make the profession more attractive to younger generations. If more young carers returned, this could address staff shortages, bring a breath of fresh air into local life and ensure that older people receive the care they deserve. In the end, I had great respect for the care workers in Aso. They manage difficult physical tasks, provide emotional support and make their patients feel good, despite their own heavy workloads. The generosity and determination I found there show that personal commitment and solidarity really do keep rural Japan alive.

Melanie Steinbrugger recently finished her MA in Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna. Her Master’s thesis explored the professional identity of rural caregivers. Starting in April 2025 she will be part of the Austrian Pavillion Team at the Ōsaka Kansai World Expo 2025.

by Cornelia Reiher

My research focuses on urban-to-rural migrants in different municipalities in Northern Kyūshū. Initially, I was mainly interested in their lives before relocating to the countryside, the relocation process itself and their everyday life in their new rural homes. However, they are mobile in their everyday lives to shop, commute to work, further their education and organize their leisure time both within and outside the administrative borders of the rural municipality in which they have settled.

Although mobility is an important part of rural lifestyles and shapes rural places, rural communities are often portrayed as closed, static and traditional. Geographer Doreen Massey (1995) showed that the local is the complex and multi-layered result of social interactions and should be approached less as a fixed entity associated with stagnation, nostalgia and stability and more as an intersection of flows of people and objects. Milbourne and Kitchen (2014) have argued that the stabilities of rurality, associated with belonging, tradition and stasis, are both reliant on and undermined by rather complex forms of mobility. John Urry (2007) showed that places are produced through “multiple mobilities of people, but also of capital, objects, signs and information” (p. 269). Thus, rural places are characterized by a complicated interplay between mobility and fixity. The mobilities that characterize rural places include, for example, migration, tourism, everyday mobility by car, internal migration from the city to the countryside and transnational migration. And not only people are mobile, but as I showed in my book on local identity and rural revitalization (Reiher 2014), it is objects such as porcelain that travel transnationally and are charged with cultural value through these mobilities.

An example from my fieldwork will show how urban-rural migrants are mobile beyond municipal borders in their everyday lives and how this relates to social structures in rural communities. In 2022, I took a day trip with Junko. I met her for the first time in 2018. She was born and raised in the Kantō area where she later worked in fashion. When she got married and pregnant, she decided to move to the countryside to raise her child in a clean and healthy environment surrounded by nature. Together with her husband she renovated a kominka and started growing vegetables and rice. Junko baked and sold bread. After a divorce, she moved to another house and started working in a company. Since moving, she has been driving around a lot every day and is dependent on her car: First she drives 20 minutes to take her child to school. Then she drives another 30 minutes in the other direction to work. In the afternoon, she picks up her child and does her shopping on the way. To escape the gossip of her neighbors, she takes her child on weekend trips to neighboring towns. I was invited to join one of her outings. That day, we visited an artisan market in the neighboring town, which was held in a former elementary school building. Markets are hubs of mobility. Junko used to sell her home-baked bread at several markets in the region. She visited the market with me because she wanted to restart her baking business to earn extra income. According to the leaflet and map, more than 90 exhibitors, mainly from the region, were offering their handmade products. These included wooden spoons, jewelry, ceramics and homemade clothing. Most of the people were urban-rural migrants, either young families or older people, and knew each other from other markets where they either sell their own handicrafts or food, or spend time with their families on the weekends. While I enjoyed the food sold at the stalls and the live music on a small stage with Junko’s child, Junko talked to the market organizers to negotiate her next participation in the market. After a few hours of eating, shopping, listening to music and talking to many people, we drove back to Junko’s house in the mountains.

Living in rural communities means a high degree of everyday mobility. It also means different types of mobilities after social relationships have changed. These include moving house, changing jobs and leaving town at weekends to escape gossip and seek emotional support. Markets are another form of mobility that offers migrants the opportunity to meet, display and sell their products, earn extra income or simply spend their free time. Markets are mobile and at the same time places where flows of people, things and ideas come together temporarily and form new networks. While some of these mobilities are voluntary, to meet up with friends at the weekend, involuntary mobilities, e.g. to work, often take as long as a commute in Tokyo. Urban migrants in particular often feel less connected to the municipality they have moved to and more connected to “the countryside” as such, as Junko’s case shows; administrative boundaries of municipalities and prefectures do not play such a big role in their sense of belonging. The community often consists of migrants who are located in different municipalities and meet in different places run by other migrants, or at mobile events such as markets.

References:

Massey, Massey (1995), “The conceptualization of place“, in: Massey, Doreen and Pat Jess (eds.), A place in the World? Places, Cultures and Globalization, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 45–86.

Milbourne, Paul and Kitchen, Lawrence (2014), “Rural mobilities: Connecting movement and fixity in rural places”, Journal of Rural Studies 34: 326–336.

Reiher, Cornelia (2014), Lokale Identität und ländliche Revitalisierung. Die japanische Keramikstadt Arita und die Grenzen der Globalisierung, Bielefeld: Transcript.

Urry, John (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press.

by Paul B.

Yoko Iijima is associate Professor of Geography at Meiji University in Tokyo. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Freie Universität Berlin to conduct research on rural development in Germany. Professor Iijima’s areas of expertise are economic geography and political geography and the interrelationships between these two fields. She studied in Freiburg, Germany, from 2000 to 2004. During her time as a doctoral student, she investigated cross-border cooperation between Germany and Switzerland. After completing her PhD, she worked in a private research institute where she was involved in many different projects for Japanese ministries and governmental organizations in the field of regional development. She then started working at a university and became an associate professor. In the following ten years, she focused on rural areas in Europe, especially rural development in Tyrol. I spoke with Professor Iijima about the differences and similarities between rural areas in Japan and Europe, what both regions can learn from each other when it comes to promoting rural areas, and the future of rural areas in Japan and Europe.

Q: What are the differences and similarities between rural areas in Japan and rural areas in Europe?

One similarity that European countries such as Germany, Austria or Switzerland share with Japan is that the birth rate in rural areas is very low, which means that few young people live and work in rural areas and more older people live and work there. However, Japan has a much bigger problem, because its birth rate is even lower and young people from the countryside often prefer to move to Tokyo, Japan’s largest city. After graduating from school many young people prefer to work or study in Japan’s capital as there are far more job opportunities there. This has to do with Japan’s centralized state system and the fact that Tokyo is the most important city in the country. Tokyo is very different from other cities in Japan, not only is it the most populated city in Japan but it also stands out for the wide range of opportunities it offers in the fields of education and employment. In contrast, Germany has a decentralized state system and maintains many urban functions even in small and medium-sized cities as well as large cities such as Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt. Therefore, it is possible for young people in Germany to work and continue their lives in small and medium-sized cities than in Japan.

Q: Are there things that work better in the rural areas of Europe or in the rural areas of Japan and can Europe and Japan learn something from each other?

In Europe’s rural areas, there are more initiatives led by citizens that want to promote their rural areas and bring their ideas and suggestions to the government and administration, so they work from the bottom up. I consider this as a good example for Japan to learn from in terms of rural areas and I think that bottom-up approaches to rural development would be a good model for the future. However, it is difficult to compare European countries and Japan in general because both consist of regions with their own history, culture, traditions, industries, and other regional characteristics. It cannot be assumed that successful examples from one country can be directly applied to another. Nevertheless, European countries can also learn from Japan. For example, the Japanese central and local governments have initiated large projects to improve and promote its different regions and rural areas.

Q: What does the future hold for Europe’s and Japan’s rural areas?

The already low birth rates in Japan’s rural areas will continue to fall over the next ten years and financial support by the Japanese government will probably not increase but rather decrease. There are also big debates about whether the social infrastructure in rural areas should remain as it is or whether it would be smarter to resettle people to cities. I am unfortunately very pessimistic about the future of rural Japan. For Europe, on the other hand, things might look better in the next ten years, because the European Union is investing heavily in rural infrastructure. But even in the EU there are issues to discuss, such as the regional differences within the rural regions of Europe.

Paul B. is a student intern at the Institute of Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.