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.

by Cecilia Luzi

It is the end of February and winter in Kyūshū is almost over. Days are longer and temperatures during the day rise above 15 degrees on some days. According to the people living here, the region did not experience a particularly harsh or long winter this year. However, I feel like this was the longest and coldest winter of my life and I believe this is related to the experience of living in traditional Japanese houses.

Winter in North Kyūshū.
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

During my four months of field research in Buzen, I lived in no less than five different places, three of which were large traditional houses. My first residence was a former agricultural warehouse next to the main house that had been renovated about 10 years ago. The owners, retirees who had returned to Buzen after their working years in Kitakyushu, had used it as a guest house until the outbreak of the pandemic. Although the renovation work was thorough and meticulous, getting up from the futon in the morning, even in November, always required some determination and strength of mind. The toilet was in a small room at the end of the veranda, and inside the temperature was not much different from outside. There was a small wood-burning stove that heated the two large adjoining rooms: a ground-level room that contained the kitchen and a dining table, and a room lined with tatami mats. The owner went every week to the forest, which could be reached by climbing a small hill, to collect wood. He taught me how to cut logs with the electric saw and the hacksaw, and how to light the fire so that it would burn well and heat the whole house properly. In mid-December, the weather forecast announced a big snowfall for the region, and one morning we woke up to over 40 cm of snow. For a week, my son and I ate, wrote, played and slept in front of the small wood stove. Every evening, after he bathed, I warmed his clothes on the stove and dressed him in front of the fire, so he wouldn’t get too cold.

Living with children in an old Japanese house is fun, but very cold in the winter.
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

In January, I moved into another old house where an elderly lady, now deceased, had lived until recently. The house was huge, and in order to have a space that could be easily heated, my son and I occupied only two rooms with a kitchen and toilet. This time there was no wood stove and to keep warm we used an air conditioner and a small kerosene stove, which I had to turn off before going to bed for safety reasons. Towards the middle of the month, a new wave of frost came. The night before the expected snowfall, the owner and neighbor, advised me to prepare pots and kettles of water because the pipes might freeze during the night. When I woke up in my room, it was 9 degrees Celsius, and no hot water came out of the kitchen tap for three days.

The warmest room in the house.
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2023

The house we currently live in is a trial house. It has a 5-meter ceiling at the entrance, and the sliding glass walls of the room have a three-millimeter air gap to the outside. You can see the floor underneath between the floorboards in the hallway. The first night, despite the warm air conditioning, I couldn’t fall asleep because the cold air was flowing through the tatami and I could feel it even through my pajamas and heavy socks. The next day, I went to an electrical store to buy an electric heater and a hot water bottle. Unfortunately, as the saleswoman explained, all the units were out of stock. I had to drive all the way to the next big city to find the last hot water bottle and a mini heater on the empty shelves.

One of the houses we have lived in.
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2023

Obviously, I am not the only one who feels the cold. The homes of the people I visit and meet are all equipped with various improvised heating methods that serve more to satisfy immediate needs than to create comfortable living conditions. These include electric stoves, gas stoves, kerosene stoves, hot water bags, and heat patches tucked under clothing or into shoes. Certainly, the winter in Kyūshū is no harsher than a Berlin winter, but the living comfort is different. In recent months, I’ve been wondering why living conditions are so difficult in those old homes in the countryside. I have spoken at length with those born and raised in the city who have made a conscious choice to live in these homes, and this coldness reveals in part the radical nature of their decision. For many of them, these houses are full of life, they have stories to tell from the daily lives of their former families. But all in all, the Kyūshū winter is quite short, and living in a traditional house brings many benefits.

The great view through the large glass walls overlooking the forested mountains.
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

Through the large glass walls overlooking the forested mountains, I could see how the seasons change the landscape from autumn to winter and from winter to early spring. There is no thermal insulation, just as there is no sound insulation. So I can hear the river running just below the road, the deer and tanuki that come undisturbed late at night to eat the persimmons hanging to dry outside the back door, or the sound of the wind rushing through the gaps in the fusuma. The cold and the sounds remind us that we are embedded in nature, for better or worse. Since only glass, straw, earth and rice paper separate the rooms, the boundary between the outside and the inside of the house is much thinner than in any country house I have lived in Europe.

by Lynn Ng

Last December, the Japanese government announced a new incentive for people to move out of metropolitan Tokyo: Starting April 2023, families who move into Japan’s countryside can expect to receive one million yen (about 7,000 euros) per child (under 18 years of age) in support of their relocation. This is a stark increase from the previous amount of 300,000 yen (about 2,100 euros) [1]. This announcement is a small part of Japan’s much larger push for people to relocate into the regions. Among many other incentives and regional promotion activities extensively explored through this blog, Japan has also been increasingly hosting migration fairs (IjūTeijū Fairs) for regional promotion. Within my short time in Japan, I have had the luxury of visiting three such fairs. My focus was on Fukushima, so one can only imagine the many other fairs taking place for other regions.

One of the first fairs I attended in Tokyo for Fukushima.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2022

These fairs are very informative: the booths are manned by staff of the municipal offices, Chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai (COKT) participants, as well as people who recently relocated to the countryside. These individuals are eager to promote their towns, explain about trial stays and tours, answer questions, and offer advice on support schemes you might be eligible for. The structure for all the fairs I attended was similar, albeit of different organizational teams. One registers for the fair online beforehand (or risk standing awkwardly in line filling up questionnaires by hand), enters with a QR code, and receives a stack of five “personal information sheets.” These information sheets are your name cards for the day. Every booth you visit will first and foremost ask for your sheet, scan through the details, and interview you on your interests and background, before suggesting the best schemes you could apply to for your potential relocation.

You scan your entry QR code and receive a set of five information sheets to hand out to the booths.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2023

The organizers of these fairs probably don’t expect visitors to visit more than five booths per day, as I spent about an hour at each booth (with most of that time spent explaining the individual criteria for their far-reaching funding plans). Since my visits were focused on Fukushima, these staffers also pulled out lots of binders of radiation-related data for me. In the unlikely event that you have a lot more energy than I did to go through the dozens of booths in one day, there are also copiers at the fairs that you can use to print out additional copies of your information sheet for the booths.

There are many brochures and freebies (note the Eco-bag) available for free.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2022

I found these fairs great, not just because they were a huge information pool, but also because they are a large web of networks. At these three events, I met the same faces and received the same brochures, yet the content of the visits mattered less than the connections I made. At the most recent fair, I stood quietly by the corner, tiredly wondering if there could be any new information at all I could get. But it took only a while before staff from a booth walked over – a person whose booth I had spent over an hour at the previous time. We spoke candidly. He asked about my research progress: slow. I asked about his visit count: also slow. That brief moment was precious, for he would tell me how, despite being a migrant to Fukushima, he had in fact spent much more time outside of the region in order to promote it. Given the irony of being a mobile migrant into the regions, he wondered for himself then, what it actually means to “migrate (ijū).”

The most recent fair I attended was a general relocation fair for all regions of Japan. Despite the large number of exhibitors, perhaps for its location at Odaiba, the crowd was much smaller than at the Fukushima-specific fair.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2023

This informal conversation with him would become a greater discussion for later. But for now, I reflect on the experiences of the three fairs – the high frequency at which they take place and the structures in which they are organized. These fairs can indeed prove effective, on top of the government’s many other incentives and schemes, as a one-stop source of information for those who are considering relocating to the countryside.

[1] Nikkei News. December 28, 2022. Tōkyō kara ijū de ko hitori ni 100 man en seifu, 23-nendo kara zōgaku [Government to increase support to 1 million yen per child for migrations from Tokyo from fiscal 2023]. Available online: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA280720Y2A221C2000000/

by Cornelia Reiher

Abandoned houses are one of the many problems rural areas in Japan are facing today. The so-called akiya mondai (abandoned house problem) also affects many urban-rural migrants (ijūsha). On the one hand, there are many abandoned houses; on the other hand, ijūsha often have difficulty finding housing because residents are unwilling to rent or sell their property, even if they no longer live there. The reasons for this are manifold and have been covered in other blog posts here. In one hamlet I visited, there were more abandoned houses than houses where people still lived. The population has dropped from 8000 to 800 in the last two decades. The local elementary school is on the verge of closing, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough people to take care of community tasks like cutting the grass (kusakari).

Many abandoned houses in Japan decay and collapse because no one lives in them
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

However, a couple, both ijūsha, recently settled in this hamlet and renovated two abandoned houses. One house has been converted into a gallery and café, the other is their home. Together with Kazuko (pseudonym), who runs the gallery with her husband, I visited the place several times during my field research in September and October 2022. It is located in a beautiful valley with rice paddies and small forests and offers a magnificent view of the nearby mountains. It can be reached from the city center in twenty minutes by car. In the hamlet itself there is a post office, a shrine, the elementary school and residential houses, many of which are empty. You wouldn’t expect to find a gallery here and would probably just drive past it, as there are no large signs pointing to it. However, at a second glance, one discovers some artwork inside and outside the gallery, including a mosaic created by an artist from Kyoto during a workshop.

A gallery in a renovated former akiya
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

When I visited for the first time, Kazuko’s husband, who is an artist himself, was busy preparing one of his own art works. In the exhibition room, preparations were still underway for the next exhibition. A sculptor was going to exhibit his work, and some of the pieces had already been unpacked. Kazuko and her husband showed me around and told me about the renovation work. The couple received no financial support. Since they did most of the work themselves, the renovation took several years. They tried to reuse as much material as possible that was already in the house. For example, since the previous owners had left most of their possessions behind, they were able to use some of the dishes for the café. They also reused much of the glass for the new windows and received a lot of help from artist friends who designed the stained-glass windows or the dishes Kazuko now uses in the café. A special feature of the house is the basement with its stone wall, which is now used as an exhibition space in addition to the ground floor. From the basement, you can look up at the exposed ceiling beams. In this interesting light, the sculptures looked quite mysterious.

A sculpture in the exhibition space in the basement and a table in the café with cookies and coffee
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

When I returned to the gallery a few days later for the exhibition opening with a friend, there were a few guests and the artists. After looking at the artworks on display, including many that had not been unpacked during my earlier visit, we ordered cookies and tea and enjoyed the beautiful view of the sunset, rice fields, and mountains. When Kazuko joined us, we chatted about the potential of art to revitalize rural areas. She believes that art can connect locals and newcomers, and stresses the importance of art, especially for children. That’s why she also offers workshops with artists for children and adults to create pottery or other artwork together. In addition to the on-site gallery and workshops, she also promotes local artists and artisans online, hoping to attract more people to the area. For now, however, most of the gallery’s visitors are friends from out of town and other urban-rural migrants.

Sunset view from the gallery’s coffee shop
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

This gallery is one of many examples of attempts to revitalize rural areas by promoting arts and crafts. Many rural areas have artist-in-residence programs, galleries, workshops and studios. They aim to preserve local craft traditions by inviting artisans or artists from abroad, or to promote their towns as attractive places for artists to work by offering low-cost or free studios, scholarships for artists, and exhibition spaces. However, many examples I came across were initiated by local governments, while the gallery described above is a purely private initiative. Although the owners have had to cover all costs themselves, it also means that they do not have to rely on subsidies that may one day run out, as is the fate of so many of these ambitious projects. I am curious to see how it will develop and look forward to visiting this gallery in the middle of nowhere again. 

by Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu)

Political scientists have discussed the role of ideas in policy decisions and policy implementation [1]. In my previous blog post, I talked about the numerous revitalization activities implemented by the coastal city of Buzen, Fukuoka Prefecture. Buzen has been striving to promote international cooperation and multiculturalism, which can in turn contribute to the city’s revitalization. My interviews with five policy actors from Buzen provide insights into some of their ideas for the city’s future development. I talked to two local government officials, two local politicians and one policy advisor.

The City Hall of Buzen where local policies are made
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

When asked about possible ways to develop Buzen, all respondents mentioned strategies that take advantage of globalization. During our first online interview in September 2021, one local government official explicitly mentioned the acceptance of more international migrants as one of Buzen’s four key strategies for revitalization. Against the backdrop of population decline, he believes that Buzen’s demographic problems will not change unless the foreign population expands. My other respondents shared this view and consider international migrants as “a powerful asset needed to move our economy forward, in this sense, it is better to accept [migrants]” (interview with Buzen’s policy advisor, October 2022). Currently, there are 344 foreign residents living in Buzen, accounting for 1.4% of the city’s total population [2]. The majority of Buzen’s foreign population is Vietnamese, followed by Burmese and Chinese. Most of Buzen’s foreign residents are technical interns (ginō jisshūsei) [3]. The number of ginō jisshūsei in Buzen is expected to rise in the upcoming years.

A discussion between Vietnamese technical interns, local residents, and local officials
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

My respondents mentioned several challenges for international migrants that need more attention, such as cultural and language barriers. They believe it important to foster mutual understanding between foreign and local residents. One local politician stresses the importance of employing a Vietnamese member of chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai (COKT) at Buzen’s City Hall to overcome the language barrier and welcome international migrants. She thinks of international migrants as “individuals” rather than just “workers” and wants to improve their living conditions.
International education and mutual learning between Japan and other countries were also mentioned as potential revitalization strategies connected to globalization. Such ideas include Buzen’s transformation into a “City of Education” (kyōiku no machi) by establishing international university campuses in Buzen for international and local students in cooperation with Taiwan and Vietnam. Another local politician suggests promoting international exchange with other countries to learn “good things” from them and to introduce “good things” from Japan abroad. For example, Japan could learn from Europe’s environmental policies, he said.

Impression from the coast of Buzen
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

However, the majority of my respondents are concerned that local residents might resist accepting more international migrants, but they are determined to internationalize Buzen. They hope that local residents will interact more with international migrants and change their way of thinking, as one local government official said. Ideas and visions are subjective. My interviews reflect what kind of revitalization strategies Buzen’s policy actors consider, but as I pointed out in my previous blog post, it seems as if globalizing Buzen is not merely a lofty idea of policy actors, but rather a vision the city has been taking concrete actions to realize.

References

[1]
Mukand, Sharun, and Dani Rodrik. 2018. “The Political Economy of Ideas: On Ideas versus Interests in Policymaking.” National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24467/w24467.pdf.

Rodrik, Dani. 2014. “When Ideas Trump Interests: Preferences, Worldviews, and Policy Innovations.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (1): 189–208.

[2]
———. 2022. “Buzen-shi no tabunka kyōsei e no torikumi.” https://www.city.buzen.lg.jp/sousei/tabunkakyousei.html.

[3]
Buzen City, Japan. 2020. “Buzen-shi: Tabunka kyōsei no suishin ni kakaru shishin.” https://www.city.buzen.lg.jp/sousei/documents/tabunkakyouseishishin.pdf.

by Cecilia Luzi

After visiting a market that was organized by urban-rural migrants, I was keen to learn more about local markets. So on a Sunday morning in late November, I went to the revitalization center (kasseika sentā) in Iwaya to visit the “Small truck market” (keitora ichi). The market was held in the large parking lot across the street from the center. The green tourism group I pick vegetables with once a week ran a stall at the market where they cooked soup in a huge cauldron, and made soba balls (soba dango) and mochi with anko. The last time I worked with them in their field, they asked me if I could help at the market. Their booth was located outside the side entrance of the revitalization center and while my partner and son enjoyed a day off, I shaped flat soba dango which were then cooked and added to a soup. The members of the green tourism group were hectic, and the only one who remained calm was a man speaking a dense dialect. Every time I encountered him, I had difficulty understanding even two words in a row when he spoke to me. But he had a nice, peaceful smile on his face and exuded a sincere serenity. At the market, he sat on the side porch of the revitalization center in front of the two fountains, steaming rice for the mochi. He monitored the intensity of the fire and kept an eye on the cooking time.

Steaming rice for mochi
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

After a shared lunch, the group began to prepare the mochi. At the stand where the soup was cooking, men and children took turns pounding the rice into the stone container. Once it was ready, the dough was pushed to the next table, where the women formed beautiful round, flattened balls with their hands, which were white with potato starch. This reminded me of the making of mozzarella. The preparation process is similar, including the speed with which the balls are formed, the precision with which the mixture is worked, the texture of the dough and the color. I couldn’t help but think of my favorite cheese. As soon as the mochi were ready (half of them were filled with anko), they were sold out. At the first strike of the wooden hammer on the stone, people immediately lined up at the stall, and as soon as they were formed, the mochi were immediately sold in packs of three for 350 yen. After the mochi were sold out, we started making sweet potatoes, fried in oil and sugar and sprinkled with black sesame seeds (my next task). These also sold out in no time, but I also kept eating while weighing them out to put in the containers.

Mochi hammers
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

From our stall, I could observe the customers, who were mainly locals and elderly people, but also families who came with their children for the kagura performances (a form of music and dance dedicated to Shinto gods) or the junior high school mochi sale. The stalls in the market mainly offered local fruits and vegetables. There was also a flower and plant stall, a wood craftsman, a woman who sewed and embroidered, and a tofu sale. In addition to our green tourism group’s booth, there were also three other food stalls that sold Buzen’s specialty Onimen (spicy noodles with locally produced chili peppers), Karaage and donuts. A small stage was set up to the side of the main entrance, where Kodomo Kagura (Kagura by students from various local groups) was performed from the beginning to the end of the event. Overall, there was a pleasant autumn atmosphere at the market. Maybe it was because the day was still warm, maybe it was the chaotic nature of the event, but I could feel the Sunday air. Children played on an old toy boat that looked like it had been abandoned for decades and climbed a memorial stone.

Children playing on a memorial stone
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

A couple of days after the market, I asked one of the members of the green tourism group how long they had been organizing this market. To my surprise, she replied that this was only the second time. The first time was in the spring of 2022. I am very curious to learn more about these types of events, especially markets that seem to exist in large numbers and pop up everywhere every week. As I’ve already found out during my digital research, markets can vary greatly in terms of customers, booths, location and size. After visiting the two markets I have described here and in my previous blog posts, I visited four other markets. The only thing they had in common was that people gathered to sell things they had made themselves. Markets are fascinating places to study the relationships between members of a community while learning about people’s work, life choices and everyday lives. I hope to learn more and write about how to prepare and organize a local market soon.

by Madeline Gentz

Shirakawa-Gō is a famous historical and agricultural village in Gifu near Kanazawa and Takayama with a population of about 1,600. Due to the cold, harsh winters and heavy snowfalls, the village developed a unique architecture for its farmhouses called Gasshō. The houses, built in the Gasshō style, are characterized by three-sided, gabled thatched roofs. The houses are surrounded by fields, forests and mountains, creating a unique setting that is an expression of the local culture.
Thanks to these farmhouses, Shirakawa-Gō was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, making the village a thriving tourist destination. In 2019, the village welcomed over 2.15 million tourists or about 5,890 tourists per day. In other words, for every villager, there are 3 to 4 tourists per day. This phenomenon has made tourism the largest source of income for this small agricultural village. However, Shirakawa-Gō still uses its agriculture.

Farming houses in Shirakawa-Gō
Copyright © Madeline Gentz 2020

The tourist landscape includes 59 houses built in the Gasshō style. Many of them are used for tourist purposes such as accommodation, restaurants, museums and souvenir stores. There are museums about silk production, Gasshō architecture and an open-air museum showing the unique architecture. There are also numerous hot springs, ryokan and western-style hotels. For a small fee of 300 yen (≈ 2.10 euros) per house, many of these farmhouses can be visited. I had the opportunity to visit Shirakawa-Gō in January 2020 and had the chance to take a guided tour of one of the houses. These tours are usually led by the owner of each house and can give one a glimpse into life there.
Another big touristic event that takes place each year in Shirakawa-Gō and draws in thousands of tourists is the Shirakawa-Gō Winter Light-Up. On selected Sundays, in January and February, the Gasshō houses will be illuminated and can be seen from the Shiroyama Viewpoint. In the past, there have been up to 8,000 visitors per event. However, this led to some serious overcrowding and the village decided to limit the number of visitors to 5,000 per Light-Up-Event. These 5,000 come in addition to the roughly 5,890-day visitors. Usually, the lottery for this will be held in October/November before the event takes place.

Gasshō Houses are used for various purposes
Copyright © Madeline Gentz 2020

Tourism has brought numerous benefits to Shirakawa-Gō. The biggest is undoubtedly the income that tourists bring to the village. In addition, tourism helps to keep the local traditions and culture alive. Visitors come to Shirakawa-Gō to learn more about the culture and the money they spend can be used to maintain the traditional houses. Furthermore, tourism creates jobs for receptionists, tour guides, interpreters, cleaning staff and more. However, tourism can also bring some negative side effects. Shirakawa-Gō has already experienced some of these. One of the negative effects mentioned is over-tourism. It can lead to inappropriate behavior by tourists, hostility between locals and visitors, the strain on infrastructure, loss of authenticity, reduction in the quality of life for locals, and a lower experience for tourists. This was the case in Shirakawa-Gō when about 8,000 visitors came to the light-up events, but thanks to the measures put in place, further escalation was prevented.

These gasshō houses are used as minshuku (left) and as a souvenir shop (right)
Copyright © Madeline Gentz 2020

A reservation system was set up for the Light-Up events. A private company with the relevant know-how was entrusted with the organization of this system. In addition, parking fees were increased from 500 yen (≈ 3.60 euros) to 1,000 yen (≈ 7.20 euros) per car to raise additional funds for the World Heritage Site. Similarly, there is no longer any bookable private parking for visitors in the village and access to the city center by buses and cars is closed to visitors between 9 am and 4 pm.

Shiroyama viewpoint
Copyright © Madeline Gentz 2020

Tourism is also affected by uncontrollable factors such as seasonality and unpredictable disasters like COVID-19. Although Shirakawa-Gō is a year-round destination and does not have strong seasonal fluctuations, it was severely affected by the pandemic and visitor numbers dropped to 710,000 in 2020 and 420,000 in 2021. Despite this setback, Shirakawa-Gō is performing well as a tourist destination, and while other villages in Japan are shrinking and slowly disappearing, the culture and traditions of Shirakawa-Gō are being kept alive thanks to the interest of tourists.

Madeline Gentz is a BA student in Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She completed her German-French double degree in international tourism management at the Harz University of Applied Sciences and La Rochelle Business School in 2020. After an internship at a travel agency in Tokyo, she moved to Berlin to pursue additional education in Japanese Studies.