Time: February 2, 2023 – February 3, 2023
Location: JDZB, Saargemünder Str. 2, 14195 Berlin
Registration and program: Urban-Rural Migration in Japan and Europe: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives | Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin (jdzb.de)

Rural areas are struggling with economic and demographic problems in many places of the world and are often confronted with the migration of rural populations to urban centers. This is especially true for communities in rural Japan, which have been affected by declining birth rates, aging, and out-migration for decades. In the past decade, however, there has been a sharp increase in both the number of people interested in moving from urban to rural areas in Japan and those who actually relocate. Urban-rural migration of older people yearning for a more relaxed retirement or younger people seeking a more sustainable lifestyle is currently evident in many post-industrial societies. A distinctive feature of Japan is the numerous programs and subsidies initiated by various actors to encourage people to move or return to rural Japan and thereby revitalize local economies and agriculture. Although research on rural areas in Japan assumes that the immigration of educated and creative people has a positive impact on the revitalization of rural communities, there has been little empirical evidence to support this assumption.

This is the starting point of this symposium, which aims to compare empirical results from the DFG project “Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan” with urban-rural migration outside Japan, while at the same time discussing the role of transnational mobility for domestic urban-rural migration in Japan. From an interdisciplinary perspective and with the involvement of practitioners, the symposium aims to analyze connections between urban-rural migration, (local) revitalization practices and global social, political and economic structures.

Program:

Thursday, February 2

15:00 –         Registration

15:30 – 16:00   Opening

15:30 – 15:45   Tokiko Kiyota (Japanese-German Center Berlin)

15:45 – 16:00   Cornelia Reiher (Freie Universität Berlin)

16:00 – 17:00   Keynote Speeches

16:00 – 16:30   Post-Pandemic Developments in Lifestyle Migration: from Back-  to-the-Land to Urbanrural?
Susanne Klien (Hokkaido University)

16:30 – 17:00   Where are we at with Counterurbanisation in these Post-Covid Times: Rural Renaissance or Recuperation?
Keith Halfacree (Swansea University)

17:00 – 17:30   Coffee Break

17:30 – 19:00   Roundtable Discussion: Urban-Rural Migration and Rural Revitalization from a Global Perspective: Challenges for Japan and Europe
Chair: Cornelia Reiher (Freie Universität Berlin)

Susanne Klien (Hokkaido University)

Keith Halfacree (Swansea University)

Taichi Goto (Region Works LLC Fukuoka)

Annett Steinführer (Thünen Institute of Rural Studies) 

19:00 –         Reception


Friday, February 3

09:00 –         Registration

09:30 – 11:00   Session 1: Urban-Rural Migrants’ Experiences and their Contributions to Rural Areas 
Chair: Cecilia Luzi (Freie Universität Berlin)

09:30 – 09:50   The Best of Both Worlds? Experiences of Urban Migrants in Rural Aso
Wolfram Manzenreiter and Antonia Miserka (University of Vienna) 

09:50 – 10:10   Mobile Biographies of Urban-Rural Migrants in Rural East Germany: the Case of Nordsachsen District
Tim Leibert (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography) 

10:10 – 10:30   Lifestyle Migration and Social Distinction in Rural Peripheries: Lessons from a Study on Alternative Foodscapes in Czechia’s Borderlands
Anja Decker (Czech Academy of Science)

10:30 – 11:00   Discussion

11:00 – 11:30   Coffee Break

11:30 – 12:30   Session 2: Project Introduction: Urban-rural Migration and Rural Revitalization in Japan
Chair: Lin-Yu Ng (Freie Universität Berlin)

11:30 – 11:45   Urban-Rural Migration and Rural Revitalization in Kyushu: Online, Offline and in Between
Cornelia Reiher (Freie Universität Berlin)

11:45 – 12:00   Welcoming Foreign Talent: How a Small Municipality Seeks to Revitalize itself
Tu Thanh Ngo (Freie Universität Berlin)

12:00 – 12:15   Finding Home in Rural Japan: Urban-Rural Migrants in Kyushu
Cecilia Luzi (Freie Universität Berlin)

12:15 – 12:30   Discussion

12:30 – 14:00   Lunch

14:00 – 15:30   Session 3: Urban-Rural Migration and the State: Policies and Politics
Chair: Tu Thanh Ngo (Freie Universität Berlin)

14:00 – 14:20   The Politics of Attracting Residents to Depopulating Municipalities in Japan
Ken Hijino (Kyoto University) 

14:20 – 14:40   Hamm (Sieg): Into the Future with Creative Solutions
Dietmar Henrich (Mayor of Hamm)

14:40 – 15:00   Locals and Newcomers in Remote Rural Areas: Twenty Years of Experimental Research
Angel Paniagua Mazorra (Spanish Council for Scientific Research)

15:00 – 15:30   Discussion

15:30 – 16:00   Coffee Break

16:00 – 17:30   Session 4: The Future of Rural Areas and Urban-Rural Migration
Chair: Maritchu Durand (Freie Universität Berlin)

16:00 – 16:20   A Framework for a New Creative Tourism-Based Community Development in Japan
Tadashi Saito (Yamaguchi Prefectural University) 

16:20 – 16:40   Urban-Rural Migration and Rural Futures in Germany
Annett Steinführer (Thünen Institute of Rural Studies)

16:40 – 17:00   Opportunities and Challenges in Swedish Rural Areas
Susanne Stenbacka (Uppsala University)

17:00 – 17:30   Discussion

17:30 – 18:15   Final Discussion
Chair: Cornelia Reiher (Freie Universität Berlin)

18:15           End of symposium

Our team will take a break over the holidays. The blog will be back on January 13.

Thank you for following and supporting our activities.

Happy holidays.

Seasons decoration in a fish tank in Sasebo
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2004

by Cecilia Luzi

Before I started my field research in Japan this October, I read about many local markets in Kyushu on social media. Many of them are organized by migrants who have moved from the city to the countryside. When several people I had met in Buzen told me about the 84 Marché in Nakatsu, Oita Prefecture, I was very excited to finally visit a market myself. When we left our house around noon on a sunny November day to go to the market, it was 20 degrees. The market was held in a park, and after climbing a winding road between maple trees with bright red autumn leaves, we saw a clearing with 25 stalls at the bottom of the hill. The stalls offered various products, from clothing and beauty products to coffee, honey and lunch boxes.

A map of 84 Marché
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

I spotted M-san waiting for a coffee and waving at me. She was one of the people who had invited me because she wanted me to meet one of her friends, a craftsman who builds stone walls for terraced fields and also speaks impeccable Italian. He was a left back on a Serie D soccer team in central Italy and has lived in Viterbo for four years. We strolled through the stalls sampling honey, coffee and roasted sweet potatoes. After half an hour, I had already run out of the business cards I had brought with me, expecting to be able to talk to a certain number of people about my project – which I had obviously underestimated, because there were so many urban-rural migrants at the market. And many of them had transnational migration histories, like M-san’s friend or the girl who runs an Italian restaurant in Nakatsu and lived in Rimini for three years to learn Italian cooking. We bought coffee from a man who had moved to Nakatsu from Tokushima, and cannellé from another man who was originally from Fukuoka, had lived in various cities in Japan, and then moved to Koge in Fukuoka Prefecture a few years ago. We also talked to a girl who had just moved here from Tōkyō to train as a farmer, and another man who had moved from Nagasaki to Yabakei in Oita Prefecture to open a small vegetarian restaurant. We also met a young man who had just graduated from chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai (COKT) in Sanko, Oita Prefecture, and was organizing the market. He currently lives in a share house with three other urban-rural migrants and wants to start an eco-village.

View of the market square
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

As we stood on the porch where the sweet potatoes were being grilled, amid the hot, sweet smoke rising from the coals, I asked M-san how long these markets have been around. “I would say the first ones started about ten years ago. The name ‘marché’ (marushee) is French, isn’t it? French always sounds cooler to the Japanese. There are Christmas markets now, but I’ve never been to those. Other markets in this area that have always existed are mainly fruit and vegetable markets where local farmers sell their produce.” I told her I was amazed at the number of migrants I met today, and asked her if it was normal to see so many of them at these events. “I would say it depends on who is organizing it. This event is organized by the guys from Chiiki okoshi kyoryokutai from Sanko, and I think that’s why there are so many migrants here. It’s kind of their thing.” It is their second market after a first market was held in the spring. “This year they finished the program [COKT] and I don’t know if they will organize more markets. Maybe someone else will take over, or maybe they’ll just stop.”

One of the stalls selling coffee
Copyright © Cecilia Luzi 2022

During my online research, I had already noticed that many markets took place only once or twice and then stopped. This might be due to the fact that those who organize them have a precarious job or do it in their spare time. Moreover, these markets seem to be the initiative of one or two people who are interested in bringing people together as long as they have the time to do so. In some cases, when they are no longer able to organize these events, others step in. In other cases, the markets simply cease to exist. But M-san also mentioned farmers’ markets, and the day after my visit to the 84 Marché, I had the opportunity to visit one. It was organized by local government officials and integrated into the local infrastructure, also with the help of local government employees. I have the impression that this facilitates the institutionalization of such events. In my next post, I will write more about the farmers’ market and reflect on the similarities and differences between these two different types of markets.

by Lynn Ng

“I lived three years in the countryside of Hokkaido!” This is often one of the first things I tell people. For the longest time, I prided myself a rural-experienced urbanite, for I had experienced the ups and downs of the rural life. So, as I made my way to a small village in mountainous Fukushima, I was thrilled to once again put on my rural rose-tinted glasses. Aboard one of four daily buses that travel into this village, I imagined the rolling hills, rice paddies, snow-capped mountains, clear rivers that awaited me at the destination.

What the road into the village was like, with the abundant nature I imagined myself to be immersed in upon arrival.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2022

After an hour of romanticizing rural Fukushima in my head, I arrived at my accommodation – a former shophouse now used to host volunteers and interns of community revitalization projects. This house sits between a steep brown hill and a small rocky stream. Unruly grass grew everywhere and an ambient radiation measuring device hides itself nearby, behind tall grasses and rusted fences. Outside the dark, empty house, I shouted: “Konnichiwa!” Silence. I wondered if I had arrived too early, that the staff had not been expecting me, yet. Or had I arrived too late and the staff already went home? I attempted to check my communication history for a number to call but alas, the signal was bad. I began to realize how inexplicably ill-prepared I was.

The air radiation monitoring device nearby reads 0.189 microSieverts/h – more than double of Berlin’s ambient dose rate (0.073 microSieverts/h) [1].
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2022

After a brief moment of internal panic, an old lady came running from out of nowhere across the street (where the steep hills were) towards me. She shouted to me something I could not understand and knocked on the windows of the house. I worried how badly my Japanese comprehension had withered away after just a year. The staff popped out of the office quickly. How she had heard the two knocks on the glass but not my incessant konnichiwas, I wondered. I turned to thank the old lady but she was no longer there. “There are no locks here, anywhere here,” the staff member said. I asked about Wi-Fi. “None,” she said, and then added, “there is a convenience store about fifteen minutes on foot, but it closes in about thirty minutes.” I put down my bags and prepared to run to the store.

Within mere minutes of setting things down, however, a small earthquake struck the village. The public radio announced that everyone in unstable housing structures should go to the nearest evacuation center. I wondered if this house was structurally viable. I wondered where the closest evacuation center was. I attempted to google. There was no internet. Abandoning all thoughts of heading out at all, I crawled onto a chair and allowed myself time to reflect on these realities of my first day, and of my upcoming week here: a week of unlockable doors, no groceries in the vicinity, and no Wi-Fi. On this first day in rural Fukushima, urbanite-Lynn experienced culture shock. I sat by the kitchen table shivering in my Tokyo-appropriate clothes. My stomach growled. I stared gloomily at the portable humidifier I bought just before boarding the bus. Why hadn’t I bought food or hot packs instead? As I had decided to leave all of the day’s problems to tomorrow, the old lady from before knocked on my door with a bowl of pumpkin stew in hand. I wondered how she gained access and remembered that there were no locks in this whole place.

The heartwarmingly delicious bowl of pumpkin stew.
Copyright © Lynn Ng 2022

I wrote these reflections while chewing on bits of soft pumpkin in the dim kitchen. I pondered upon this culture shock of the vast disparity between my imagination and the realities of living in this village. The ambient radiation numbers displayed on the tucked-away measuring device had easily become a non-concern. I wondered how other rural migrants here felt on their first day – had they also met this mysterious old lady? Or had they spent the day walking around finding phone signals? How did their imaginations match up with reality? On this first night, as I headed off to bed, I tripped on the uneven tatami, pinched my fingers twice on the wooden doors, tucked my valuables under my pillow and slept to the sounds of the stream flowing softly outside while a hundred questions raced through my mind.

[1] Ministry of Environment Japan. (2019). Ta chiiki no kūkan senryō-ritsu to no hikaku [Comparison of ambient radiation to other areas]. Available at:
https://www.env.go.jp/chemi/rhm/portal/digest/dwelling/detail_003.html

by Cornelia Reiher

Two days after my arrival in Japan this September, Kyushu was hit by an “exceptionally strong typhoon”. This reminded me that the Covid pandemic was not the only reason that forced people to change their travel plans or daily lives. Typhoon No. 14 hit Kyushu on September 18, shortly after I arrived in Fukuoka, where I had planned to meet with our colleagues at Kyushu University before starting fieldwork in Arita and Taketa. Although I was safely ensconced in a high-rise concrete hotel, I was surprised to find that most stores, supermarkets, and even konbini in Fukuoka were closed. When I went to a supermarket that was still open, the shelves were quite empty, and I was lucky to buy the last obento.

On television, news of store and train closures were updated every minute, and signs in the windows of Hakata Station informed customers of temporary store closures due to the typhoon.
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

Train, plane, subway and bus services in Fukuoka were also suspended, and people stranded at Hakata Station waited in long lines for information. Media coverage was quite alarming, and my emergency app recommended evacuating to a nearby gym, but hotel staff said the hotel was much safer. All people in Fukuoka were advised to stay indoors. While watching on TV as the typhoon hit the coast of Kagoshima with fierce winds, high waves, and a storm surge, I waited anxiously in my hotel room for the typhoon to hit Fukuoka. Finally, the typhoon had lost some speed as it passed Fukuoka early in the morning of September 19 while I was still asleep.

Homeowners put tape on their windows as a precaution against typhoons to prevent them from breaking.
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

The next morning, television showed images of heavy storms, flooded streets and fallen trees. A report from Yufuin showed that the roads were underwater. Many highways and businesses were still closed and train service was suspended. At breakfast, I overheard a waitress telling a guest that the entire hotel staff was sleeping in the hotel during the typhoon. I texted my friends in Oita and Saga and asked them if they were okay. Some had actually spent the night with their families in a shelter, but fortunately, no one had been injured. According to NHK, the total number of injured people in Fukuoka and Saga prefectures was very low, eleven and three, respectively. However, my friends and research participants were affected in different ways. Events they had been preparing for several months had to be canceled. One friend was stuck in Kokura for two days waiting for a connecting train. Others reported that the typhoon had broken windows or blown the roof off their homes. In particular, those living in renovated former akiya reported damage. Many experienced the typhoon as frightening and said this typhoon was much worse than previous ones, but others complained about the media spreading panic. Guesthouse operators told me that people were seeking refuge in the guesthouse.

In many places in Kyushu, the strong wind had knocked over the rice plants.
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

When I visited Saga and Oita after the typhoon, I could see some damage myself: In the rice fields, the typhoon had knocked over the rice plants just before the harvest. Therefore, the rice could only be harvested by hand. This cost the farmers more time and resources. In Oita, a large tree next to a local shrine was struck by lightning during the typhoon and large branches had fallen. Two weeks after the typhoon, local people were still busy cleaning up the damage. At the same time, they were also going about their usual activities, preparing for the annual Kagura performance at the shrine, which was being held for the first time in two years because of the Covid pandemic. This made me realize how resilient rural residents are to natural disasters. Instead of complaining, they cleaned up the damage and went on with their lives. Many even emphasized how lucky they were this time because, for example, the nearby river did not burst its banks. But natural disasters are always on their minds, which is reflected in damage prevention measures and visible in the rural landscape. For example, homeowners put tape on their windows to protect them from typhoons, but it is very difficult to remove. Therefore, it stays on for a while after the typhoon, and in some cases, it is not removed at all. Some people think of countermeasures when building or renovating a house and use the heavier roof tiles (kawarayane), for example, because the roof is more likely to hold up in a typhoon.

Branches of a tree struck by lightning during the typhoon.
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

In summary, this experience puts the pandemic in perspective as one of many risks and disasters that the rural population of Japan faces in their daily lives. I realized that I had focused too much on the Covid pandemic because I was unable to travel to Japan due to the pandemic. However, the spatial and temporal dimensions of these different disasters as well as the different social, economic, political and cultural impacts are perceived and handled very differently by people in the countryside. It is interesting to study how rural residents deal with these different risks and disasters and manage them in everyday life.

by Maritchu Durand

There have been some changes since my last blog post. Unfortunately, my work on the project has come to an end. But this has given me the opportunity to finally dive into my master’s thesis more deeply. Focusing on the renovation of akiya in rural Japan and their role in rural revitalization, I am now approaching my research subject on two fronts. First, I am reading about the numerous case studies that have been conducted in the last few years, as well as important works on urban-rural migration. Second, I am entering the wild world of YouTube in order to find concrete cases of migrants’ representation and narratives of their experiences with DIY renovation. Since I previously have looked at videos published by a prefecture, now I want to find more personal testimonies, filmed, edited and posted by individuals. In this post, I will present my first observations from a whole new YouTube world.

A residential house from the early Shōwa period during the renovation process in Arita, Saga prefecture.
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

First of all, I was quite surprised to find out that there were so many channels about DIY renovation of old houses. Interestingly, most channels combine the words inaka gurashi – life in the countryside – with anything ranging from ‘DIY renovation’ to ‘akiya’ or ‘kominka’. Although the number of subscribers to those channels ranges from only 3000 to sometimes 500 000, all of them feature highly popular videos that have up to two million views. The most popular videos are those showing houses before and after renovation or the often year-long renovation process in 10 to 20 minutes. The different channels can be divided into two groups: the ‘silent ones’ and the ‘talkative ones’. In the talkative videos, the – often quite young – house owners play a prominent role in explaining their renovation process and showing themselves during renovation work, gardening or exploring the region. They are the main actors and viewers follow them along their journey through renovation. These videos can be quite explanatory and technical, but often also present features of conventional TV programs in Japan: comical sound effects, bright and colored subtitles and comments by an out-of-frame narrator. See for example:

However, there are more videos of the ‘silent type’ where migrants rarely show their faces and do not talk. Explanations are provided via subtitles. Light and upbeat music or slow and melancholic instrumentals accompany footage of renovation work, the houses and the natural and quiet surroundings featuring insects and diverse flowers, cold mountain streams and organic vegetables in gardens behind the house. See for example:

While each channel has its own characteristics, all of them share common features and representations that are particularly interesting to observe just after reading Susanne Klien’s work on urban-rural migrants in post-growth Japan[1]. Like Klien’s many interviewees, the house owners in the videos are young urbanites who recently decided to change their lives and move to the countryside. They are lifestyle migrants who chose to leave the city and their jobs to live closer to nature in a rural environment. The videos present two main aspects of urban-rural migrants’ life in the countryside Klien has identified: while showing satisfaction and joy in their life surrounded by nature, cultivating their garden, discovering wildlife and slowing down in their everyday life, urban-rural migrants also face difficulties in their new lives. When migrants talk about difficulties and failures, it is often presented as a great opportunity to learn in the videos. Still, it cannot be ignored that their renovation enterprise takes up most of their time, energy, and money as renovating a house requires time, skills and resources. But there are also differences between the migrants in the renovation videos and those in Klien’s work. While situated in a liminal state between movement and settlement, the latter enjoyed a certain freedom of movement and did not hesitate to change locations when they wanted to. In contrast, the young migrants who bought a house and are now renovating it put all their efforts and resources into this enterprise and seem much more tied to a particular place. They cannot move away on a whim or break off in the blink of an eye.

This former public bath in Taketa, Oita prefecture was renovated and is now used as a restaurant and gallery.
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

This situation might seem like a trap for young migrants that engage in akiya renovation projects that might as well fail. However, from a more positive perspective, the migrants choose to invest in the land, the house and the place to create a future home. The renovation process also gives them the opportunity to meet many local people who help them. Finally, such renovation projects by urban-rural migrants could contribute to more sustainable migration and rural development in the long run.

[1] Klien, Susanne (2020), Urban migrants in rural Japan: Between agency and anomie in a post-growth society, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

by Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu)

October 3^rd, 2022: I’ve just returned to Tokyo before flying back to Berlin this Sunday. This is almost the end of my fieldwork in Japan! After six months, five cities, and countless memories, I know now that fieldwork can generate not only data for research but also new friendships, life experiences, inspiration and even career opportunities. As my flight back to Berlin is approaching, I can’t help but feel somewhat melancholy. “So that’s it?”, I think to myself. As a young researcher, I struggle to deal with my attachment to the field, and I also wonder if my personal bonds with several respondents may affect the objectivity of my analysis.

My fieldwork has come to an end. It was an amazing experience
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

I keep thinking back to May when I conducted my first interviews with national policy actors in Tokyo. How nervous I was back then! After these initial meetings, I came to realize that many policy actors, including even politicians and high-ranking government officials, were highly supportive and there was no reason why I had to be afraid to discuss with them. In fact, some research participants, despite their extremely hectic schedules, were kind enough to keep following up on my research progress and meet me multiple times until my very last days here. These respondents have become my friends and mentors, and we even promised to meet again in Germany next year.

I also had great experiences in Kyūshū. I was especially impressed with Fukuoka Prefecture, and more specially Buzen City – a small yet spirited municipality that has been making great rural revitalization efforts through international cooperation and digital transformation. My respondents from Fukuoka Prefecture and Buzen gave me the feeling that Fukuoka is a place of new ideas, challenges, and vitality. My respondents here are also extremely proactive and modern. Since all of them added me on social media and preferred texting to sending emails, I could contact them right away whenever a question arose. Sometimes, after our meetings, they even texted their new ideas and opinion about rural revitalization without me asking.

One of my research participants is a charismatic leader, academic, businessman
and a native of Yame City, where I attended high school
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

Compared to Fukuoka, Nagasaki seems to have a slower pace, or in other words, is more “rural”. Yet, I was able to experience the charming, relaxing life in Nagasaki. I stayed at an Airbnb in Nagasaki, and my host – a Nagasaki native – is very knowledgeable about rural revitalization and interested in the project that our research team is conducting. He also used to work in a local politician’s office. In order to help me grasp the local context, my host guided me to many historical places in Nagasaki, invited me to join local events, introduced me to other local residents, and even drove me to Hasami Town – my other main field site. He is also familiar with several of my respondents and prepped me before my interviews. For instance, he told me about the backgrounds and policy orientations of several local politicians. While in Nagasaki, not only did I get to hear the voices of policy actors, but also those of local residents. Many of them were highly critical of how the prefecture handles rural revitalization. More importantly, the people I met in Nagasaki became a part of my everyday life. We formed a close-knit community and had dinner together every other day as we lived very close to each other. One of my new friends also came to Tokyo to see me off on Sunday.

An evening picnic with my Airbnb host and new friends from Nagasaki
Copyright © Ngo Tu Thanh 2022

This is not my first time in Japan or living abroad. After having lived in six countries, I thought I was used to saying goodbye. Yet, it is still quite emotional to know “that was it”. However, I’m sure that the end of the fieldwork is not the end of these new “friendships” (if I may use this word at all… as many respondents are older and way more accomplished than I am). In the upcoming months, I will do my best to make the most out of the valuable information my respondents shared with me and finish my PhD dissertation. I cannot wait to visit Japan again as soon as possible.

by Cornelia Reiher

In September, I was able to travel to Japan for the first time after three and a half years. Since visa-free travel was not possible until October 11, I had to undergo a time-consuming visa application process. Thanks to our colleagues at Kyushu University, I was able to affiliate as a visiting scholar and was very happy when the visa was finally stamped in my passport. Fortunately, just before I left for Japan, the PCR tests for those who had been vaccinated three times were no longer required for entry. At the same time, not only the entry ban but also the war in Ukraine has made it difficult to travel to Japan. Since it is no longer possible to fly over Russia, air routes have become much longer and air ticket prices have risen sharply. Against all odds, I put on my mask, boarded a plane and entered Japan in mid-September, where I was the only foreigner in the immigration queue. I had never seen the international terminal of Haneda Airport so empty.

Alone at the immigration line at Haneda airport
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

The number of Covid-19 infections in Japan has increased since July 2022, even in rural areas. Therefore, hygiene measures were taken very seriously and everyone wore a mask indoors and outdoors. Even in my field sites, many people had already been infected with Covid. Many interlocutors told me openly that they or their children had Corona, but apparently, the subject was taboo, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. Foreigners in particular were shunned. One interviewee told me that people even changed sides of the street when they saw her, and she felt discriminated against for the first time in Japan, even though she had lived there for a long time.

Since one of the principles of good research practice is to do no harm to research participants, I followed all the formal and informal rules as much as possible. Since everyone always wore a mask, I did too. I also carried a suitcase full of Covid-19 test kits and performed tests regularly. Fortunately, I did not experience any discrimination or rejection from my research participants, but found Covid to be a good conversation starter, as everyone I met was interested in the Covid situation and rules in Germany and Europe. Many Japanese found it hard to believe that people in most European countries no longer wear masks.

Even cows wear masks during the pandemic. I found this plastic one at a michi no eki in Aso.
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

After conducting online interviews during the past year, I had come to Japan to conduct on-site interviews and attend events to see more than just people’s faces. But also during my stay in Japan, I had to interview some people remotely because they or their family members were infected with Covid-19. And this time I hardly saw anyone’s face because the interviewees had their masks on during almost all the interviews, some even in their own houses. Only when I took photos of my research participants did they briefly remove their masks. In the town halls of my two field sites, as well as in many other public institutions, a scanner at the entrance monitored the body temperature of visitors and staff. Although wearing masks is currently required in Germany only on public transportation, disinfecting hands and wearing masks even at 32°C became second nature to me (again). Like everyone else in Japan, I spent entire days without taking off my mask.

Interview with masks and partition walls in a municipal hall in Kyushu
Copyright © Takako Horita 2022

But how can a researcher relate to people if she only sees them with a mask? I found it very unfortunate that I could not see the facial expressions of many of my research participants during the interviews because they are just as important as their verbal expressions. On the other hand, I had met many of my research participants before – either online without masks or during previous fieldwork in Japan. Without these previous encounters, however, it would have been somewhat difficult for me to get to know them. Sometimes I wondered if this type of field research was really better than the online interviews I had already conducted. However, I would say that it was important to be on-site to observe the environment in which my research participants live and the social interactions in their daily lives. During the online interviews, I only saw their faces and often a virtual background. Some participants gave me a tour of their homes or neighborhood online, but I could only see what they wanted me to see. For this reason, it was important to (re)visit my field sites in person. In doing so, I not only noticed how much the places have changed since previous visits, but I also happened to come across many interesting things by coincidence. In summary, during my fieldwork in Japan, I experienced firsthand how the pandemic changed not only fieldwork for researchers outside of Japan who could not enter the country and had to find alternative ways to do fieldwork, but also fieldwork in Japan itself.

From left to right: Monitoring body temperature at the entrance of public facilities; signs that ask customers to wear masks and to keep distance at a supermarket; and the check-in equipment at a guesthouse (tissues, disinfection spray, masks and a fever thermometer).
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

by Sarah Bijlsma

A question that inevitably comes up when thinking about (urban migration to) rural Japan is where ‘the rural’ as a unit of analysis begins and ends. To put it differently, is rural Japan defined by population density, municipal borders, the conceptual boundaries of ‘the countryside,’ linguistic terms like chiiki (region), inaka (countryside), or chihō (district), or by a combination of all? In my research on Miyakojima it is the term shima (island) or ritō (remote island) that is used by people to reflect on the space they inhabit. Being a piece of land fully surrounded by water, I often feel that the term is applied to describe an isolated and more or less homogeneous space [1]. Yet, spending time on Miyako I realized that its 159 km² is used, planned, and negotiated by different people in fundamentally different ways.

To begin with, Miyako has a small urbanized area on the west side of the island. This is where most of the 52,814 inhabitants live [2]. However, when I strolled through the narrow streets, I was especially struck by the many multi-story buildings with a different karaoke bar or hostess club on each floor. One night I spoke to a girl named Mika who works in such a hostess club. She told me that she was originally from Osaka and had moved to Miyako three months earlier. On Miyako, only migrants like herself work as hostesses as the job comes with a number of benefits for them. For example, the club provides a dorm to live in, food and free drinks, a relatively high salary, and even pays for a one-way airplane ticket from the girl’s home city to Miyako. Mika had been a hostess for many years but stated that she likes the work way better on the island. In Osaka, her customers were mainly middle-aged salarymen. In contrast, on Miyako her customers are tourists and Japanese construction workers who are more or less the same age. So she gets paid to party, get drunk, and talk to people she would also be friends with outside of her job.

Club Venus and other hostess clubs in the center of Miyako
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2022

The seaside is an area that is marked by the concrete of hotels and resorts. These buildings did not exist until a few years before; the year 2015 marked the beginning of a large-scale construction rush that became known as the ‘Miyako Bubble’. I have been told that the local population hardly benefits from these hotels, as they are built, managed, invested in, and used by people from Japan. Mika’s boyfriend is someone who knows Miyako’s beach areas very well. Originally from Yamanashi-ken, he worked at a real estate company in Tokyo before moving to Miyako in 2021. He started his own SUP business next to Yonaha-Maehama Beach, Miyako’s number one tourist spot. When I asked him if there are any locals who make use of his services, he said that locals do not spend time at the beach at all. For them, the ocean is something ordinary (atarimae). The only locals you see are the owners of jet ski companies, many of whom are yakuza. He does not know the exact reason for this, but since a lot of money goes is turned over in these businesses and customers pay in cash, they seem to be the perfect vehicles for laundering money.

Miyako is known by Japanese tourists for its bright blue sea
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2022

While Miyako’s city center and beaches are the terrains of Japanese tourists and emigrants, the inland belongs to the local population. Miyako has no mountains and these inner landscapes are characterized by wide sugarcane fields. In a small village on the east side of the island stands the house of Hiroto and his wife. The couple, originally from Miyako, run a small restaurant while raising their eight children. When they were still a family of six, they traveled around Japan to learn about alternative ways of agriculture, architecture, and education. When they returned, they could not find a house and decided to build a hut from old cans and clay in a banana field. Their fifth child was born there. After six months, they bought an old house which they fully rebuilt. The roof was taken off to make the house twice as high. A second floor was built, accessible only by log, and it contains so many books that they call it their ‘library.’ There are no separate rooms in the house; everyone can just grab a futon and sleep wherever they want. The walls of the bathroom are made out of corals, and the toilet is largely built of glass bottles that cast a pleasant green light into the house whenever in use.  

The house of Hiroto and his wife
Copyright © Sarah Bijlsma 2022

These three examples illustrate that, far from being a homogeneous environment, the geography of Miyako is organized according to different social groups. As such, the landscape of Miyako can be ‘read’ as text [3]: Taking a close look at the island’s architectural structures provides insights into the fabric and social relationships that are being negotiated on this small piece of land.

Endnotes

[1] Gillis, John R. 2007. “Island Sojourns”. Geographical Review, Vol. 97, No. 2, pp. 274-287.

[2] As of June 2022. Miyako Mainichi. 27.06.2022. Miyako keniki jinkō 35nen buri souka / 20nen kokuseichōsa sokuhō [Miyako’s population increases for the first time in 35 years / 20 year preliminary census report]. Via https://www.miyakomainichi.com/news/post-142738/ (accessed on 19.10.2022)

[3] Cosgrove, Denis. 1989. “Geography is everywhere: culture and symbolism in human landscapes.” In: Derek Gregory & Rex Walford (eds.), Horizons in Human Geography. Barnes & Noble. pp. 118–135.

by Marius Palz

When riding your car along the east coast of Nago City you will pass several small villages that lie north of Cape Henoko, a place that became mostly known for the ongoing construction of a new military facility, yet another one of many American bases that are cramped together on the small island of Okinawa. The small villages north of Henoko are what I consider my field site. While Henoko has been the focus of many academic and newspaper articles, not much attention has been paid to these small villages in the north, although they are also affected by the controversial base construction. They are also interesting to look at from the perspective of urban-rural migration.

Passing through these villages, you will see the turquoise waters of the inō (inner reef section) on the one side and the green mountains of the yanbaru (forested area of northern Okinawa Main Island) on the other. It is a truly idyllic place, but you will also see many abandoned houses similar to those in other parts of Japan. There are several reasons for the population decline over the last decades, some of which I want to address here.

The area of Nago’s east coast is called Kushi, which invites a play on words in the local language: “Kushi wa kushi ni natteiru”. The first kushi in the sentence refers to the area while the second one means “last” or “behind” in Uchināguchi (the language of Okinawa Main Island). “Kushi comes last” is a common saying among those who live here, referring to the late introduction and poor maintenance of what is considered essential infrastructures like water, roads, coastal armouring and internet. Compared to the urban southern part of Okinawa Island, Nago City is already considered underdeveloped, especially with regard to the availability of jobs for young people. The villages of Kushi, however, could be seen as the periphery of the periphery. The number of schools along Nago’s east coast declined drastically over the last decades leaving the villages north of Cape Henoko with one facility that combines elementary and junior high school as well as one senior high school. With only a couple of job options, such as local schools, roadside shops or the local fisheries association, many young people decided to leave their home villages to build up a life in the urban south or in major cities of mainland Japan.

Many have left this beautiful place, but they did not give up on their inherited property, which poses another problem for the villages: even though there are multiple abandoned houses, newcomers that would like to live in this remote place cannot move in. My interlocutors explained to me the reasons for this: Okinawa has a strong tradition of ancestral worship, which is represented by the family altar, normally located in the house of the oldest son. Moving the family altar is extremely costly because ritual specialists have to get involved. Moving it would also break the connection between the family and the ground passed on over generations. Therefor most people leave the family altar behind when moving to the city and visit it during days of worship. The presence of the family altar makes it impossible to sell the property or rent it out to strangers. To be able to do so consent within the family must be obtained, which is difficult since Okinawan families tend to be very big. Instead of renting or selling, some families prefer to tear down the house and construct little concrete huts to house the family altar.  

Among those who stay in the villages of Kushi, some decided to work on the base construction site. Despite massive protests against the project that have been going on for over two decades now, the Japanese government insists on Henoko being the only possible location to host the base. Of course, the construction generates jobs, but it also comes with severe environmental consequences as well as noise pollution and possible accidents in the future, leaving those who depend on an income from base construction with mixed feelings.

Meanwhile, some of the villages still manage to attract urban migrants despite all the problems mentioned above. The combination of clear waters and forested hills make Kushi an attractive area for those in search of an alternative to Naha, Tokyo or Osaka and collective village activities create a sense of belonging. Especially those places that emphasize communal work and festivities attract new people. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, made these activities more difficult. Formerly harvest festivals, communal dances, sports events, collective village maintenance and barbecues on the neighbour’s porch were good occasions for newcomers and long-time residents to mingle. It is hard to build up ties when all of these events get cancelled year after year.

Marius Palz is a member of the ERC-funded “Whales of Power” research project and a PhD candidate at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at the University of Oslo. After having worked with members of the Ainu community in Hokkaidō and Tōkyō for his Masters, he is currently writing his dissertation on “Human-Dugong Relations and Environmental Activism in the Ryūkyū Archipelago.” As an anthropologist of Japan, he is not only interested in minority-state relations, but also multispecies and extinction studies. He conducted eight months of fieldwork in Okinawa during 2021, most of which he stayed in the Kushi area.