In December 2022, I wrote a post on the struggles of my first week back in the field – the countryside with shivering winds and empty phone signals in Fukushima. I worried gravely what returning to the field would be like and how ill-prepared I had been. To come full-circle, I want to share the last week of my field work in Fukushima here. During this week I had a starkly different experience in a different but deeply similar site (countryside, mountainous, cold). In January, I participated in a farm-stay in another part of rural Fukushima. Given that it was mid-winter and taking place just after Japan’s worst snowstorm in a decade, I worried that this farm experience would be cancelled, or worse, unfruitful.
Luck would have it that the days immediately after the storm were sunny and bright. While still cold enough for the snow to stay, I was immensely glad to see blue skies. Regular farm work aside, my research participant was also hosting a community hotpot party in the evening and our task for this day in particular was simple: salvage and harvest whatever vegetables we could get from the snowy fields. Booted and gloved up, I walked hesitantly towards the row of lettuces, wondering what could actually have survived the snowstorm. I knelt down at a bundle of lettuce, poked its frozen leaves, sighed, and prepared to get up and abandon this section. At that moment, an old lady from the neighborhood trudged over and squatted beside me, telling me in slurred Japanese to pluck them out. I was confused but tried nevertheless, but alas the soil itself was frozen and the lettuces would not budge without me completely ripping the ball apart.
The old lady muttered impatiently, conjured a knife from out of nowhere, and started stabbing the frozen soil to dislodge the lettuces. She showed me then how to gently peel apart the frozen outer leaves to reveal fresh lettuce cores. I was in awe. I had fully planned for the dinner party to be of scraps, since it was mid-winter. Yet, now I knelt on frozen soil cradling a palm-sized lettuce core so fresh I wanted to bite on it there and then. Midway through our farm efforts, a middle-aged man drove up along the driveway and, with some distance from us, started poking his knife at the tree roots. What could it be now? I was curious and excused myself from the group and walked over to the man, all the while hoping he would not turn around and stab me with his knife. “Ah, look, Daikon,” he said. I crouched cautiously and saw what he was poking at– the frozen soil around a tiny sprout of what appeared to be radish leaves. He told me that tiny leaves meant larger radishes, and so together we plucked at the tiny sprout and heaved and dug. Our strenuous efforts were rewarded with a stick of thin, palm-sized radish. “Maybe this can just be grated,” he comforted himself. After hours of harvesting, we were pleased with our yield – a healthy mix of lettuces, cabbages, onions, and other greens I could not identify. We wheeled our finds to the car and set off to prepare for the hotpot.
Now back in Berlin, I reflect upon those three months in Japan and how things have come full circle. I look back at those pictures of lettuces and hotpots, and wonder how little I thought about radiation at all during the whole farm-to-table process, even though I spent hours harvesting vegetables grown in the soil of the former exclusion zones. I wondered again if that’s what the newcomers here experienced too: the forgotten radiation displaced by the warm hotpot parties and cheeriness of the rural wide blue skies.
Rural areas in many places around the world are struggling with economic and demographic problems and are often faced with the migration of rural populations to urban centers. This is particularly true for communities in rural Japan, which have been affected by declining birth rates, aging and out-migration for decades. Over 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 the number who actually move. A distinctive feature of Japan is the numerous programs and subsidies initiated by various actors to encourage people to move to or return to rural Japan in order to revitalize the local economy and agriculture. Shortly after the Japanese government launched new financial support measures in early 2023 to encourage people to leave Tokyo and move to the countryside, the symposium “Urban rural migration in Japan and Europe: Transnational and comparative perspectives” was held on February 2-3, 2023 at the Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB). The aim of the symposium, organized by Cornelia Reiher (Free University of Berlin), was to compare empirical results from her DFG project “Urban-Rural Migration and Rural Revitalization in Japan” with urban-rural migration within and outside Japan and to analyze connections between urban-rural migration, revitalization practices and support measures. Anthropologists, architects, area studies specialists, consultants, geographers, municipal officials, political scientists, and sociologists from various European countries and Japan took turns on the panel to discuss the challenges of urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan and European countries, highlighting similarities, differences, and transnational trends.
After the opening speeches by Tokiko Kiyota (JDZB) and Cornelia Reiher, two keynote presentations focused on counter-urbanization in Japan and Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Susanne Klien (Hokkaido University) focused on self-determination and subjective well-being, but also on loneliness and precarity in the lives of migrants after relocation to rural Japan. Introducing the term “urban rural,” she emphasized the increasing hybridization of urban and rural areas, especially at a time when people can transcend space through digital media. Keith Halfacree (Swansea University) presented the case of rural England and Wales, emphasizing that the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit, and the food production crisis will have long-term effects on these areas. While counter-urbanization can provide an opportunity for rural revitalization and renaissance, it can also widen the gap between urban and rural areas.
The first day ended with a roundtable discussion led by Cornelia Reiher. The two keynote speakers were joined on stage by consultant Taichi Goto (Region Works LLC Fukuoka) and Annett Steinführer (Thünen Institute for Rural Studies). After their brief opening statements, the discussion focused on the impact of the Covid pandemic on rural areas in Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom; the challenges and promise of urban-rural migration and counter-urbanization for rural revitalization in the three countries; and addressed issues such as housing, relationships between locals and newcomers, and how to create places where diverse rural residents can meet. Panelists emphasized that there are more dividing lines than those between “locals” and “newcomers” and that research should pay more attention to more fluid forms of migration and mobility, such as second-home owners or people with multiple residences trying to enjoy the best of many worlds.
The second day comprised four sessions, each with three presentations. To allow for cross-national comparisons, each panel consisted of a presentation on Japan, a presentation on Germany, and a presentation on a European country. The first session, devoted to the experiences of urban-rural migrants and their contributions to rural areas, was opened by Wolfram Manzenreiter (University of Vienna), who presented findings from collaborative research on community well-being in Greater Aso. He focused on the notion of belonging and the importance of personal background for community engagement. Tim Leibert (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography) presented the example of the district of North Saxony, showing the influence of individual social networks on the decision of urban residents to move from Leipzig to rural areas. To conclude the first panel, Anja Decker from the Czech Academy of Sciences presented her research on urban-rural migrants in western rural Czechia and on cooperations and conflicts between newcomers and the local population facilitated by alternative food practices.
In the second panel, the DFG project “Urban rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan” was presented. First, Cornelia Reiher, the project leader, introduced the research project in general and reported some preliminary findings from her own field research in two communities. She spoke about topics such as the role of local governments in migration decisions and rural revitalization, changes brought about by new practices linking online and offline spaces, and increasing diversity in rural Japan. The project’s two research assistants then presented their research. Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu) discussed the case of Buzen City from a public policy perspective, emphasizing the important role of international migration and cooperation in rural revitalization. Cecilia Luzi also spoke about Buzen City, but from the perspective of urban-rural migrants. She showed that rural revitalization is not a uniform process, but a multifaceted phenomenon that takes different and sometimes contradictory forms.
The third panel focused on the role of politics and policies in urban-rural migration and rural revitalization. Participants included both scholars and practitioners. Ken Hijino (Kyoto University) provided information on general trends in policies to attract new residents to rural areas in Japan and the role that depopulation and attracting new residents play in mayoral elections. Mayor Dietmar Henrich from Hamm (Sieg) in Germany presented his municipality and the challenges it faces due to population decline, and discussed creative solutions to promote in-migration. Finally, Angel Paniagua Mazorra (Spanish Council for Scientific Research), who participated online, spoke about his twenty years of research on natives and newcomers in remote rural areas in Spain, addressing some methodological challenges and personal perceptions of change in these areas, including infrastructure improvement.
The fourth panel focused on the future of rural areas and urban-rural migration. Tadashi Saito (Yamaguchi University) introduced a new research method called “Verbs-Extracting Research Method, VERM” to analyze and explore new opportunities for tourism in rural Japan by focusing on the actions of research participants. Annett Steinführer discussed terminologies and presented findings on the reasons, motives and social structure of people who move from urban to rural areas in Germany. Finally, Susanne Stenbacka (Uppsala University) discussed three aspects of migration in rural Sweden, namely the increase in international migration, the immigration of socio-economically weak households, and the increased demand for vacation homes and permanent housing in rural areas.
In the final discussion, Cornelia Reiher, Susanne Klien, Tim Leibert, Anja Decker, and Keith Halfacree reflected on the issues discussed during the symposium. The central themes they identified were the incompatibility of local needs and national funding plans for rural areas, the incongruence of administrative and social boundaries, and competition between local governments. Conflicting representations of rural areas, access to land, land prices, finding suitable housing, and building a home were important issues for newcomers and long-term residents of rural areas that led to conflicts and political disputes in both Japan and European countries. The main target group of policies for developing rural areas and attracting new residents were surprisingly similar in all countries, where young families were to be attracted to move to the countryside through relocation fairs, financial incentives and the provision of housing. Panelists discussed whether attracting new residents is really a solution to rural problems, and suggested that depopulation could also be seen as an opportunity from a posthuman perspective. Considering all these aspects, depopulation in rural Japan seems to be more serious than in other countries, but perhaps it is not so unique after all. Overall, the symposium encouraged all participants to continue this conversation, to pay more attention to more unstable types of mobilities, and to reflect more on the terminology used when discussing mobilities to rural areas.
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.
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 4th 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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?
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).”
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/
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
