by Susanne Klien*

Hi from Hokkaido! I recently wrapped up my follow-up fieldwork in Tokushima Prefecture. Originally scheduled for 2020, I had to postpone it because of the pandemic. In spring 2021, the infection rates seemed low enough in Kamiyama, a town with 5000 residents in the mountains. However, the decision to go ahead was difficult since my place of living, Sapporo, had high rates of infection, at times outnumbering Tokyo. Also, like most rural places, my field has an extremely high rate of residents older than 65 (50%). A close contact in town warned me that it may be difficult to pursue conventional fieldwork as many events have been cancelled and individual attitudes to the virus vary. Yet, he also shared that there were non-local visitors and some residents went on business trips. I eventually decided to go ahead, but also felt that extreme caution was required as not to risk anyone’s health including my own. Wearing a FSC.F-99 mask at all times, prioritizing outdoor activities and interviews was basic fieldwork etiquette.

During the first five days after my arrival I kept my activities low key, focusing on archival work. In contrast to my worries before departure, I felt my fear of catching COVID-19 dwindle every day – more pressing worries were how to cope with centipedes, giant spiders and heavy pollen exposure. Apart from a few public places that required measuring one’s body temperature, it was almost as if the virus did not exist. Some elderly neighbors who came for a chat were not even wearing masks. A local lady in her 70s whom I interviewed at her house said that I did not need to wear my mask during our conversation. Among the dozens of urbanite settlers I interviewed, only one asked me whether I had taken a PCR test.

That being said, however, there have in fact been a few infections in town. I talked to a settler in her late 20s who caught the virus, having brought it from outside. She said that even after her recovery, she was told by a shop owner to keep away. Social stigmatization has been reported as a huge issue in rural places that seems to outweigh the low risk of catching the virus there.

Most of my interviewees from four years ago were still in town, even those who had stated that they may move to other places. Check out my recent monograph Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society (Albany, NY: SUNY Press 2020) if you are interested in their stories. Some collaborators have started entrepreneurial activities – in fact, my accommodation was a guesthouse opened by one of my interviewees, a woman from the Tokyo area in her early 30s.

Others were still searching for their ideal lifestyles, just like four years ago. It was reassuring to see so many familiar faces, yet it was all so different. There were many new arrivals. Having featured widely in various media, Kamiyama has gained a reputation as a place for fashionable individuals with special skills: designers, chefs, creatives, IT engineers.

Some long-term migrants observed that these newcomers are not really interested in deeper engagement with the local community; they just want to realize themselves by pursuing activities that make sense to them.

The pandemic seems to have legitimized the lifestyle choices of migrants as rural life as strategic both with regard to infection rates and food access. A couple in their 30s who have lived in Kamiyama for six years joked that their parents in Tokyo had always questioned their decision to leave their corporate jobs until the pandemic, when all of a sudden, they were praised for having made the right choice.

With inquiries about relocation having increased notably since the pandemic, Kamiyama – and many rural towns – have clearly seen a rise in interest by individuals from all walks of life.

*Susanne Klien is associate professor at Hokkaido University. Her main research interests include the appropriation of local traditions, demographic decline and alternative forms of living and working in post-growth Japan. She is the author of Urban migrants in rural Japan: Between agency and anomie in a post-growth society (State University of New York Press, 2020).

By Antonia Vesting

Apart from small projects at school and later at university, I had little experience in field research. By conducting my first fieldwork in Japan one could say that I plunged into the field headfirst. During my time at Waseda University, I learned about methods for conducting interviews. This however did not reduce my worries as a rather inexperienced fieldworker. Fortunately, I was not alone. My professor for rural development at Waseda University, who happened to be familiar with the region from his time as a student at Kyōto University, agreed to accompany me. This was truly a lucky coincidence!

As we stayed in Kyōto, we had to drive back and forth to the interview locations every day. Initially I had planned to stay at my friend’s house in Miyama but due to the advancing Covid-19 pandemic, she was worried that her neighbors would be anxious about having people from Tōkyō visit. Luckily, my interlocutors and my friend did not share this opinion and we could meet in person to conduct the interviews. As I have a driver’s license but no routine in driving, I was especially thankful for not having to drive the winding mountain roads that lead to Miyama and which are often frequented by deer at night. Taking these 70 minutes drives to and from Miyama also had their upsides: aside from long and interesting talks, I learned a lot about rural development and the practice of interviewing.

Returning from a long day in the field, creeping into my hostels dormitory late at night and collapsing on the futon with utter exhaustion, I found that field research and interviewing can be a very positive and enriching experience. Having completed all obligatory language-classes before going to Japan, my Japanese improved drastically during my half a year stay in Japan and transcribing the interviews further boosted my language-skills (not to mention personal growth and unforgettable experiences and insights). Still, there remain points for improvement.

Considering that I conducted research only for my bachelor’s thesis, my sample of interlocutors was very small, and I gained access to them through only one gatekeeper which induced some bias in my study. Furthermore, one of the interviewees only agreed to an interview for a small monetary compensation, which, as I learned afterwards, could negatively affect the credibility of the interview’s content. After returning to Germany, I found that there had been other studies on I-Turners to Miyama in Japanese, which rendered my research less relevant regarding novelty of findings and insights (not relevant for bachelor’s thesis but for later academic research). Nevertheless, this scholarship proved useful to compare my findings. I also was very conscious about the handling of interview data in respect to data security and the protection of privacy of my research participants.

Being now in the second semester of my master’s studies at Freie Universitāt Berlin, I have come to look back at the time of conducting interviews in Miyama in a new light. With my experience from visiting Miyama for the first time in 2016 as a backdrop and with the new knowledge and input, I gathered during my research in 2020, I now reevaluate my first experience of doing fieldwork in Japan. Reflecting on this first fieldwork experience and learning more about qualitative methods as parts of my master’s degree curriculum, I will hopefully enhance my research skills and avoid some of my initial mistakes in my upcoming projects.

I am very much looking forward to putting this new knowledge into practice when doing fieldwork in Japan again in the (hopefully) near future.

Antonia Marie Vesting is a MA student in Freie Universität Berlin’s Japanese Studies program. She received her bachelor’s degree from Hamburg University with a BA thesis on lifestyle migration in  Kyōto Prefecture. She has presented results from this research in an earlier blogpost.

by Ksenia Kurochkina

This is Ksenia Kurochkina here. In this post, I share how I started studying rural Japan and how my personal journey contributed to my research.

I came to Japan to study in 2009 with the main interest in contemporary society and younger generation’s working styles. I started visiting rural areas, first as my hobby, volunteering at organic farms. Interestingly, during my trips to villages, I had acquainted many young people from a social cohort I have not heard of before: young urbanites who recently migrated to the countryside to live and work. After witnessing high unemployment rates for youth, uncertainties of irregular employment, and psychological traumas of social withdrawals in the cities, I was very enthusiastic to see many young people with positive agendas, dreams, and revitalization projects on the outskirts of metropolitan areas. These people held different ideas on work, leisure, and the future from what I have seen in urban life. From my fascination with these people grew my research interest for the MA and Ph.D. theses on urbanites migrating to rural areas in Japan. Also, in the following twelve years since the beginning of my research, we all observed “how rural settlement in the ‘post’-productivist era has moved from ‘dropping out’ of the agenda to heading it” [1].

As a part of my dissertation project, I did long-term fieldwork in the Japanese countryside. I stayed for one year in a village in Kansai, renting a rural house, raising chickens in the backyard, and also getting ready to giving birth to my first child. Doing ethnographies, especially in sparsely populated remote areas, challenges researchers to investigate personal boundaries and engagements with informants. On the one hand, the immediate neighborhood with my informants gave me plenty of advantages in gathering valuable insights for my research. Through daily errands, I could closely observe the everyday lives of rural newcomers around their houses, paddy fields, and community. For example, because I was pregnant during the fieldwork and gave birth to my daughter in the local hospital, I could access the village’s young mothers’ community and learn a lot about their natural childbirth and child-rearing practices and how this contributed to their quality of life in rural environments. Caring for my backyard chickens with the advice and tips of my neighbors gave me valuable insights into newcomers’ routines of organic homesteading, sustainable cooking, and their deeper motivations for rural life.

On the other hand, I experienced that close interactions with some villagers may prevent a researcher from quality conversations with other villagers, as human relations in rural communities are loaded with many histories, rumors, and conflicts. For example, after some weeks in the fieldwork, I found out that two I-turn neighbor-newcomers have broken relationships and do not even greet each other. Therefore, I took measures to balance my relations with the informants to avoid bias. 

When doing fieldwork in the countryside, building up trust with the informants is a big part of successful interviewing and participant observation. Although a researcher should take an independent stance in the field, personal relationships and experiences always contribute to the research path we are walking.

[1]
Halfacree, Keith. 2006.  “From dropping out to leading on? British counter-cultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality”, Progress in Human Geography 30, 3 (2006), pp. 309-336.

Ksenia Kurochkina is an associate researcher at Sociological Institute, Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. She received her PhD from Waseda University in 2021 with a thesis on lifestyles of young rural newcomers in Japan.

by Tu Thanh Ngo (Frank Tu)

Policies to revitalize rural areas are nothing new in Japan. Revitalization policies date back to the 1930s when the Farm, Mountain and Fishing Village Economic Revitalization Campaign (1932–1941) was initiated that was followed by a series of laws and policies, such as the Promotion Services for Home Living Improvement (1940s–late 1950s), the Basic Agricultural Law (1961), the Mountain Village Promotion Act (1965), the Emergency Act for the Improvement of Depopulated Areas (1970) or the Law on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas (1999) [1].

However, a new policy has been introduced in 2014 by then Prime Minister Abe Shinzō that became the epitome of rural revitalization. According to a Chiikiryoku Advisor for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, “Regional revitalization (chihō sōsei) was born under the Abe Cabinet” (personal online communication, 16 June 2021). According to Hijino (2017) and Yoshizawa (2019), the Abe administration did not only introduce the term chihō sōsei, but also framed rural revitalization as a flagship policy. The term chihō sōsei refers to a policy titled “Machi, hito, shigoto sōsei” and its policy framework “Machi, hito, shigoto sōsei sōgō senryaku” [Comprehensive Strategy for Communities, People and Work] [2].

The Comprehensive Strategy’s intention is to centralize all strategies used for rural revitalization, decentralization of population in Tokyo, and anti-depopulation under one single framework [2]. The Comprehensive Strategy consists of four objectives [3]:

1. Create a stable economic environment in rural areas
2. Strengthen the ties between rural and urban areas to attract new in-migrants
3. Provide support for marriage, childbearing, and child-rearing in rural areas
4. Create a safe living environment 

In essence, the Comprehensive Strategy “aims at reversing the population flow into the greater Tokyo area” [4]. To be specific, by the end of the first five-year phase, the government expected to reduce the number of in-migrants to the Tokyo region by 60,000 people and to increase the number of out-migrants from the Tokyo region by 40,000 people [5]. In addition, the Comprehensive Strategy is expected to “make it easy for young couples to live and work full-time with support from the local government” [4] by creating 300,000 new jobs in rural areas [5]. On how to achieve the goals that the Comprehensive Strategy sets out to do, the MIC advisor quoted earlier wrote: “From my point of view, regional revitalization needs to consider transportation, living standards – including education, income, etc.” (personal online communication, 16 June 2021).

However, as mentioned above, policies to revitalize rural Japan existed long before Abe’s Comprehensive Strategy. Thus, although all existing policies have now been centralized to constitute one regional revitalization policy framework, is this new policy a breakthrough or just merely old wine in new bottles? This is what we want to find out through our project that studies the implementation and the impact of the Comprehensive Strategy in four municipalities in Kyushu. In addition, we will also pay attention to how the implementation of the Comprehensive Strategy differs across different levels of government (national, prefectural and municipal).  

[1]
Feldhoff, T. (2013) ‘Shrinking communities in Japan: Community ownership of assets as a development potential for rural Japan?’, Urban Design International, 18(1), pp. 99–109.

Nakama, Y. and Uchida, K. (2010), ‘Seikatsu Kaizen Fukyū Jigyō no Rinen to Jittai: Yamaguchi ken wo jirei ni’, Nōringyō Mondai Kenkyū, 178, pp. 1–13.

Smith, K. (2003), ‘Building the model village: Rural revitalization and the Great Depression’, in Farmers and village life in twentieth-century Japan. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 126–155.

[2]
Hijino, K. V. L. (2017), Local Politics and National Policy: Multi-level conflicts in Japan and Beyond. London and New York: Routledge.

Yoshizawa, Y. (2019), ‘Chūō Seifu ni okeru “Chihōsōsei” no Seisaku katei to seifu kan kankei’, Seiji Keizaigaku Kenkyū Ronshū, 4, pp.1-20.

[3]
Office of the Prime Minister (2014), Machi, Hito, Shigoto Sōsei Sōgō Senryaku ni tsuite, Shushō Kantei. Available at: https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/sousei/pdf/20141227siryou5.pdf.

[4]
Kumagai, F. (2020), Municipal Power and Population Decline in Japan: Goki-Shichido and Regional Variations. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.

[5]
Nakamura, Y. (2015), ‘Chihō Sōsei o meguru Sōgō Senryaku to Chihō Jichitai: Kokusaku kara Jichi e no Tenkan wa Kanō ka’, Utsunomiya Daigaku Kokusai Gakubu Kenkyū Ronshū, 40, pp. 43–48.

by Sarah Bijlsma

At the north side of Miyako Island, from a rock in the sea a bit off coast, arises a pillar with a height of 4.2 meters. The pillar is narrow at its foot, widens a bit towards the middle and comes together at the top in a smooth and round shape. Its material could be that of a mineral or quarts; being partly transparent, the object merges with its surrounding environment as it takes on the color of the air behind it. Apart from the color, it reminds a little of an ancient megalith, like the statues of Stonehenge or the Moai on Easter Island. As such, it is not entirely clear whether this is a man-made shape or a natural geomorphological object. In any case, the pillar has certainly a spiritual atmosphere around it and could be an important object of worship in local religious traditions.

The object I described above was created by the Japanese artist Mori Mariko (b. 1967, Tokyo) and part of the artwork Primal Rhythm.[1] Primal Rhythm is one of six site-specific artworks that will be placed on different continents. The statue Sun Pillar was put on the stack in July 2011 and made of layered acrylic; synthetic fibers with pigments in between that create different hues within the shape. The work further contains of a Moon Stone; a round stone-shaped object that floats on the surface of the sea and changes color according to the tide and the phase of the moon. Once a year, at the winter solstice, the Sun Pillar casts a shadow over the water that pierces the Moon Stone. Mori explains that she was inspired by artifacts found from the Jōmon Period (ca. 14.000 to 300 BCE). “Two objects were always found in a particular area: a round stone and a kind of small standing stone. The pair seems to me to be a symbol of regeneration, or a wish to help in harvest, or related to worship of the nature god. It’s probably a primitive stage of Shintoism.”[2]The Moon Stone, however, is not yet finalized, hence hitherto, the Sun Pillar glimmers alone on its rock formation.

The location of Miyako Island for this artwork has not been chosen coincidentally. Mori “visited” Miyako via Google Earth and decided for Nanako Bay—referred to as “Seven Light Bay” by the artist—as the area seemed fairly untouched. Mori explains that some of the villagers who live nearby participate in annual rites where other islanders are not welcome. “[the rites are] quite hidden,” she says. “If you see [them], you will die. They’re really secretly done, these ceremonies. The island is very well-preserved. There is a rich indigenous community that still exists. Modern things not there so much but there is a lot to learn from them in terms of the relationship of human society to nature.” [3]

In 2011, Mori invited the village shaman to perform a ceremony on the beach during the winter solstice in 2011. “They immediately understood what I am trying to do because they have such a rich relationship with nature,”[4] she states. Since then, Mori herself performs occasionally a ritual at the site, the most recent one during summer solstice this June. In white garment she spread her arms towards the Sun Pillar and let herself and a miniature version of the Moon Stone float on the waves of the sea.[5]  In this regard, Primal Rhythm is indicative for the way how Miyako-jima is represented outside of the region, including assumptions on human-nature relationships and cultural purity that draw so many Japanese tourists and migrants near. Yet, more importantly, what this artwork also illustrates is how Seven Light Bay becomes a site where globalized concepts of place and indigeneity merge with local rituals and rites and where, accordingly, opportunities are created for new “traditions” to emerge.

[1]
Visit for more information about the project its official website via https://www.faoufoundation.org/

[2]
Indrisek, Scott. “Crystal Flag: Mariko Mori wants to bring her nature-loving art to six continents.” Modern Painters, May 2011, pp. 58-93. (Here p. 60).

[3]
Ibid. pp. 60-61.

[4]
Ibid. 61.

[5]
See for videos of these rituals Mori Mariko’s Instagram page via https://www.instagram.com/marikomori/ and https://www.instagram.com/faoufoundation/

By Vincent Heuser

As Cornelia Reiher mentioned in an earlier blog post , the small town of Arita in Saga prefecture is known as “Japan`s birthplace of porcelain”. Despite the ceramics industry being in decline for almost three decades since its prime, Arita porcelain has been maintaining its world-wide fame for centuries. In 2016, Arita porcelain celebrated its 400^th anniversary since its foundation in 1616. Three years prior to this milestone, a Creative Industries Agreement was signed between the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo and Saga prefecture. The main purpose of the settlement of this agreement was the launch of the 2016/project, which aimed to rebrand Arita ware by connecting international design and art studios with local potteries and trading companies [1].

The main part of this project consists of the artist-in-residence program (Creative Residency Arita) which was also implemented in 2016. The idea behind this program is to give artists and designers (referred to as artists from here on) from abroad the opportunity to live and work in Arita for a three-month period. The artists all have their own project related to the production of ceramic work and during their stay in Arita, they work on that project together with locals from the ceramics industry. Generally, the artists are required to finish their project before leaving Arita and a presentation is held by the end of the term at which all the artists that participated in each session introduce the results of their project to the public.

Since the project is sponsored by the Dutch government, Dutch artists and artists who are based in the Netherlands have been most frequent to participate in the Creative Residence Arita program. However, through the open call program, artists from other countries have participated in the past as well, contributing to a further internationalization of Arita town as well as to a greater variety of countries that the ceramics industry in Arita cooperates with.

Since the program started, a total of 25 artists from nine different nations have participated in the Creative Residence Arita. There is a great variety in style and purpose of the ceramic pieces of art that the different artists have produced during their stay in Arita. A feature that most pieces have in common though, is that you can tell that the artists were inspired by their experiences in Arita or generally in Japan as well as the different styles of Arita ware itself.

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the Creative Residence Arita program has been interrupted since last year. Since Japan currently does not allow foreign nationals except those with a registered address in Japan to enter the country, no new artists from abroad were able to enter the program even though the number of applicants has remained steady since the launch of the program. However, preparations to resume the program are currently in progress and hopefully the program will be restarted in the near future once it becomes possible again for the new artists to enter the country.

With the beginning of the new fiscal year in April, the administration of the program was shifted from the Saga Prefecture International Division to the Arita Town Hall Commerce and Tourism Division. The fact that all parties involved in the process of organizing and managing the Creative Residence Arita program are now based in Arita makes it possible to keep an even closer connection between the artists, the organizers and the local partners from the ceramics industry. Hopefully, these close connections will lead to an even deeper exchange between the local ceramics industry and artists from all over the world.

[1]
Creative Residency Arita, https://cri-arita.com (last viewed on June 23, 2021)

Vincent Heuser received his bachelor’s degree from Hamburg University with a thesis on “Japan after the triple disaster 2011: The revitalization of the Tōhoku area”. He currently works as coordinator for international relations (CIR) in the JET-Program at the municipal hall of Arita-chō.

by Antonia Vesting

During the winter semester of 2019/20, I studied at Waseda University’s “Transnational and Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Innovation Program” (TAISI Program) in Tōkyō and conducted fieldwork for my upcoming bachelor’s thesis. I conducted interviews with lifestyle migrants living in Miyama town, Kyōto Prefecture and one expert interview with researchers at the DIJ in Tōkyō.

Lifestyle migration can be broadly defined as “the relocation of people within the developed world searching for a better way of life” [1]. In Japan, one further distinguishes between U-turn migration (returning to one’s rural hometown or area) and I-turn migration (moving to a place far away from one’s hometown or the home of one’s parents). In my research, I focused on l-turn migrants.

In 2016, I had spent three months studying Japanese at a Japanese Language School in Kyōto. Through my landlady, who is a Miyama l-turner herself, I was able to visit Miyama several times and was impressed by the innovativeness of individuals and groups who addressed problems such as abandoned woodlands, spreading monocultures and local infrastructural deficiencies. Thus, I became interested in the interconnection of sustainability and innovation of lifestyle migrants in Miyama and later chose this as a topic for my bachelor’s thesis.

My former landlady and friend introduced me to three Miyama I-turners and one I-turner and her friend, a long-term visitor reorienting herself after taking a break from work. After getting in contact with possible interlocutors, during a trip to Miyama in early February, I came back to conduct interviews in March 2020. I was accompanied by my professor for rural development at Waseda.

The results of my research confirmed many findings of the existing literature about lifestyle migration to rural Japan. When it comes to the relocation process, surprisingly, social media did not play a major role for my research participants. For them, connections to locals, as well as other I-turners, companies and other institutions in Miyama were more important. One also received financial support. Adjusting to simpler living standards was not easy for everyone and I wondered whether this is especially the case for older lifestyle migrants.

The interviews also showed that social networking and good relations with locals are the key for a successful life in Miyama. The newcomers actively try to participate in community life by presenting their ideas and visions. They think about their own future and the future of their community and actively and creatively engage in solving problems, often taking sustainability into consideration. However, obstacles remain as newcomers struggle to present their ideas to locals and implement them.

Migrants not only make use of local (traditional) resources and use them in new ways to create a path to the future, but they also use resources from the cities, thus building networks between rural and urban areas. At times they are entrepreneurial and innovative, but in most cases, it is not discernable that their entrepreneurial activities promote social change. Nevertheless, I-turner contribute to sustaining their community.

If I-turners choose to remain in one location in the long-term depends on how long they have already been settled there and how the region and living conditions change in the future. Miyama attracted new residents through its relative proximity to Kyōto – even though it is only accessible by car or bus – and rich natural and cultural amenities suggesting a specific way of life. But depopulation, neglect or climate change affect the satoyama landscape. There is still a lot to be done to preserve Miyama’s attractiveness.

[1]
Benson, Michaela / Karen O’Reilly (2009): „Migration and the search for a better way of life: a critical exploration of lifestyle migration”. In: Sociological Review 57 (4), p. 609.

Antonia Marie Vesting is a MA student in Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She received her bachelor’s degree from Hamburg University with a thesis on “Lifestyle-Migration, Sustainability and Innovation in rural Japan: An Exemplary Case Study of a Community in Kyōto Prefecture.”

by Jyoti Vasnani

Vacant houses, or akiya, are one of the ways that Japan’s shrinking population has become visible in its landscape. This is especially so in rural areas, and this visibly empty space highlights the need for revitalisation in rural Japan. 

Akiya have been increasing across Japan over the years. Although the term “akiya” encompasses vacant buildings such as homes for sale or rent, it is akiya which have been essentially abandoned altogether that are a point of concern for both policymakers and citizens. Often, homes become vacant due to the death of the owner. If there is no one indicated clearly as an inheritor, or if the inheritor lives elsewhere and fails to maintain the building (due to the distance, expense, or lack of interest, for example), the home falls into disrepair and becomes a problem for the community. This is common in rural areas. 

Such unmaintained akiya can be a liability to the municipalities they are in, due to the financial costs and impact on third parties (such as the residents in the neighbourhood) of having a precarious house in the area. Not only are they dangerous and a potential spot for pests, they also may affect the scenery, which can deter people from moving in to the neighbourhood.  

Most municipalities, from small villages in Kyushu to the wards of Tokyo, have schemes to help mitigate the rise of akiya. This includes financial support for renovating and selling the structures, as well as the maintenance of so-called “akiya banks,” or databases of vacant houses. Some communities, however, have also begun to think of community-related solutions to the akiya ‘problem’. For example, in Yoshino, Nara, the akiya bank works with the “Live in Yoshino” project (sunde yoshino jigyō), which promotes migration to Yoshino*. It also works in conjunction with a resident group that runs a guesthouse that provides “trial living” to people interested in moving to Yoshino.  

In this manner, rural municipalities convert a problem: the increasing number of vacant houses, into a solution for another problem: attracting newcomers as a countermeasure to depopulation.  

Take, for example, Amakusa City, a remote municipality on the western edge of Kumamoto, which was formed by the amalgamation of the city of Hondo and a number of small fishing villages in 2006. It currently has a population of 78,820 [1], and is best known for Sakitsu, a picturesque hamlet designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2018 along with other sites of Japan’s Hidden Christians in Nagasaki, and which attracts tourists.  

Amakusa City hosts a website devoted to attracting new residents [2]. In fact, it is one of the more robust local government-led websites that can be found on local efforts to use akiya to attract new community members. The website’s akiya bank lists available properties (not limited to residences), and it features successful stories of people who have moved to Amakusa, some of whom have started businesses using vacant shops. Such efforts help relieve the worries of potential residents who may not know what to expect from the rural lifestyle. All of these are part of the efforts that Amakusa is taking to encourage people to permanently migrate to their city.   

When I visited Amakusa in 2018, I visited a shop (Figure 3) which was remodelled from a vacant house. It seemed to have been run by a local—nevertheless, it had media coverage and was widely visited, showing that it is possible for a successful business to run out of a vacant property [3]. When I spoke with the owner, he mentioned that he scouted the property and renovated it himself. The owner of Amakusanta, another store located in a remodelled akiya in Sakitsu, learned about the property via a friend who was maintaining it. This could point towards an alternative method of making use of akiya—finding out about it through local, informal means in addition to the information available online officially via the akiya bank—that is not visible to a researcher without fieldwork and getting to know the locals. 

*For more information on Yoshino: http://www.town.yoshino.nara.jp/chosei/keikaku/akiyaproject/

[1]
Amakusa City (2020). Amakusa-shi Tōkeisho (Reiwa 2 nendo) [Statistical Documentation for Amakusa City (for 2020)]. Retrieved from https://www.city.amakusa.kumamoto.jp/kiji0036844/index.html

[2]
Amakusa Web no Eki (n.d.). Amakusa Raifu [Amakusa Life] (Accessed 9 June 2021). Retrieved from https://inaka.amakusa-web.jp/

[3]
Shimoda Kōhī-ten (n.d.). In Facebook [Business page] (Accessed 9 June 2021). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/shimodacoffee/

Jyoti Vasnani was a BA student, who graduated from the National University of Singapore in January this year. She has a strong interest in akiya and what communities are doing to make the best out of these spaces, and wrote her thesis on the topic of akiya and place-making.

by Sachiko Ishihara

Hej from Sweden! This is Sachiko Ishihara here, a PhD student at Uppsala University, researching about moving to the countryside in Japan, focusing on two remote islands, Yakushima (Kagoshima prefecture) and Goto (Nagasaki prefecture).

I have just gotten back from another visit to Värmland. One of the rare personal benefits for me from the pandemic has been to be able to spend more time in the countryside. Not in Japan, as I had planned for my fieldwork, but in Sweden, at my partner’s family country house in Värmland, in the western side of Sweden. Throughout this pandemic year, we have gone to do work online from the countryside, parallel to the discussions of teleworking in Japan [1].

In my research, I have been interviewing people who moved to Yakushima and Goto. Now that I can’t be in Japan to have a personal experience of Yakushima and Goto at the moment, I think about my own experience of being in Värmland in a new light. Perhaps I can get new insights and have more to relate to them from my experiences here? Although the contexts are different, I am from the city going to the countryside by choice, too. I am not moving there permanently, but more going back and forth, like the idea of kankei jinkō that Maritchu Durand introduced in an earlier blog post.

A barrier: dialects. Even though my conversational Swedish is quite good when talking to people from Uppsala and Stockholm, I notice that I can barely have a short conversation with the neighbors, struggling to understand their Värmland dialect. I remember that my interviewees, coming from outside the regions of Yakushima and Goto, told me that they also occasionally had trouble understanding local dialects once they moved there. For me, this hinders me from trying to communicate with the neighbors. I wonder how my interviewees in Japan deal with this.

In the winter when we were there in Värmland, we used the woodfire stove to cook. For me, it was the first time and it was something I wanted to try since I had stayed with a family in Yakushima during my fieldwork who only used woodfire stoves to cook. In the house in Värmland, they had preserved the old stove, but for daily cooking we used the electric cooking stove.

It was fun to cook with firewood, although needless to say, it is quite a lot of work to do every day. While we were there, news came from Texas about their blackouts [2]. No power in the freezing winter meant that some people froze to death. Since I grew up my initial nine years in Texas and my brother and his partner still live there, this news hit close to home. And although the Texas issue involves complexity I cannot unpack here, for me the woodfire stove symbolized securing resilience, to be able to keep warmth and to cook, even if the larger system fails somehow.

In May, we also started planting some vegetables in the garden. As many of my interviewees in Japan also engage with farming, I think of more questions to ask next time that relate to concrete farming practices, the many decisions you make from tilling, buying seeds, composting and fertilizing, and beyond.

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These are only fleeting reflections about my life in rural Sweden during the pandemic, but maybe they will bring me closer to my interviewees and to Yakushima and Goto somehow. Even if I am on the other side of the world.

[1]
Japan Times (2021, May 3): “Japan to promote relocations outside Tokyo without changing jobs”, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/05/03/business/relocations-outside-tokyo/ (accessed June 1, 2021).

[2]
The guardian (2021, February 18): “Anger mounts over Texas power blackouts as icy cold maintains its grip”, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/17/texas-power-blackout-weather-cold (accessed June 1, 2021).