Table Of ContentJAPAN’S NEW RURALITIES
Seeking to challenge negative perceptions within Japanese media and politics on the
future of the countryside, the contributors to this book present a counterargument
to the inevitable demise of rural society.
Contrary to the dominant argument, which holds outmigration and
demographic hyper-aging as primarily responsible for rural decline, this book
highlights the spatial dimension of power differences behind uneven development
in contemporary Japan. Including many fieldwork-based case studies, the chapters
discuss topics such as corporate farming, local energy systems and public health-
care, examining the constraints and possibilities of rural self-determination under
the centripetal impact of forces located both in and outside of the country. Focusing
on asymmetries of power to explore regional autonomy and heteronomy, it also
examines “peripheralization” and the “global countryside,” two recent theoretical
contributions to the field, as a common framework.
Japan’s New Ruralities addresses the complexity of rural decline in the context
of debates on globalization and power differences. As such, it will be of interest to
students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, human geography and politics, as
well as Japanese Studies.
Wolfram Manzenreiter is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of
Vienna, Austria. His research interest in the social outcomes of globalization is
documented in Sport and Body Politics in Japan (Routledge, 2014) and the co-edited
volume on Happiness and the Good Life in Japan (Routledge, 2017).
Ralph Lützeler is Assistant Professor at the Department of East Asian Studies,
University of Vienna, Austria. His relevant publications include the co-edited
volume Imploding Populations in Japan and Germany: A Comparison (2011) and other
papers on demographic change and its regional implications in rural and urban
areas of Japan.
Sebastian Polak-Rottmann is a PhD student, researcher and lecturer at the
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna, Austria. His research focuses
on private security companies, political participation and well-being in Japan.
Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies
Series Editors:
Roger Goodman
Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, University of Oxford, Fellow,
St Antony’s College
J.A.A. Stockwin
Formerly Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies and former Director
of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford, Emeritus
Fellow, St Antony’s College
Japan’s World Power
Assessment, Outlook and Vision
Edited by Guibourg Delamotte
Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan
Tokyo After Ten
Swee-Lin Ho
The Dilemma of Faith in Modern Japanese Literature
Metaphors of Christianity
Massimiliano Tomasi
Understanding Japanese Society
Fifth edition
Joy Hendry
Japan and the New Silk Road
Diplomacy, Development and Connectivity
Nikolay Murashkin
The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan
The Realities of ‘Power’
Nakakita Kōji
Japan’s New Ruralities
Coping with Decline in the Periphery
Edited by Wolfram Manzenreiter, Ralph Lützeler and Sebastian Polak-Rottmann
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Nissan-
Institute-Routledge-Japanese-Studies/book-series/SE0022
JAPAN’S NEW
RURALITIES
Coping with Decline in
the Periphery
Edited by Wolfram Manzenreiter, Ralph Lützeler
and Sebastian Polak-Rottmann
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Wolfram Manzenreiter, Ralph
Lützeler and Sebastian Polak-Rottmann; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Wolfram Manzenreiter, Ralph Lützeler and Sebastian Polak-
Rottmann to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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from the publishers.
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without intent to infringe.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-34105-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-35418-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-33126-8 (ebk)
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CONTENTS
List of Figures viii
List of Tables x
List of Contributors xi
Series editors’ preface xvi
Preface and acknowledgments xviii
1 Introduction: Japan’s new ruralities 1
Ralph Lützeler, Wolfram Manzenreiter and
Sebastian Polak-Rottmann
PART I
Transformations in the primary sector 25
2 From agribusiness to deer hunter: “placing” food
industrialization and multispecies health in Tokachi, Hokkaido 27
Paul Hansen
3 Corporatization as hybridization in rural Japan: the case of
Iwasaka in Shiga Prefecture 48
Kiyohiko Sakamoto and Haruhiko Iba
4 Sea pineapples in troubled waters: on the local-global
interdependencies of the sea squirt (hoya) industry in the
aftermath of the 3.11 disaster 65
Johannes Wilhelm
vi Contents
5 Reclaiming the global countryside? Decline and
diversification in Saga Genkai coastal fisheries 82
Sonja Ganseforth
PART II
Political innovations in rural Japan 101
6 Local renewables: Japan’s energy transformation and its
potential for the remaking of rural communities 103
Thomas Feldhoff and Daniel Kremers
7 Empowering rural cooperation: effects of agricultural
policy intervention on rural social capital 124
Shinya Ueno, Toshiki Ōsuga and Wolfram Manzenreiter
8 Sustaining healthcare in Japan’s regions: the introduction of
telehealth networks 140
Susanne Brucksch
9 Regional revitalization as a contested arena: promoting
wine tourism in Yamanashi 159
Hanno Jentzsch
PART III
New residents in the countryside 175
10 Has the island lure reached Japan? Remote islands between
tourism boom, new residents, and fatal depopulation 177
Carolin Funck
11 Fluidity in rural Japan: how lifestyle migration and social
movements contribute to the preservation of traditional
ways of life on Iwaishima 196
Shunsuke Takeda
12 Nai mono wa nai—challenging and subverting rural
peripheralization? Decline and revival in a remote island town 212
Ludgera Lewerich
13 Embracing the periphery: urbanites’ motivations for
relocating to rural Japan 230
Cornelia Reiher
Contents vii
PART IV
Conceptual interventions for a new understanding
of rural Japan 245
14 Reinventing rurality: hybridity and socio-spatial
depolarization in northern Japan 247
John W. Traphagan
15 Rereading the changing Japanese rural peripheries: new
approaches and actors for the future 262
Tolga Özşen
16 Environmental activity gaps and how to fill them: rural
depopulation and wildlife encroachment in Japan 276
John Knight
17 Epilogue: Think global, act peripheral in Japan’s new ruralities 295
Sebastian Polak-Rottmann, Ralph Lützeler and
Wolfram Manzenreiter
Index 302
FIGURES
1.1 Case study areas of this volume 13
2.1 Taishō migration promotion posters highlighting Tokachi as a
place of individuated opportunity and alternative agriculture 31
2.2 Large-scale forestry in the “Gensan” area circa 1955 32
2.3 A bird’s eye view of a rotary parlor 35
2.4 A pamphlet “suggesting” how to be a good Hokkaido hunter that
is clearly geared toward trying to attract younger and female
practitioners 39
2.5 Hunters processing after a morning out hunting 41
3.1 Paddy field in Iwasaka 55
3.2 Office and greenhouses of Shimada Farm 57
4.1 Production value and share of cultivation fisheries (1960–2016) 69
4.2 Primary fisheries by type (2013) 70
4.3 Age structure in Sanriku’s fisheries companies and their average
size by age groups and gender (2013) 71
4.4 Sea squirt production in South Korea (weight and value) 74
4.5 Persons with a hoyapai at a local festival 75
4.6 Comic foreground for visitor’s photographs (kao-paneru) of
Hoyabōya in the port area of Kesennuma 76
5.1 Fishing village at the Genkai Sea 85
5.2 Local morning market at the Genkai Sea 88
6.1 Cumulative operational renewable energy capacity certified
under FiT 109
6.2 Renewable energy self-sufficiency at the prefectural level
(electricity for private household, business and agricultural use,
excluding large-scale hydro) 110
6.3 Japan’s energy and electricity self-sufficient municipalities 2012–2017 111
Figures ix
6.4 Structure of Japan’s total primary energy supply in F.Y. 2010 and 2016 112
7.1 Social capital and community size, 2006 and 2016 130
7.2 Trends in the changes of social capital mean values by size of
community 131
7.3 Correlations between all social capital values in 2006 and 2016 135
8.1 Basic scheme of the ism-Link network of Iida City and the
Shimoina District 150
8.2 Demographic forecast for Fukui Prefecture (changes between
2015 and 2030) 151
8.3 Basic scheme of Fukui Medical Net 153
10.1 Number of islands visited in Japan or abroad for purposes other
than work 182
10.2 What is your image of islands? 184
10.3 Have you ever thought about moving to an island? (percent of
respondents) 184
10.4 Population and visitor numbers in Yakushima 186
10.5 Population and visitor numbers in Naoshima 188
12.1 Hishiura port with the Kinnyamonya Center in the background 219
14.1 Gelato shop located across from hay fields that are farmed to feed
local cows 253
15.1 Tokuno’s Settlement Analysis Method (TSAM), steps 1–4 266
15.2 List of the social and economic issues of households, step 5 266
15.3 Average distance of out-migrated descendants from their
hometowns by region 269
