Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan

Introduction to the blog “Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan”
by Cornelia Reiher
This blog was created as part of the research project "Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan." From October 2020 to October 2024, the project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In the project, Cornelia Reiher (PI) and her team from the Institute of Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin investigated the impact of urban-rural migration on rural revitalization in Kyūshū, Japan’s most southern main island. By empirically studying interlinkages between urban-rural migration and rural revitalization as well as between local practices, urban-rural migration and larger societal, political and economic structures we contributed to debates on the future of rural areas in Japan. In the project, we analyzed how mobilities change social structures and orders, power inequalities between centers and their peripheries and central-local relations in Japan. Project data was produced qualitatively via hybrid ethnographic fieldwork (both online and offline), formal and informal interviews and content analysis of documents and visual materials produced by different stakeholders.
Urban-rural migration is not unique to Japan, but what is particular about Japan, are the programs and subsidies initiated by different stakeholders to attract people to move (back) to rural Japan and in turn to revitalize local economies and agriculture. In this project, we compared 1) how municipalities of similar size in different prefectures in Kyūshū appropriate central government’s programs and 2) how these programs impact on in-migration, in-migrants’ experiences and local rural revitalization practices in the respective municipalities. In order to understand the different trajectories of urban-rural migration, we also compared 3) different types of urban-rural migration according to their initiation by central and local government actors, private, civil society or business actors. In a nutshell, this project sheds light on how mobilities contribute to reconfigurations of rural spaces in Japan.

In this blog, our group shared insights into the research process and progress, information about our field sites and on related projects and publications and presented first research results. In addition to the contributions by team members, the blog also features guest contributions by students, PhD students, colleagues and practitioners from Freie Universität Berlin, Japan and universities around the world who work on related projects focusing on rural Japan. Because the project began under the conditions of the global Covid-19 pandemic, throughout the project, our team experienced hope and disappointments with regard to our fieldwork plans. We slowly began to accept that we would probably have to approach fieldwork as hybrid research and learned to appreciate the opportunities offered by the digital world. In this time of high uncertainty, we started the blog to share first insights from our online fieldwork and to connect with other researchers and practitioners in Europe and Asia. We invited colleagues to write about their own research on rural Japan, urban-rural migration and methodological challenges during the pandemic. As we were unable to travel to Japan ourselves, we also asked some of our research participants to write about the situation in rural Japan, their lives and their rural revitalization activities. In this sense, this blog is not only a collection of short posts about rural Japan, but also a testimony of how Japan research was conducted during the pandemic and how colleagues and research participants experienced the pandemic in rural Japan. Since 2022, I have also used the blog as a resource for teaching undergraduate students about Japan's rural areas.
I still update the blog regularly. To save the blog posts permanently, I decided to upload them to the Cross Asia Repository. The posts are presented in chronological order, starting in March 2021. As of June 2024, more than 150 posts were published on topics such as abandoned houses (akiya), migration, sustainability or workation. As diverse as the authors' backgrounds are, so is their writing style. Most of the posts are written in English, but there are also some bilingual posts in Japanese that have been translated into English. I hope you enjoy the variety of topics and the insights into rural Japan during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.