The Rural Revival Movement in Japan: A Comparison of
Two Communities
Donald C. Wood
Akita University School of Medicine, Department of Social Medicine
(Originally
published in the Bulletin of the National Association of Student
Anthropologists, 11(1-2):8-16, Spring 1999, Copyright 1999 American
Anthropological Association)
One of the most noticeable trends
in rural Japan today is the village revival movement (mura-okoshi undo). This is
encountered in towns (machi-okoshi
undo) as well as in villages across Japan as they attempt to
combat the effects of urbanization and the subsequent drop in
population in rural communities. The revival movement in rural
Japan primarily aims to foster a stronger sense of community identity
among town and village residents by motivating them to become more
active in social events. It also aims to encourage interaction
between residents of all generations and sometimes outsiders as well.
Immediate economic benefits are of secondary importance in the
movement. In this paper I compare the revival strategies of two
neighboring rural communities in Akita Prefecture, where I conducted
fieldwork between 1995 and 1997 while employed as an English instructor
through the Japan Exchange Teaching (JET) Program. I will
show here that different municipalities will pursue different
strategies for similar purposes within the rural revitalization
movement, and that these strategies vary according to certain factors,
among which local history is paramount.
The
Rural Revival Movement
One of the problems that rural
communities in Japan are facing is the “shortage of heirs problem” (atotsugi mondai), as young rural
people migrate to urban areas to seek better living and working
conditions (Moore 1990:273). Due to industrialization and increasing
access to higher education among rural residents, remaining in the
hometown or village entails high opportunity costs for most young
people; their labor is more valuable in the cities. Farmers’
young male heirs who stay behind face a number of difficulties,
including finding a bride (Tamanoi 1998:200). Another common rural
problem, especially in the north, is the trend of young able-bodied
farmers going away from home for seasonal, often dangerous, work (dekasegi). This occurs because of a
lack of good regular employment for Japanese farmers and their heirs,
nearly all of whom farm part-time, and it also leads to worries about
securing heirs and the continuation of the family lineages (Bailey
1991:147). These problems are exacerbated by Japan’s falling birth
rate, which is now below the level needed to maintain the current
population of just over 125 million. Rural communities are
hardest hit by this, and other, demographic trends.
Due to the problems described
above, rural municipalities in Japan are now engaged in a great variety
of revival programs which are designed to prevent towns and villages
from dying out by energizing the populace, encouraging them to stay or
return later, and attracting outsiders. The planners of these
revival programs– in some cases residents and in other cases local
officials– sometimes try to stimulate tourism and immediate economic
gains, but making residents active in their communities and using them
as resources for building community pride and identity is the main
element of the movement. If this is achieved, it is assumed that
other needs– new settlers, infra structural improvements, and economic
development– will follow. The rural revival movement often takes
the form of large-scale community events and pageants involving media
coverage and tourists, but encouraging local elders to teach young
students traditional handicrafts, promoting the export of local
products, and other efforts are also parts of the movement.
Sometimes there is an element of competition between small communities
as they vie for media attention and tourists as well, for tourism often
develops alongside the revival movement. Knight (1994b:249)
outlines three stages in this development: the first occurs when
urbanization draws people from rural areas and threatens the futures of
many towns and villages; the second is the intervention of the state in
such demographic trends; and the third is the recognition that rural
areas need to be made attractive to tourists and potential new
residents. The rural revival movement is dominated by a rhetoric
of “rural self-reliance,” in which “valiant villages” struggle to
combat dangerous demographic trends by relying on their inner strengths
(Knight 1994a:634). However, Knight shows that the state plays a
major role in the movement in terms of financial support.
There are many examples of
eye-catching town and village revival projects across Japan.
Cases of local initiatives abound in the Japanese newspapers and in
popular journals. A bookstore in one remote area has offered
plots of local forest-land to urban people in exchange for used books
as a promotion (Efron 1997). Another town experiencing depopulation is
trying to lure outsiders by granting ownership of local housing sites
to settlers provided that they reside on the sites for at least 20
years (Yomiuri Shinbun 1996). A small town in Kumamoto Prefecture has
decided simply to offer 500,000 yen in cash to community residents upon
the birth of their fourth child (Daily Yomiuri 1996). Even
Japan’s ancient history becomes a part of the revival movement.
Prehistoric sites of Japan’s Jomon period (10,000 B.C. to 300 B.C.)
have been sparking the imaginations of the public for the last several
decades (Kataoka 1997). When these remains are discovered in
towns and villages, they quickly become incorporated into local revival
projects in the form of Jomon cultural festivals and musicals designed
to boost community spirit and cohesion. More than 1,400 residents
participated in such an event in a town near where I conducted my
fieldwork (Akita Sakigake 1996a).
The establishment of rural
gardens intended for the use of both local and urban people has also
been a part of the town and village revival movement (Aoki
1996:797). Concerning state initiatives, the Japanese government
has offered 100 million yen to each municipality in the country for
revival projects and community-level identity building (Knight
1994b). The government has also allocated funds for the Artist in
Residence Program, under which rural communities can receive money to
use for building facilities in which temporary resident artists are
expected to interact with community members and to display their
creations (Akita Sakigake 1996b). The Japan Exchange Teaching
(JET) Program, begun under the Nakasone administration in the 1980’s,
was also a part of the government’s nation-wide revival plans
(McConnell 1996).
Ogata
Village and Hachirogata Town
The two communities I compare
here, Ogata Village and Hachirogata Town, are about 35 kilometers north
of the capital city of Akita Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, at
40 degrees north latitude. Ogata Village is located inside what
was once the nation’s second largest inland body of water, Lake
Hachirogata. For centuries it was the source of many varieties of fish
and also seasonal flood damage for area residents because the lake was
connected to the sea by a natural channel. The government used
Dutch impoldering techniques, which involved constructing a dike around
a center area inside the lake and then filling in that area with rock
and soil while pumping out the water, in order to transform Hachirogata
into farmland in the 1960's. This created over 17,000 hectares of new
land which was to be used for growing rice in a large-scale, fully
mechanized manner on farms far larger than the national average (Gordon
1965). Ogata Village was founded in 1964, the year of the Tokyo
Olympics, and about 700 households were admitted in five settlement
waves from 1967 to 1974. Ogata’s population has remained steady
at about 3,300 people over the last two decades. The Ogata
farmers are unusual in that they practice agriculture on a full-time
basis and are among the wealthiest in the nation. This village
also has the highest per-capita income in Akita Prefecture.
Hachirogata Town is located on
the eastern border of the ribbon-like remains of the lake. It has
a long history, having been an important market town during medieval
times, but is experiencing marked population loss as its 8,000
residents dwindle year by year. The town is primarily
service-oriented, and is physically defined largely by its long main
street lined with small businesses. Some town residents hold small rice
fields and a few of them still fish. It is significant that a
large part of the town’s livelihood– the fishing industry– was all but
destroyed by the creation of Ogata Village.
Revival
Efforts at Ogata Village
Until the late 1980's the village
of Ogata made few concerted efforts at village revival. Community
festivals and events such as the village sports day and the summertime
o-bon dance, which can be found in any Japanese community, were seen as
sufficient by both the residents and the village administration alike.
However, due to disagreements between a number of village farmers, the
village officials, and the national government, the village became a
national embarrassment in the 1980's. The village was conceived
as a model farming community built on a foundation of rational,
industrial agriculture and communal rice marketing, but unforseen rice
surpluses and other problems led to black market activities on the part
of some farmers and legal actions on the part of the government (Moore
1991, 1993). The village office was firmly on the side of the
national government throughout the disputes. Bad publicity was
received by the village over the affair, and its image was thereafter
perceived by the administration as having been seriously
tarnished. The late 1980's were an important period for the young
village because it was during this time that a serious office-directed
effort at rural revival began to appear. It is important to note
that Ogata Village’s revival efforts, unlike those of Hachirogata Town,
differ from the norm in at least three ways: (1) they are planned and
implemented by the village officials with little or no community input,
(2) the events are of a scale larger than those of most other
communities, and (3) the village’s projects tend to exclude most of the
community residents and alienate many of them. Village employees,
many of whom live in the surrounding towns, are required to “volunteer”
their time to work the events.
By 1996 the village had three
main revival projects underway. The youngest of these is the nanohana (canola flower) festival,
which was held for the first time in 1995. The event takes place
every year in May in the 3.7 hectare
nanohana field at the north end of the village. This field
explodes with brilliant yellow every spring when the flowers
bloom. The 1996 event centered around the opening of the
village’s new hotel, which was built largely with prefectural funds on
a site adjacent to the nanohana
field. Professional models posed for photos among the flowers,
and prizes were offered to participants for the best portraits
resulting from these sessions. Helicopter rides, concerts, games,
and food were also parts of the entertainment. The 1997 and 1998
events featured rides on a mini train that ran along a permanent track
through the field. Because the event takes place at the peak of
planting time for the village farmers, Ogata Village residents,
including children, are rarely seen at the event. Rather,
tourists from inside and even outside the prefecture dominate the
event, and many village residents look upon the festival as a waste of
their tax money.
Another revival plan that the
village has is the bunkajin
neighborhood project, which seeks to locate and select people
throughout the country with special skills (bunkajin, or “cultural
people”) to build houses and live at least part of the year in the
village, sharing their talents and knowledge with the residents.
They are offered annual cash payments and the titles to their housing
sites after residing in the village for a certain number of years
(Ogata Village 1997). The neighborhood is spacious and nicely
landscaped compared to the farmers’ neighborhoods. As of 1997 there
were three of these cultural people listed as having already signed
contracts with the village. Two houses had been built and one of these
was occupied by a professional hang glider. All village farmers I
spoke with about the project were skeptical at best and most were
opposed to the idea, citing both the expense and the division between
“cultured” bunkajin and “culturally deficient” farmers that the village
administration has created by using the bunkajin label.
The primary revival projects that
the village has today are its solar car and bicycle races, which have
been held every year in July or August since 1993. The car event
was conceived by a hair dresser who owns the most upscale salon in
Akita City. He learned about the solar races in Australia and the
United States by watching television, and decided that he wanted to
start such an event in Akita. Since Ogata Village has both space
and special government connections, he took his idea to the mayor who
quickly made it a reality. The first year, the event was held on
village roads, but by the second year a special track had been built
outside of the village among the fields, and the race has been held on
the track every year since then. This track is the only one of its kind
in the world: built and certified for use as a solar vehicle race
course. The bicycle race was added in 1994 in an attempt to lure
more teams, since solar bicycles are much easier and less expensive to
build and transport than solar cars. Each of the events features
more than one hundred teams from other parts of Japan and the world,
and they attract much private and government funding, as well as
attention from the media and tourists.
Residents are divided over the
solar races, which have become central to the mayor’s new
image-building scheme for the village in the 1990's. Many residents
view the races as bottomless money pits, and feel that they bring no
appreciable benefits to the community. One argument against the
events is that the track is located far from the settlement, so most
contestants do not need to spend much time at all inside the village
itself. Some older farmers like the races and a few families serve as
hosts for foreign team members, but the solar events seem to hold the
greatest appeal for the younger generations of the village. Many
school-age children enjoy attending the races, and some of the young
farmers who are just now taking over their fathers’ farms are forming
racing teams. However, even the middle school students (ages
12-15) are divided in their opinions. Standardized surveys I
distributed among them in 1997 indicated that some view the events as
political, reflecting the views of some of their parents. About
one half of them responded favorably toward the events while the other
half were apprehensive or negative.
The effects of the nanohana nestival, the bunkajin, and the solar events on
the village residents are difficult to measure. So far, the first
two projects appear to be generating little interest among them.
Most school kids were ignorant of the cultural people project, and most
adults seem to be skeptical at best. There is a possibility that
this project will have appreciable benefits if any of the imported
cultural people do manage to capture the residents’ attention and
influence them. The effects of the solar sports are also hard to
quantify. On an individual level there are some benefits, especially
among those young people who are participating. Furthermore,
cheering for local teams may bring a sense of community identity to the
villagers who are interested.
Revival
Efforts at Hachirogata Town
Hachirogata’s revival strategies
are fundamentally different from those of Ogata Village, and are more
similar to revival projects found in other typical rural communities
across Japan. This is because Hachirogata Town has several things
that Ogata Village does not have. First, the town has a history
measured in centuries, rather than Ogata’s which is measured in
decades. This is the main point influencing the town’s choice of
revival strategies and differentiating them from those of Ogata Village
and will be elaborated on below. Second, there is the train line.
Hachirogata Station, about twenty minutes away by car, is the closest
train station to the village. Access to the train makes it easier
for town residents to travel to Akita City for shopping or social
engagements, and those who work in the city can more conveniently
commute to their jobs while continuing to live in their home
town. Third, the town is very close to its larger neighbor,
Gojome Town, a recently amalgamated community comprised of many hamlets
stretching far eastwards into the foothills of the Taihei mountain
chain. Gojome offers locally famous markets and job opportunities
for some Hachirogata residents.
Hachirogata Town has had a close
relationship with the lake bearing the same name for centuries. Many
town residents once depended on the lake for its fish, combining rice
production with fishing, but today only very few do this. Most
town farmers received plots of reclaimed land along the shore from the
government as compensation for the loss of the fishing grounds, and so
were transformed into weekend and holiday farmers with full-time wage
labor jobs. This brought them into the mainstream of Japanese
farmers, almost all of whom practice agriculture on a part-time basis
and depend on regular wages to survive (Jussaume 1991).
This historical relationship with
the lake is expressed in two of the three large revival projects the
town has today. One of these is a fishing contest that has been
held every September since 1991. Contestants compete in different
categories, trying to catch varieties of carp from the waters of the
lake. More than 500 people from inside and outside Akita
Prefecture took part in the contest in 1996. Many town residents
appear supportive of the event because it brings large numbers of
potential customers to their businesses, and because it attracts the
attention of the media. The other event, which emphasizes the
lake, is the annual water festival, which takes place in August and
sometimes overlaps with Ogata’s solar races. This is a smaller-scale
event than the fishing contest, and attracts mostly area
residents. The festival explores the town’s historical
relationship with the lake by featuring boat rides which take visitors
out into the largest remaining area of the lake to show them modern
boats rigged with large square-shapes sails and nets being used to
catch fish in the way it was done before the reclamation. Long lines
attached to the corners of the sail are secured on the other end to a
net which is totally submerged. The sail catches the wind and the
boat is carried across the water. In the process, the net scoops up
fish to be pulled into the boat once the sail is rolled up. Other
attractions at the event include a small museum which holds a wooden
fishing boat (utase-bune) like those that were once used on the lake,
demonstrations of the use of foot-powered water wheels for irrigation,
and the opportunity to eat fresh fish from the lake as well as local
rice.
The town’s largest revival
project today is an event that is attached to its traditional
summertime dance (bon-odori). The bon-odori is held every August
during the time of year when the gate of the underworld is said to open
and Japanese make special trips to their family graves to clean them,
make an offering to the temple which tends the graves, and pray for
their ancestors. All communities–towns, villages, and
neighborhoods– hold these traditional bon dances at this time. These
dances involve community members dancing slowly and methodically in a
large revolving circle, usually in groups based on school, class, club,
or block affiliation, and often in traditional clothing or in costumes
signifying their group identity within the community. Hachirogata’s bon
dance is famous throughout Akita Prefecture as one of its three
greatest, and consequently it attracts numerous tourists each
year. The residents have recently incorporated this traditional
summer festival into the town’s revival movement by adding a community
street musical. In 1996 the performers wrapped up their first musical
series with the fourth, and final, installment of the story of the
town’s founding and development. They then began a new series the
following year. Other than some experts brought in to handle
lighting and sound, the musicals are planned, directed, and performed
entirely by members of the Hachirogata community. The inclusion
of these musicals has boosted interest in the bon dance, and received
much added news coverage for the event as a whole. The town also
advertizes the events heavily in the local newspapers. Since the
events take place on the town’s main street for several nights in a
row, the large crowds offer significant benefits for the local economy.
Comparing
Ogata Village and Hachirogata Town
I have shown above that the rural
revival movement manifests itself differently in these two communities.
Ogata’s effort in this is a direct response to the village’s political
problems that began with government interventions in rice production in
the mid-1970's, and erupted in open defiance to these policies ten
years later. Most Ogata farmers, whether supportive of these
events or not, will concede that the village’s image as a model
agricultural community was soiled by the episode. Japanese people
in their twenties today generally only know of the Hachirogata land
reclamation project from a grade-school textbook, but most in their
thirties who paid attention to national news and politics remember the
quarrels between the opposition farmers of Ogata and the
government. The mayor of Ogata Village for the last eighteen
years told me clearly that the village engages in revival efforts
primarily to erase the “dirty” image of the past and to build a new
image for the village as it heads into the next century. The deputy
mayor explained that this new image is based on a “solar village”
concept, wherein the solar sports and agriculture are considered
closely related because both rely on the sun’s energy. The
village hotel, “Sun Rural Ogata,” even has solar panels on the roof
which provide energy for a decorative lighting system in the building
as a part of this new village image.
Ogata’s revival projects are
top-down initiatives which are planned, implemented, staffed, and
funded by the village office. Individual initiatives do exist,
but these receive little or no encouragement from the
administration. The mayor’s political opponent, a local farmer
with a large rice-marketing business, has begun a rural revival project
of his own. He has founded a sausage factory at which visitors
can make their own sausages and eat them while drinking beer. Area
children have made school trips to the village to experience making
their own sausages. Another group historically opposed to the
government and the village administration makes and markets its own
environmentally-friendly soap. One farmer who was probably the
most active in opposing the government has built a lodge above his
garage where he hosts urban people who buy his rice. They can
stay in this lodge and help him and his wife with the farm work, and
therefore actually participate in growing the rice they eat. If
one receives village information only from the office, they will not
know of any of these projects.
Hachirogata’s events are more
typical in both their traditional foundations and in their planning and
implementation. As Knight (1994a) has shown, rural revival
initiatives usually originate with community residents who are often
young returning migrants. These are people who have left their
home towns and villages for the cities, and then returned after gaining
a new appreciation for rural life. The amount of return-migrant
involvement in Hachirogata’s projects is unknown, but the town’s
efforts are markedly different from those of the village. There
is a special revival event planning committee consisting of town
residents that meets to discuss the town’s events. One town official,
the head of the planning division, sits on this committee to serve as
the primary administrative link between these residents and the
administration. This committee plans all of the town’s revival
projects and presents its proposals to the office, which handles the
budget and works to secure any government funds which may be
available. The committee’s name appears in large print on the
town’s event advertisements, attesting to its major role in them.
Hachirogata Town engages in
revival projects in direct response to immediate pressures stemming
from population loss and also from other local communities, who are
also pursuing revival endeavors. An assistant to the planning
office director explained that the town engages in these projects in
order to “not lose out to some other town.” He further
explained that the town was seen as having few natural resources, such
as great amounts of land or a natural hot spring, that could be
exploited in revival efforts, so the from the beginning the committee
hit upon the idea of using the town’s history and the residents
themselves to stimulate the town through grass-roots initiatives.
Hachirogata’s revival strategy is similar to those described by Knight
(1994a), in which such projects are initiated at the community level
and supported by the local government, which also secures some national
government funds as well.
Conclusions
The two communities of Ogata
Village and Hachirogata Town pursue different revival strategies.
This is primarily due to two reasons: (1) compared to Hachirogata and
other typical rural communities, Ogata Village has a brief history and
no real traditions to call its own, and (2) the village was built as a
model community by the government but became a national embarrassment
due to certain political problems which arose later.
The town and the village each
exploit its resources differently in their revival efforts. The
history of each community affects how these resources are used.
Both have the lake, but only the town makes use of it in its revival
projects. The village was the cause of the lake’s demise, so
celebrating the history of the lake does not work in the village. The
immediate pressures felt by each community also affect the form that
revival projects take. Hachirogata’s population loss makes grass-roots
attempts at raising community spirit more sensible than events aimed at
gathering outsiders which alienate residents. Ogata Village’s
administration, on the other hand, is concerned with the outward
expression of the village, and so goes for the biggest events that it
can produce– the opinions of the residents not withstanding.
Perhaps if the residents of Ogata Village warm up more to the
administration’s revival efforts, and if the administration becomes
more sensitive to the resident’s wishes, the village will soon find
greater community spirit and cohesion through its brand of mura-okoshi
as is currently taking place in the town of Hachirogata.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Dr. Norbert
Dannhaeuser of Texas A&M University for his suggestions concerning
the original draft of this paper. I am also grateful to Robert
Stokes and Dr. Circe Sturm of the University of Oklahoma for their time
and many suggestions as
well.
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