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Chapter 7 Regionalism and the Local, in The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies
Abstract
One of the seven chapters in the Land, History and Culture section, outlining the trends and tensions in notions of region and locale in Japanese history and social science.
... Though Japan has the 10 th largest population in the world, the country's population has been decreasing and has become concentrated in major metropolitan areas. For instance, 51% of the total population of Japan lives in only three major metropolitan areas, Chiiki Saisei (revitalization of a region) has long been the center of concern in Japan (Rausch, 2015), but most of these places struggle to attract more residents as well as tourists. Residents play a variety of roles in attracting tourists as an authentic source of information, especially as social media provides increasing connectivity between residents and tourists (Arsal et al., 2010;Braun et al., 2013;Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). ...
Residents are pivotal in the competitiveness of tourism destinations. Yet, their role as place-brand ambassadors needs better understanding, particularly in relation to social media, which directly link visitors to residents through user-generated-content (UGC). This paper explores residents' roles as place-brand ambassadors on Twitter, using the case of Onomichi (Japan), where decreasing population meets economic dependence on tourism. From a content analysis of residents’tweets, four distinct roles are identified, and corresponding types of content are mapped on a two-dimensional continuum based on direct vs. Indirect word-of-mouth and the level of sentiment. Authors discuss implications for Destination Management Organizations (DMOs). Findings highlight the increasingly shifting role of residents towards being primary sources of place-marketing, especially due to social media, and as active proponents (rather than passive targets) of place-branding in the digital age. Such organic place-marketing may be the key to sustaining tourism in the face of rising anti-tourist sentiments worldwide.
Japanese Studies, as a broad area of research, can benefit from a highly focused area of research within its purview, namely regional studies (chihogaku). This paper presents and example of this using the case for Tsugaru Studies (Tsugaru gaku) as a regional studies area within Japanese studies.
This paper describes the efforts at creating Tsugaru Studies. These efforts have included and yielded numerous literary translations, several university course textbooks, and a recurring periodical. This paper considers the process and content of the creation and emergence of this specific contribution in Area Studies. The implications reveal a paradox of Area Studies research: the work that is widely disseminated often fails to advance Area Studies due to its focus on uniformly descriptive objectives, whereas the work that is highly local and locally contextual is both limited in exposure and therefore does little to alter the static dynamics of Area Studies research.
From 2000 onward, Japan underwent a period of municipal mergers referred to as the Heisei Mergers. Even though the outcome of these mergers is still unclear, the central Japanese government is considering, if not moving toward, initiating a new set of mergers, this time consolidating the 47 prefectures into 12 dōshū, or states, in what is termed a dōshū-sei, or state system. This article examines the proposed characteristics of the dōshū-sei together with its justifications and implications. Evaluation of the dōshū-sei system follows, based both on post-Heisei Merger and pre-dōshū-sei sentiment, as well as an analytical consideration of the unintended consequences.
This book challenges the conventional view of Japanese society as monocultural and homogenous. Unique for its historical breadth and interdisciplinary orientation, Multicultural Japan ranges from prehistory to the present, arguing that cultural diversity has always existed in Japan. A timely and provocative discussion of identity politics regarding the question of 'Japaneseness', the book traces the origins of the Japanese, examining Japan's indigenous people and the politics of archaeology, using the latter to link Japan's ancient history with contemporary debates on identity. Also examined are Japan's historical connections with Europe and East and Southeast Asia, ideology, family, culture and past and present.
A demographic and ethnographic exploration of how the aging Japanese society is affecting the family.
Incorporating qualitative and quantitative data and research methods from both demography and social anthropology, this book explores demographic trends in contemporary Japan's rapidly aging society. The contributors describe and analyze trends by addressing the ways in which demographic change is experienced in the context of family. The book considers the social effects, welfare issues, and private and public responses to demographic change and how this change has influenced the experiences of family caregivers and the elderly themselves. It offers both a specific regional contribution to the emerging field of demographic anthropology and an anthropological contribution to cross-disciplinary research on aging.
“There is … a lot that can be gleaned from this volume about changing patterns of Japanese kinship and concepts of welfare and morality.” — Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
"This important intellectual contribution is an effort to integrate those fields that are often artificially separated in academia. This book is interesting, novel, and timely." — Akiko Hashimoto, author of The Gift of Generations: Japanese and American Perspectives on Aging and the Social Contract
Contributors include Naomi Brown, Brenda Robb Jenike, Toshiko Kaneda, Satsuki Kawano, John Knight, C. Scott Littleton, Susan Orpett Long, James M. Raymo, Leng Leng Thang, Christopher S. Thompson, and John W. Traphagan.
This chapter continues research work on the Heisei Mergers, considering how they may represent a step toward an additional wave of realignments, in the form of the doshu-sei.
Japan’s population is shrinking. On current trends it will decline by an average of half a million people per year for the next forty years. The country is also getting older and the ratio of dependants to active workers is expected to approach 1:1 by around 2030. These two interdependent processes will deliver great changes to Japan in the coming decades.
In the twenty-first century, a historic turnaround in global demographic trends will occur. Europe and East Asia are especially vulnerable to demographic shrinkage. Germany is already shrinking, as is Russia. South Korea will begin to shrink soon and, importantly, so will China from around 2035. Overall, this is good news, but it brings with it worldwide changes to ways of living and working.
Japan’s rural areas have been shrinking for decades. Entire villages have vanished, even been “sold.” Thousands of municipalities have been judged “non-viable” and merged. Thousands more private and public enterprises have collapsed leaving colossal debts, while hundreds of thousands of older people live miserable lives in neighbourless communities. Rural shrinkage has been the unseen corollary of Japan’s extraordinarily dynamic 20th-century urban expansion; indeed, Japan’s postwar economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of rural retreat.
Potentially disastrous is the negative-sum game that national depopulation triggers, as one community’s gain becomes another’s loss. Japan’s Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century reveals how communities are responding positively to these emerging circumstances, delivering a message of hope and vitality to shrinking regions worldwide. Setting Japan alongside Europe, and with an epilogue describing the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown of 11 March 2011, the book offers policy makers and practitioners up to date advice for community revival born of extensive collaborative fieldwork across the whole Japanese archipelago.
Japan’s Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century brings together the work of 18 international scholars to present the first comprehensive study of regional shrinkage under Japan’s national depopulation. Interspersed throughout with numerous illustrations, the book reveals a richly textured examination of shrinkage at the local level, from which emerges the overall story of Japan’s depopulation and its place within the trajectory of world development.
This will be an important source for all social science collections, as well as for researchers, policy makers, students, and practitioners with interests in regional development, demography, East Asia, and post-industrial change.
In this powerful and evocative narrative, Gail Lee Bernstein vividly re-creates the past three centuries of Japanese history by following the fortunes of a prominent Japanese family over fourteen generations. The first of its kind in English, this book focuses on Isami, the eleventh generation patriarch and hereditary village head. Weaving back and forth between Isami's time in the first half of the twentieth century and his ancestors' lives in the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, Bernstein uses family history to convey a broad panoply of social life in Japan since the late 1600s. As the story unfolds, she provides remarkable details and absorbing anecdotes about food, famines, peasant uprisings, agrarian values, marriage customs, child-rearing practices, divorces, and social networks. Isami's House describes the role of rural elites, the architecture of Japanese homes, the grooming of children for middle-class life in Tokyo, the experiences of the Japanese in Japan's wartime empire and on the homefront, the aftermath of the country's defeat, and, finally, the efforts of family members to rebuild their lives after the Occupation. The author's forty-year friendship with members of the family lends a unique intimacy to her portrayal of their history. Readers come away with an inside view of Japanese family life, a vivid picture of early modern and modern times, and a profound understanding of how villagers were transformed into urbanites and what was gained, and lost, in the process.
Writing Okinawa is the first comprehensive study in English of Okinawan fiction, from it's emergence in the early twentieth-century through its most recent permutations. It provides readings of major authors and texts set against a carefully researched presentation of the region's political and social history; at the same time, it thoughtfully engages with current critical perspective with perspectives on subaltern identity, colonialism, and post-colonialism, and the nature of "regional," "minority," and "minor" literatures. Is Okinawan fiction, replete with geographically specific themes such as language loss, identity, and war, a regional literature, distinct among Japanese letters for flourishes of local color that offer a reprieve for the urban-weary, or a minority literature that serves as a site for creative resistance and cultural renewal? This question drives the book's argument, making it interpretative rather than merely descriptive. Not only does the book provide a critical introduction to the major works of Okinawan literature, it also argues that Okinawa's writers consciously exploit, to good effect the overlap that exists between regional and minority literature. In so doing, they produce a rich body of work, a great deal of which challenges the notion of a unified nation that seamlessly rises from a single language and culture.
Now in its fourth edition, An Introduction to Japanese Society remains essential reading for students of Japanese society. Internationally renowned scholar Yoshio Sugimoto uses both English and Japanese sources to update and expand upon his original narrative in this sophisticated yet highly readable text. This book explores the breadth and diversity of Japanese society, with chapters covering class, geographical and generational variation, work, education, gender, minorities, popular culture and the establishment. Updates include an exploration of the ‘Cool Japan’ phenomenon and the explosion of Japanese culture overseas. This edition also features the latest research into Japanese society, updated statistical data, and coverage of recent events including the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the change in government. Written in a clear and engaging style, An Introduction to Japanese Society provides an insight into all aspects of a diverse and ever-evolving contemporary Japan.
Sapporo, Niigata, and Kanazawa devised strategies in the 1990s to lead Japan's entry into the emerging Northeast Asian region and to spur decentralization, but their plans proved to be unrealistic. Idealistic notions of decentralization have faded. The coalition behind the Committee for the Promotion of Decentralization established as part of Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro's "big bang" has split. Rising aspirations for regionalism around the Sea of Japan rim also have been frustrated, especially as relations with the Russian Far East proved difficult. Japan must coordinate a new model of regionalism and decentralization to emerge as a leader.
Japan is one of the world’s most literate societies. Its national newspapers are the most read newspapers in the world, and the country also has a very vibrant local newspaper sector. This book assesses the vital role local newspapers play in the development of local communities, as well as examining their development, industry structure and production conventions. The author employs the key term, ‘revitalization journalism’, to explore in detail the many techniques and conventions that local newspapers employ to engage with, and make an impact in, their specific host regions. The book concludes by comparing Japanese local newspapers to the current state of newspapers worldwide, and assessing how Japanese local newspapers are likely to develop in future.
The ancient civilization of Japan, with its Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, is also closely associated with all that is new and modern. Looking outward, Japan sees what it has become since Hiroshima: the world's second-largest economy, a source of fury and wonder, a power without arms. Looking inward, Japan sees old ways shaken and new ones developing at a hectic pace. Japan in the Twenty-first Century offers compelling insights into the current realities of the country and investigates the crucial political, economic, demographic, and environmental challenges that face the nation. A combination of text, maps, and photographs provides an essential understanding of Japan's geography, cultural heritage, demography, economic and political development, and of many other important issues. Pradyumna P. Karan explores the obstacles and opportunities that will shape Japan and affect the world community in the coming years. He highlights strategies and policies that will facilitate economic and political change and stimulate the development of effective institutions for long-term, sustainable prosperity and economic vitality. Unique field reports drawn from direct observations of events and places in Japan illuminate Japanese traditions and sensibilities. The first full-length English-language textbook on Japan's geography, culture, politics, and economy to appear in nearly four decades, Japan in the Twenty-first Century will be a vital resource for researchers, academics, general readers, and students of Japan. Pradyumna P. Karan, professor of geography and Japan studies at the University of Kentucky, is the author or editor of numerous books on Asian geography and culture, including The Japanese City and Japan in the Bluegrass. Copyright © 2005 by the University Press of Kentucky. All rights reserved.
What is Japan? Who are its people? These questions are among those addressed in Bruce Batten's ambitious study of Japan's historical development through the nineteenth century. Traditionally, Japan has been portrayed as a homogenous society formed over millennia in virtual isolation. Social historians and others have begun to question this view, emphasizing diversity and interaction, both within the Japanese archipelago and between Japan and other parts of Eurasia. Until now, however, no book has attempted to resolve these conflicting views in a comprehensive, systematic way. To the Ends of Japan tackles the "big questions" on Japan by focusing on its borders, broadly defined to include historical frontiers and boundaries within the islands themselves as well as the obvious coastlines and oceans. Batten provides compelling arguments for viewing borders not as geographic "givens," but as social constructs whose location and significance can, and do, change over time. By giving separate treatment to the historical development of political, cultural, and ethnic borders in the archipelago, he highlights the complex, multifaceted nature of Japanese society, without losing sight of the more fundamental differences that have separated Japan from its nearest neighbors in the archipelago and on the Eurasian continent.
Schnell writes that, although Japan has become a highly urbanized and cosmopolitan society, its culture is still perceived as being heavily rooted in the agrarian - and specifically rice paddy - traditions of its rural villages. The privileging of rice production as cultural exemplar, however, serves to both obscure and discredit a number of alternative traditions, such as those of mountain communities where the land is too rugged for growing rice. Many rural communities have turned to local tourism as a means of economic development, often reinforcing in the process the stereotypes about them. Schnell argues that rural residents are more knowledgeable about the metropolitan center than the center is about them, and that the flow of information from television and other nationally distributed mass media is unidirectional.
This book presents a comprehensive analysis of one of the most pressing challenges facing Japan today: population decline and ageing. It argues that social ageing is a phenomenon that follows in the wake of industrialization, urbanization and social modernization, bringing about changes in values, institutions, social structures, economic activity, technology and culture, and posing many challenges for the countries affected. Focusing on the experience of Japan, the author explores: how Japan has recognized the emerging problems relatively early because during the past half century population ageing has been more rapid in Japan than in any other country. how all of Japanese society is affected by social ageing, not just certain substructures and institutions, and explains its complex causes, describes the resulting challenges and analyses the solutions under consideration to deal with it. the nature of Japan's population dynamics since 1920, and argues that Japan is rapidly moving in the direction of a 'hyperaged society' in which those sixty-five or older account for twenty-five per cent of the total population. the implications for family structures and other social networks, gender roles and employment patterns, health care and welfare provision, pension systems, immigration policy, consumer and voting behaviour and the cultural reactions and ramifications of social ageing.
Japan and National Anthropology: A Critique is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study which challenges the conventional view of Japanese studies in general and the Anglophone anthropological writings on Japan in particular. Sonia Ryang explores the process by which the postwar anthropology of Japan has come to be dominated by certain conceptual and methodological and exposes the extent to which this process has occluded our view of Japan.
The popular image of Japanese society is a steroetypical one - that of a people characterised by a coherent set of thought and behaviour patterns, applying to all Japanese and transcending time. Ross Mouer and Yoshio Sugimoto found this image quite incongruous during their research for this book in Japan. They ask whether this steroetype of the Japanese is not only generated by foreigners but by the Japanese themselves.
Following the Second World War, a massive land reclamation project to boost Japan's rice production capacity led to the transformation of the shallow lagoon of Hachirogata in Akita Prefecture into a seventeen-thousand-hectare expanse of farmland. In 1964, the village of Ogata-mura was founded on the empoldered land inside the lagoon and nearly six hundred pioneers from across the country were brought to settle there. The village was to be a model of a new breed of highly mechanized, efficient rice agriculture; however, the village's purpose was jeopardized when the demand for rice fell, and the goal of creating an egalitarian farming community was threatened as individual entrepreneurialism took root and as the settlers became divided into political factions that to this day continue to struggle for control of the village. Based on seventeen years of research, this book explores the process of Ogatamura's development from the planning stages to the present. An intensive ethnographic study of the relationship between land reclamation, agriculture, and politics in regional Japan, it traces the internal social effects of the village's economic transformations while addressing the implications of national policy at the municipal and regional levels.
For many years, coal formed the backbone of Japan's economic development, but the dangers and costs of mining became increasingly expensive for the industry and government. Global changes in coal production and exchange finally prompted Japan's decision in 1986 to shut down nearly all domestic coal mines in favour of coal imports. Japan's policy for industry restructuring had been applauded as one of the most comprehensive in addressing the needs of the industry, the workers and the community. At micro-level, however, the people in the community most affected by the policy decision have been excluded from the process. This text reveals the stratified effects, as well as compensation, for the different groups in Yubari City, Hokkaido. Although the policy settlement package goes to the coal miners, community redevelopment ignores their needs, prompting them to leave the city and benefiting instead land owners and public employees. Revealed as well are the ways in which Japan's cultural values, particularly the vertical social structure as it affects decision making, status, occupations and company organization and the importance of maintaining the family system, figure in the policy process and its consequences.
This paper aims to summarize the mechanisms of public investment as a social policy in remote rural areas in Japan. It includes findings from former studies as well as a case study undertaken in Shimane by the author, and it discusses the function of public investment in terms of the relationship between the three major groupings involved in the local civil engineering industry. These groups are the “primary labor force group” (PLG) which consists of workers born before or in 1935, the “secondary labor force group” (SLG) which consists of workers born after 1935, and the “local civil engineering companies” (LCECs). In the 1970s and 1980s. there was a strong mutual dependence between the PLG and the LCECs in remote rural areas. PLG workers gave higher priority to maintaining a traditional rural lifestyle and hoped to find jobs in their local area, hence jobs for them should have been created through public works projects. The LCECs also wanted a cheap and quantitatively flexible labor force for public works projects, so public investment worked effectively as a regional social policy. However, as the PLG workers retired and a new generation of workers entered the work force, the disparity between the supply of and demand for labor in the civil engineering industry has increased and the role of public investment as a social policy has been weakened. These changes suggest that the so-called “kaso problem” is generation-specific and that public investment as a social policy for remote rural areas is nearing its end.
The Japanese travel and tourism industries reflect contradictions between goals to internationalize and fears about vanishing Japanese cultural traditions. This article discusses the nostalgia underlying the popularity of domestic tourism to rural areas in search of reunion with Japanese identity. It explores furusato (home village) imagery in travel advertising and in movies depicting travel in terms of its appeal to contemporary feelings of "homelessness" among many urban Japanese. It also discusses the impact of nostalgia tourism on remote areas recently transformed into popular travel destinations. It explores the decontextualization of place in simulated experiences of rural areas such as local place fairs hosted by city department stores, and various other consumer offerings of pseudotravel experiences for busy urbanites.
This article examines discourses related to newly built neighborhoods in contemporary Japan. The focus on recently constructed housing estates is a corrective to many recent studies which have been overwhelmingly examinations of "old" or "traditional" neighborhoods. On one level, such discourse is related to the reputational content of a locality, that is to the series of typifications and images that capture the character and "spirit" of a place. On another level, people often use the residential community as a medium for discussing or for evoking wider issues. Through addressing specific places and their attendant qualities, people constantly promote or denigrate certain visions of what Japan was, is, or should be. This study suggests that a fruitful way to explore the complexity of these discourses is to uncover the "folk" models of locality which are held by different local groups. People use these models to describe, analyze, and evaluate what goes on in their communities and to prescribe ways to change them.
ALAN BOOTH'S CLASSIC OF MODERN TRAVEL WRITING Traveling only along small back roads, Alan Booth traversed Japan's entire length on foot, from Soya at the country's northernmost tip, to Cape Sata in the extreme south, across three islands and some 2,000 miles of rural Japan. The Roads to Sata is his wry, witty, inimitable account of that prodigious trek. Although he was a city person-he was brought up in London and spent most of his adult life in Tokyo - Booth had an extraordinary ability to capture the feel of rural Japan in his writing. Throughout his long
This paper focuses on a museum in a farming village in Akita Prefecture, Japan. The village was created through a massive land reclamation and settlement project, and the museum was built largely to help clean up the village's image after conflicts over rice production and marketing sullied its reputation beginning in the 1970s. I show that while the politically charged museum has exacerbated differences between residents, it has also become a new venue for them to express their views on the history of their village regarding the authenticity of design and display. The processes behind this illustrate the ways in which individuals construct authenticity in terms of their own experiences and conceptions of both the past and present, and also how concerns over authenticity slowly recede in the wake of a more “sincere” museum environment. On a practical level, investigating the museum and its position in village society suggests that a tourism venture may have a local value other than immediate financial profit. Furthermore, it indicates a methodological benefit in shifting the focus away from “community” as a singular entity, and instead viewing its various people through the museum, so that individual agency may be seen with increased clarity.
What can we learn from the Great East Japan Earthquake? In this article, I examine the effects of the overarching physical and social system that has developed in Japanese society for the last half century. I use the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident as an example. I will also look to the meaning of kuni (the Japanese word for country, state or nation), and emphasize the urgent need to advance sociological comparative analysis of different forms of nation, state and country in times of emergency.
The image of the shinkansen - or ’bullet train’ - passing Mount Fuji is one of the most renowned images of modern Japan. Yet, despite its international reputation for speed and punctuality, little is understood about what makes it work so well and what its impact is. This is a comprehensive account of the history of the shinkansen, from its planning during the Pacific War, to its launch in 1964 and subsequent development. It goes on to analyze the reasons behind the bullet train's success, and demonstrates how it went from being simply a high-speed rail network to attaining the status of iconic national symbol. It considers the shinkansen's relationship with national and regional politics and economic development, its financial viability, the environmental challenges it must cope with, and the ways in which it reflects and influences important aspects of Japanese society. It concludes by considering whether the bullet train can be successful in other countries developing high-speed railways. Overall, this book provides a thorough examination of the phenomenon of the shinkansen, and its relationship with Japanese society.
Modeling after Vandello and Cohen’s American Collectivism Index, the researcher developed a scale to measure collectivism in prefectures (similar to U.S. states) in Japan. The new scale was evaluated against results from the Japanese General Social Survey, a national survey of individuals conducted annually, and was tested for association with common correlates of cultural syndromes. As expected, the Japanese Collectivism Scale (JCS) was reliable and was significantly associated with results of the individual-level attitudinal survey and the correlates of collectivism. The JCS also showed within-culture variations of collectivism in Japan—variations that are important to consider when interpreting cross-cultural differences in attitudes and behavior.
Western understanding of the postwar evolution of states in advanced capitalist societies envisions a moment of fundamental transition beginning in the mid-1970s indexed by reduced government spending, the privatization of public services and increased inequality among local governments. Regulation theory sees the process as a transition from a Keynesian welfare state to a Schumpeterian workfare state necessitated by the shift from a Fordist to a post Fordist regime of capital accumulation. Japan, a member of the OECD, and the world's second largest economy, doesn't fit the political-economic trends nor the model put forward by Western regulation theorists. Japan has not experienced the decline in state spending, privatization of public activity, and rising inequality among local governments characterizing Western OECD nations. The Japanese have selectively incorporated Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas but in a spirit much closer to writers associated with the German historical school, and always within a framework rooted in Japan's own historical traditions and exigencies. We document Japan's departure from the Western model of state restructuring and explore the theoretical implications.
This article examines the twists and turns of the Tokushima dam case across three levels of the political landscape (national, prefectural, and city) over the past several years. It also assesses jumin tohyo as a tool of democracy at the local level in Japan. Some of the questions examined here are: Why has there been a surge in the demand for local referendums in Japan in recent years? How do national and local governments react to these demands? What, if anything, is distinctive about jumin tohyo? And what are the prospects that it will serve as an instrument of citizen participation in local administration and as a means for greater checks on government?.