The Death of Rural?

My Observations and Findings in Japan

(By Dirk Bischof, CEO and Founder, Hatch Enterprise, U.K. Edited by Fumiko M., Liaison, ETIC.)

As part of my sabbatical, I went on a one-month bike trip in Japan in April 2023. Racing down the hills on my bike in the remote parts of Kyushu, Japan, I came across rows and rows of vacant houses. I didn’t see any residents and hardly any cars went by. This was not the only place that I saw desolate rural hamlets and villages on my trip. It was a stark contrast to places such as Tokyo, the ever-growing megacity, and the urban areas that I passed through such as Fukuoka or Nagasaki.

Having grown up in rural Germany and spending a few weeks there every summer, I love my local forest, local lakes, and green spaces. I spend hours walking every day to soak up nature, warmth or have fun swimming in one of the many lakes. Rural Germany is not the same as rural Japan, we don’t have many remote regions like Japan. But as an affirming place polyamorist (more on that later), I love the Japanese countryside and the remote regions I’ve discovered cycling some 4,000km through Japan over the last 15 years. I’ve seen parts of Japan that were so visually stunning, with clean mountain streams running through vast forests and deep, impenetrable mountains. The clarity, and harmony I feel walking in large forests is the same in Japan as it is in Germany for me.

One night during the bike trip around Kyushu, I was having late drinks at a bar and I chatted to a foreigner, like me, who spoke about the vacant houses crisis in rural Japan. It was exactly what I had witnessed. It piqued my interest and I started to look into what was really going on. Is it possible that rural Japan is facing its demise?

The Demographic Clock is Ticking

Japan’s population is expected to decrease significantly, with estimates suggesting a drop from 126 million to 88 million by 2065 (Bloomberg, 2019). By 2065, the average life expectancy is projected to rise to 85 years for men and 91 years for women. This change will result in 38% of the population being 65 years or older, leading to Japan becoming a ‘super-aged’ society, where over one in five people are 65 or older (Japan Times, 2022). This means low productivity, increasing healthcare expenditures, depopulation of rural areas, and a high dependency ratio as the working-age population needs to support a growing population of older people. I could see that the depopulation is already accelerating in some rural areas while Tokyo and other big cities are still growing. In Japan, a stunning 92% of people, or 117 million live in urban areas, according to the World Bank, which is very similar to Great Britain, where it’s around 90% in urban areas and 10% in rural areas.

Megacities are thriving at the expense of rural areas. Some of the key factors are job opportunities, access to healthcare, a wider variety of entertainment options, better public transportation, and a diverse population and of course dating opportunities and increased chances to find a partner. However, on the flip side, there are drawbacks as well. Urban living often comes with a higher cost of living, elevated crime rates, increased pollution, greater susceptibility to diseases, traffic congestion, less privacy, and heightened stress levels.

Despite the many drawbacks, migrations to cities accelerated towards large metropolitan areas, especially between 2012–2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst seemingly decelerating this trend, made people move from densely populated urban areas to the suburbs, supported by lower cost housing and work-from-home policies. However, whether the long-term trend of migration away from rural areas will ever be reversed is a question that cannot currently be answered. What is very clear are the migration trends away from rural areas towards suburbia or outright urban areas, due to the various upsides that these places afford their inhabitants.

What are we to do about the apparent loss of rural villages, towns and with it, lifestyles, methods of production, and a loss of cultural practices and folklore? Who will tell the stories of how to look after fields and forests when no more people are there to put the hard work in to do the looking after, when the megacities have sucked up all the resources and humans?

At the same time, romanticising rural areas is of little use. Living and working in rural areas across the whole year can be harsh. I’m just thinking of areas that are snow-locked in winter, with little to no public transportation or with access to the outside world extremely restricted if you don’t have a car. Life can be very hard in a village, and in a case of emergency, untimely death is not out of the question. Alongside this, hard work to plant, harvest, preserve, or turn produce into products can take its toll. There is often little free time when you’re running a small farm or looking after animals.

And yet, we have to ask whether there is an opportunity to connect the city and rural communities; can we find a balance between being city dwellers and those living and working in rural communities? Are there possibilities to sustain the dwindling rural areas and populations by reviving them through connection, resources, and systems of support that are necessary to make these ‘love affairs’ not fleeting romances, but life-long relationships? I came across a book, which looks exactly into this issue.

The book: Kuni, A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection

In their influential book called Kuni, A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection, authors Tsuyoshi Sekihara and Richard McCarthy talk about kuni, loosely translated as “community”. In their book, a thriving community comprises a population of around 2,000 people and many villages, held together, supported by, and through a Regional Management Organisation. The authors argue that 2,000 is not an absolute number to strive for but they argue for a population not too big and not too small. To me, this could mean anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 or thereabouts. A population able to renew itself, with enough actors in it for diverse thoughts and action to arise and for there to be sufficient productive capability to look after the land, whether these are farms, forests, or fishing grounds, with the ability to produce goods and services that allow the kuni to be self-sufficient and not needing to rely on imported goods. This is critical and described also in the book, which I encourage you to read if you’re interested (link ). Not only did I get to read the book, I was also fortunate enough to interview Tsuyosh-san, one of the authors, while I was in Japan and he shared some thought-provoking insights about the concept of kuni and the future of rural Japan. Here is the link .

There are many well-described graphs in the book that help us understand the flow of goods, people, and capital, particular importance is placed on the RMO, which is essential in directing flows of goods and services and manages various activities.

Here’s what I made of this, as more things are flowing in both directions, from rural areas to people who come and visit, whether on one-off trips or even becoming regulars, who might even want to start working in the rural area, look after a field of their own or get involved in activities around the production, management or care necessary to sustain goods and services in a given rural area that become part of the kuni.

Place Polygamy vs Place Polyamory

The book also describes a concept of place polygamy, a concept borrowed from the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, referring to the idea of remaining “loyal to and engaged with more than one geographic location”. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people in urban areas and cities longed for the countryside, space, and nature. This has led to some people leaving cities for more suburban or even rural areas.

The concept of kuni invites us to the idea of being at home in both the big city and the countryside, as long as we remain loyal to both. Whether we become supporters from afar through purchasing goods or services the rural kuni produces or whether we get more deeply involved by participating in their activities, from planting crops, to building or repairing houses that would fall into disrepair otherwise is something I believe can be seen on a wider spectrum than is described in the book. There are many concepts of ‘farm to table’, where inner-city restaurants have close relationships with specific farms in the countryside and will develop a deep understanding of seasonality, availability, and price of goods produced alongside the tastes of customers, over time.

To me, this can be extended into a slightly looser “place polyamory”, where people in cities become more aware of what it takes to produce foodstuff, from grains to fruits and vegetables or fish and meat produce. Through a deeper engagement with what we eat, after all, we are what we eat, people might want to get more involved in what goes on in more rural areas, maybe at first only dipping their toes into rural activities, visiting a festival or enjoying a hike through a forest, before, maybe getting involved a bit more through repeat visits, with friendships to locals developing over time. People might ot immediately want to build a strong relationship with a rural area, whether a village or small town but keep exploring, keep going back and forth, whilst carving out time away from ‘city activities’ and investing time and energy in going to rural places. None of this happens overnight. It’s a discovery, learning and experiential journey, a getting-to know each other, almost like flirting and dating. We’re not sure if we’re meant to be in a rural setting but the appeal, once discovered and explored, is irresistible for most people.

Different Tracks: Foreigners and Entrepreneurs

The book by Sekihara and McCarthy offers a practical, liveable approach to reviving rural areas and offering an exchange of goods, services, and people between urban and rural areas. This is not the only solution that’s been thought of when trying to address the depopulation of rural Japan.

There are also a few other ideas that have been tried and tested. I read about the case of Izumo, a city in Shimane, one of the rapidly depopulating prefectures in Japan. Izumo has a population of around 175,000 and is known for Izumo-Taisha, the country’s oldest Shinto shrine. Izumo has managed to avoid the drastic population decline witnessed elsewhere in Japan. But to counter the demographic challenge, the city launched an innovative plan in 2016 to achieve a 30% foreign resident population by 2021 through robust recruitment strategies. This rapid success has led Izumo to swiftly expand Portuguese-language services for residents, aligning with Japan’s increasing accommodation for non-Japanese speakers.

There are other examples too. Captivated by the town’s rural charm, Masahiro Sekine, head of a corporate training company, relocated his family to Tokigawa, Saitama in 2009. Immersed in the community, he envisioned fostering local entrepreneurship and launched the Hiki Entrepreneurship University in 2017?—?a program for aspiring self-employed individuals in their 30s and 40s, supported by the town. The five-month curriculum provides practical advice and lectures on independent livelihoods. The initiative has produced 34 graduates who have established businesses locally and remotely, such as farming, design, upholstery, and lodging services. The program’s impact reflects the pandemic and remote work’s influence, making rural living more appealing. Another participant, Takashi Kazama, transitioned from a public sector role to becoming an intermediary bridging public-private collaborations, with his recent endeavour involving introducing tuk-tuk services to Tokigawa. Addressing the issue of abandoned homes, he suggests converting these properties into assets. In Japan, nearly 8.5 million properties are vacant, and projections indicate this problem could escalate, reaching 20 million by 2033.

Pondering the Rural Future, Reflecting on the Past

As I ponder the future of rural Japan and other places in the world facing similar challenges, I thought of the stories shared by my grandmother during my childhood. The stories she told me are still so vivid in my mind because I heard them so many times, having spent my childhood living with my grandparents as my parents flat above, was too small and didn’t have a second children’s bedroom. I heard my grandparents stories, poems and songs of their youth and adolescence in the morning and in the evening. Theirs too was a life in a rural setting, which started with getting up early to feed animals, before school or breakfast, then running off to school and as soon as it was finished, working in the kitchen or the field with little time left to study or to see friends and “go for coffees”, as is most young people’s idea of after-school activities these days. But when my grandmother would spend time relaxing, it was always communal, making music with neighbours, playing games outside with friends. She always said that life was not easy as a child growing up in what is now the Czech Republic, before WW2, but she fondly remembered this time and how happy she was. She would often tell me that this was the happiest time in her life. Even into her 80s and 90s she would be able to sing the songs of her ‘heimat’ (the place of her birth) or recite poems.

Will the poems, songs and stories be forever lost as romanticised versions of a life long lost? Can we re-discover and can we embrace the rural?

As these questions were racing through my mind, I recalled the lyrics of the song my grandmother used to sing, that connected her to her spiritual home, and nature:

“There is no tree more beautiful than a rowan tree, a rowan tree, a rowan tree……

And if I died, I wouldn’t be alone, I wouldn’t be alone, I wouldn’t be alone.

Then plant on my grave, a rowan tree, a rowan tree,

That’s how it’s done.

A rowan tree, a rowan tree, a rowan tree…..

For there is no tree more beautiful than a rowan tree, rowan tree, rowan tree…….”