Shrinking Sado: Education, Employment and the Decline of Japan's Rural Regions

In 2005 Japan’s population began to shrink and, according to the government’s own research institute, is scheduled to drop by approximately 30 per cent within the next 50 years. Although this fall is considered to be a rather recent phenomenon, what is less well known is the fact that Japan’s rural regions have been steadily declining, perhaps even collapsing, since as far back as 1950. This population shrinkage, and the inevitable decline in socio-economic vitality that accompanies it, has been taking place as a result of an excessive concentration of economic opportunity and political power in Japan’s urban centres. Japan’s cities have grown in the post-war period, in part, at the expense of a long-term decline of the countryside. This article uses Sado Island as a case study in rural decline and argues that a chronic and structurated out-migration of younger people from the island to urban areas in search of education and employment opportunities has been a major cause of this decline. To the extent that what has already taken place in Japan’s rural areas may be indicative of the shape of things to come for the country’s provincial towns and cities, as the population fall begins to bite more deeply, the article then goes on to systematise these processes within the larger context of the acceleration and intensification of the processes underpinning Japanese capitalism. The article will propose that, in addition to its ongoing exhaustion of nature, Japanese capital is exhausting the country’s labour power and, consequently, its population. Part of the solution to the exhaustion of labour and nature may be for us to think beyond modernity into a post-capitalist order. Thus, rather than being seen as a dying relic of the country’s past, this article will suggest that the society of Sado Island may assist us in imagining and planning a new direction for Japan

America’s New Best Friend: The UK vs Japan

Prime Minister Abe of Japan returned to Tokyo on Sunday 12 February having sealed his country’s position as a principal ally of the United States of America, in the process potentially even ousting the United Kingdom from its long-treasured ‘Special Relationship’. Leaving aside, first of all, the question of whether the UK or Japan should wish to deepen relations with the USA, given the nature of the new administration, both Theresa May and Shinzo Abe – in their rush to be the first leaders to cross the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to meet with and congratulate President Trump for his ‘stunning election victory’ – have been keen to cement a special role for themselves and their country in the foreign policy of the world’s only superpower

Why Japan can't (or won't) stop using fossil fuels any time soon

The G7 leaders’ pledge to eliminate the use of fossil fuels as an energy source by century’s end could be the most significant outcome of the most recent meeting. It also reinforces German host Angela Merkel’s claim to be the “climate chancellor”. As is customary with such pledges, however, the announcement was short on specifics and it’s really not clear how reductions in fossil fuel usage can be achieved. After all, disasters at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 have made key G7 members considerably less enthusiastic about nuclear power, one obvious alternative

Towards an Asia-Pacific ‘Depopulation Dividend’ in the 21st Century: Regional Growth and Shrinkage in Japan and New Zealand

Japan is shrinking. Current projections indicate a population decrease of around one quarter by mid-century. Depopulation is potentially good news, providing opportunities for reconfiguring living conditions and alleviating human-environmental pressures. Nevertheless, ageing and depopulation have outcomes that require adjustment. One of these is spatial inequalities, which have been accelerating since the 1990s. Japan is the Asia-Pacific’s pioneer ageing and shrinking society. In East Asia both China and South Korea are ageing and expected to begin shrinking soon. Even high immigration Anglophone countries such as New Zealand are experiencing post-growth demographic processes at subnational level. Japan’s significance is in how adaptive responses there inform prospects for others as they experience their own post-growth pathways. This article presents case studies of Sado Island in Japan and New Zealand’s South Island in a comparative qualitative analysis of rural agency under population decline. Overall, I contend there is potential for benefitting from demographic shrinkage – what I term a ‘depopulation dividend’ – and for rural regions in the Asia-Pacific to progress towards a sustainable post-growth economy and society

Confronting the Olympic paradox : modernity and environment at a crossroads in downtown Tokyo

The 2020 Summer Olympics will be the hottest ever; due to a combination of climate change and scheduling them when Tokyo is at its most sweltering. Cities have been transformed, with the Games used by governments to unite citizens behind patriotic visions of national success and project a modernist image of a city and nation on the leading edge of global progress. This is the Olympic paradox- being uniquely symbolic of modernity while also complicit in modernity’s outcome, including the systematic depletion of the Earth’s resources, our destruction of its habitats, and pollution of the biosphere with emissions and effluents which together threaten the sustainability of life on Earth

Fukushima - The Triple Disaster and Its Triple Lessons: What can be learned about regulation, planning, and communication in an unfolding emergency?

On 11 March, 2011 a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the North-eastern coast of the Japanese main island of Honshu. Although reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shut down as expected, the 15m tsunami which followed caused a loss of power which disrupted the cooling systems. Over the next few days, four of the six reactors experienced catastrophic events, requiring the evacuation of plant personnel and residents of nearby villages in a 20km radius. Nuclear contamination has continued to hinder clean-up and reconstruction efforts in Fukushima prefecture, one of the three worst hit by the tsunami, and it is estimated that the plant itself could take up to 40 years to decommission. Moreover, subsequent investigations have revealed serious systemic issues in the regulation of nuclear power and in the mechanisms for provision of scientific advice to the public, policymakers, and to disaster response personnel, which has contributed to a considerable loss of public trust in both scientists and the Japanese government. Handling of the ‘triple disaster’, therefore, raises important questions for understanding the scale and extent of nuclear contamination after accidental release, but also about the need for realistic emergency planning and for consistency, accuracy and trust in the dissemination of useful information, not only during an unfolding disaster and immediate recovery period, but often for years, even decades, to come

A study on the nature of capitalist modernity in contemporary Japan Man and company under restructuring and globalisation

This dissertation uses an empirical study of the lifetime employment system in four large Japanese corporations and the principal work values of their core white-collar university graduate male employees to inform a theoretical discussion on the nature of modernity and capitalism in contemporary Japan. As such, therefore, it lies within the academic disciplines of sociology and Japanese studies. For some time now the lifetime employment principle has been the ideological and functional basis of the Japanese management system. However, due to the steadily accumulating stresses exerted by the further intensification and globalisation of economic competition, coupled with changes in Japanese society stimulated by the achievement of material abundance, Japanese corporations feel they are under increasing pressure to implement fundamental changes to the system of employment. For their part, employees are adopting a more independent, critical, and reflexive employment orientation. Making use of both Western and Japanese theoretical representations, and contrasting the post-war paradigm of employment security and stability within a rapidly growing economy with the present period of corporate restructuring and economic stagnation, the dissertation posits a hypothesis that Japanese society is undergoing a period of systemic and cultural transformation that lies between a post-war “transitional” and a global “hybrid” modernity. That is to say, the post-war Japanese company can be said to have possessed both modern and fictive pre-modern attributes and was thus a “trans-modern” corporation. Moreover, the present period of corporate rationalisation, together with the progressive modernisation of the Japanese salaryman’s work and career consciousness, signifies that the Japanese corporation is entering an age characterised by a global hybrid form of capitalist modernity