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

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

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

International mobility for early career academics : does it help or hinder career formation in Japanese studies?

Career formation in professional occupations is heavily influenced by national institutional contexts. In common with many professions, however, in academia international exposure is attractive to employers and valued by employees. This national-international dualism presents early career academics (ECAs) with potentially contradictory challenges in navigating their career development. Drawing on multidisciplinary approaches we researched international mobility in academic career formation. We designed a rigorous five-stage mixed methods quantitative and qualitative methodology to question whether a lengthy early career sojourn in Japan assists British-trained scholars in pursuing an academic career in Japanese studies in the UK. Further, we ask whether and why a lengthy sojourn might hinder academic career formation. Although we researched experiences in Japanese studies, our research is relevant to any discipline where significant periods are spent overseas. We found that early career international mobility caused scholars to experience significant challenges of distanciation and socialisation in navigating their imagined career paths, including the potential to become marooned in Japan. Fortunately, our informants are adaptive in the best use of their circumstances and decisions. We conclude with a brief discussion of theoretical implications and provide advice for ECAs in managing international career transitions

Imagining disasters in the era of climate change : is Japan’s seawall a new Maginot Line?

Following the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster of 11 March 2011, the Japanese government began constructing a series of 440 seawalls along the north-eastern coast of Honshu. Cumulatively measuring 394.2km, they are designed to defend coastal communities against tsunami that frequently strike the region. We present a case study of the new seawall in Tarō, Iwate Prefecture, which had previously constructed massive sea defences in the wake of two tsunami in 1896 and 1933, which were subsequently destroyed in 2011. We ask whether the government has properly imagined the next disaster for the era of climate change and, therefore, whether its rationale for Tarō’s new seawall is sufficient. We argue that the government has implemented an incremental strengthening of Tarō’s existing tsunami defence infrastructure. Significantly, this does not anticipate global warming driven sea level rise, which is accelerating, and which requires transformational adaptation. This continues a national pattern of disaster preparedness and response established in the early 20th century, which resulted in the failure to imagine the 2011 tsunami. We conclude by recalling the lessons of France’s Maginot Line and invoke the philosophy of Tanaka Shōzō, father of Japan’s modern environmental movement, who urged Japanese to adjust to the flow (nagare) of nature, rather than defend against it, lest they are undone by the force of its backflow (gyakuryū)

A new look at population change and regional development in Aotearoa New Zealand

In New Zealand, population change is interlinked with regional development. Places growing in population attract regional investment, while regional investment—or lack thereof—can change migration patterns. However, to determine the appropriate response to population change for a community, it is important to understand that population change involves much more than “just” migration. Specifically, it involves interactions between the three components of population change: natural change (births minus deaths), net migration (international and internal) and population ageing (changing cohort size). For example, migration can be negative, but growth can be positive due to underlying natural increase or growth in cohort size. Responses need to differ, depending on these drivers. The goal of this article is to provide new insights into these interactions using data for 275 cities, towns and rural centres (hereafter “urban places”) in New Zealand for the period 1976 to 2013. The results show that natural change has been consistently positive for most urban places up to the present, although projections indicate that in the future this component will become negative across much of the country. At the same time, net migration shows considerable spatial variation, not only in terms of volume, but also direction (negative or positive), which differs markedly by age. A net gain of people of retirement age can offset a net loss of young adults to deliver overall growth, and vice-versa, but the two have very different implications for longer term growth. An analysis of the drivers of net migration using GIS and machine learning techniques provides an indication of the importance of economic conditions (land-use and access to markets), lifestyle, access to essential services (hospitals and education) and their interaction with age in regional change. The results show that population age is the best predictor of migration. Younger people are moving to cities for tertiary education and work and older people near or in retirement are moving to smaller lifestyle towns but also want to be close to amenities such as hospitals and international airports. The research also shows that natural lifestyle characteristics (landscape and climate), in combination with age are just as important as economic conditions for understanding migration. Regional development, such as infrastructure that helps business (ports and services) is important for the working age population but not necessarily the retirement age group. When regional development, age/life-cycle stage and lifestyle come together, such as in Queenstown and Tauranga, net migration gain is high