Urban Migrants in Rural Japan

Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society

Susanne Klien

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781438478067, 9781438478050
• eBook ISBN: 9781438478074
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Offers an in-depth ethnography of paradigm shifts in the lifestyles and values of youth in post-growth Japan.

2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Urban Migrants in Rural Japan provides a fresh perspective on theoretical notions of rurality and emerging modes of working and living in post-growth Japan. By exploring narratives and trajectories of individuals who relocate from urban to rural areas and seek new modes of working and living, this multisited ethnography reveals the changing role of rurality, from postwar notions of a stagnant backwater to contemporary sites of experimentation. The individual cases presented in the book vividly illustrate changing lifestyles and perceptions of work. What emerges from Urban Migrants in Rural Japan is the emotionally fraught quest of many individuals for a personally fulfilling lifestyle and the conflicting neoliberal constraints many settlers face. In fact, flexibility often coincides with precarity and self-exploitation. Susanne Klien shows how mobility serves as a strategic mechanism for neophytes in rural Japan who hedge their bets; gain time; and seek assurance, inspiration, and courage to do (or further postpone doing) what they ultimately feel makes sense to them.

Chapter One

Lifestyle Migration and Mobility

Negotiating Urban Lifestyles in Rural Communities

Rural to urban migration is common with increasingly more individuals relocating from the countryside to Tokyo and other urban areas; however, Japan has recently seen a small but steady increase in urbanites aged between twenty and forty-five who make a conscious choice to move to rural settings (Klien in Assmann 2016). This trend was accelerated by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 but had gathered momentum well before the disaster.

Changes in Urban Perceptions of the Countryside

Television documentaries and print media have been reporting on the increasing attraction of the countryside for the young urban generation. Publications focusing on urban to rural relocation have begun to emerge, such as Turns (established in 2012) or Sotokoto (literally, things outside, established in 1999). These magazines showcase a slower pace of life, ecological concerns, the creation of personalized lifestyles coupling ideal employment and quality of life, saving tips, and social entrepreneurship. Their target audience is twofold: those considering relocation and those who have already taken the leap into rural areas.

Sotokoto’s February 2016 issue was published under the title Finding a New Home (Atarashii ijū no katachi, literally, forms of new migration) and featured articles about migrants throughout Japan, from Miyagi Prefecture in the northeast to Miyazaki Prefecture in the southwest. Even mainstream publications, such as Pen, that are targeted at male corporate employees regularly publish issues about moving to rural areas; from this we can reasonably conclude that mobility has become more acceptable as a lifestyle choice.

Ordinarily, Pen leads its feature articles with topics such as design, architecture, or male grooming. An example that highlights this changed perception of rural living would be the April 2016 Pen issue entitled Let’s Move House: People Who Made Their Ideal Lifestyles into Practical Reality (Ijū shiyou: Risō no kurashi wo te ni ireta hitobito no jireishū). Some time ago, a change in the perception of the countryside began to take hold, with a gradually perception as a more “trendy” yet stereotypically “rural” place due to the sudden popularity of female lifestyle migrants (ijū joshi); however, urbanites who prefer rural settings have been found to pursue a broad variety of livelihoods that are not necessarily typical “rural” professional activities.

In many cases introduced in this monograph, newcomers conceded that “the countryside” and “country lifestyle” was not the key incentive for the move; instead, for the majority, the countryside seemed the perfect setting for self-growth, challenge, and furthering their career goals. Improving their quality of life was one element, but it was not their main goal.

Broadly categorized, individuals who have relocated to rural areas are referred to as “lifestyle migrants,” that is, individuals who relocate for noneconomic reasons with the aim of leading a more meaningful life and consequently view migration as “a route to a better and more fulfilling way of life, especially in contrast to the one left behind” (Benson and O’Reilly 2009b: 1). Benson and O’Reilly define lifestyle migration as “the spatial mobility of relatively affluent individuals of all ages, moving either part-time or full-time to places that are meaningful because, for various reasons, they offer potential of a better quality of life” (Benson and O’Reilly 2009b: 2). Diversifying lifestyles (raifusutairu no tayōka), self-realization (jiko jitsugen), “living for oneself” (jibunrashiku ikiru), a better work-life balance (wāku raifu baransu), and a greater emphasis on quality of life have emerged as the main incentives for relocation. Other factors include the decreasing attractiveness of lifelong employment to some individuals against the background of lack of self-determination in conventional large-scale Japanese corporations. Many of my interviewees indicated that given the choice between leading a life where decision-making is left to the top-tier management in large-scale companies and a life where they can make their own decisions in a small-scale company, they would opt for the latter, even if this choice entails a reduced salary. Other migrants have opted out of regular work altogether, devising their own ways of earning a livelihood through a combination of sharing economy and freelance work—usually a lifestyle that involves close giving and taking with the immediate environment combined with an engagement that crosses physical boundaries through work and leisure (e.g., through social media and various forms of communication through the internet). Benson and O’Reilly’s concept of lifestyle migration has gained significant traction, but some scholars have pointed out that the inherent weakness of the framework’s effectiveness is due to its excessive comprehensiveness: “Lifestyle migration is a flexible conceptual framework that covers heterogeneous groups of individuals all seeking to improve their quality of life through international geographic mobility” (Bantman-Masum 2011).

Similar to Benson and O’Reilly’s definition of lifestyle migration, the concept of “lifestyle mobilities” is described by geographer Norman McIntyre as the “movement of people, capital, information and objects associated with the process of voluntary relocation to places that are perceived as providing an enhanced, or at least, different lifestyle” (McIntyre 2009: 230). To illustrate this change that occurs in migrants after their move, a female migrant in her mid-thirties who relocated to a remote island observes that in her leisure time, she has started to spend time outdoors in ways that she did not in Tokyo, picking wild flowers and plants to spruce up her home or preparing her own breakfast cereal mixes because breakfast cereal is not available in this remote location. She remarks that as a result of her short commuting time to work and the lack of entertainment and shops, she has considerably more time at her disposal in comparison with her previous life in Tokyo—a change in her routine that made her somewhat anxious at first. She says that in retrospect she “unconsciously ended up buying clothes and other products” when living in Tokyo (interview on 16 September 2016). Now she enjoys quiet days on the remote island, going to bed much earlier and having more time to sleep due to the brief commuting time. She states that she is satisfied with her present work-life balance and also uses less money since her relocation while enjoying a richer lifestyle (yutaka na kurashi). In other words, in her case corporeal mobility has resulted in a lifestyle change that coincided with a shift in values brought about by her partner’s decision to move to a rural area.

Fieldwork since 2010 in Niigata, Shimane, Miyagi, and Iwate prefectures and Hokkaido has shown gender-specific behavior patterns in migrants: Generally, female migrants tend to make greater efforts to engage directly with their local environment and nature in their leisure time as in the aforementioned case from Shimane Prefecture. Male migrants typically focus more on work, with many so engrossed in their professional activities that they end up neglecting leisure and social relations. For example, one of my male hosts during fieldwork, a migrant in his late twenties who is originally from Osaka but worked in Tokyo for three years in corporate employment before relocation to a remote island for work reasons, observes that without the specific vacancy notice, he would not have chosen to relocate as he is not particularly attracted to rural areas. In other words, the attractiveness of the work (not in financial terms, but in terms of self-determination and growth potential) was the main incentive for him to move. On reflection, he chuckles to himself, only a week after he started working on the island and formally changing his address, his manager ordered him back to Tokyo for one month because part of the activities that he was in charge of needed to be planned and negotiated in the capital. This example demonstrates that the conventional notion of relocation as a final, fixed, and distinct point in time is more imaginary than real and that mobility as such is contingent and permanent in many cases. Even when migrants make a conscious decision to relocate, they keep on moving out from their new home and coming back to it again after their initial relocation, both for work and leisure—a feature of the lives of the relocated that will be addressed in a section in chapter 3 in which I discuss the notion of lifestyle mobility. The example of this settler from Osaka also shows that lifestyle migration or mobility does not necessarily go hand in hand with counterurbanization, as has been claimed by Berry (1976) or Mitchell (2004). I advocate the view that the migratory moves of individuals need to be interpreted not as given points or fixed decisions but rather as processes that may include the option of second homes, repeated departures, and do not exclude the possibility of further moves in the future. In other words, motility, that is, the potential of mobility (Bonss and Kesselring 2004), is a salient feature in many narratives and individual trajectories: the majority of migrants encountered during fieldwork across Japan talked about their high satisfaction with their lifestyles after relocation; yet, they were not sure where they will find themselves in five years. Indeed, when I revisited field sites in Shimane Prefecture six years after my first visit, half of the migrants I had interviewed had moved on somewhere else (either back to their hometowns or to a third place).

“Mobility Turn” in the Social Sciences

The “mobility turn” in the social sciences has resulted in mobility practices and migratory trends being increasingly investigated by scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, human geography, psychology, sociology, as well as political science. Sheller and Urry refer to a “new mobilities paradigm” (2006). Mobility is presented as an “all-inclusive category” (Croucher 2015: 168), which generally is ascribed positive nuances (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013) against the background of Appadurai’s global “flows” (1996) and Bauman’s “liquid modernity” (2007). Many narratives make Giddens’s “reflexive project of the self” evident (1991:81), with lifestyles being defined as a set of practices that “give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity” (Giddens 1991: 81). As for the case of Japan, extended-stay tourism (Ono 2009), retiree migration to other countries, sociocultural refugee tourism to other countries (sotokomori) (Yamashita 2009), Japanese lifestyle migration to Australia (Nagatomo 2007a, 2007b, 2015) and the relocation of individuals in the creative scene to New York (Fujita 2009; Kanzaki Sooudi 2014) have attracted ample attention. Lunsing (2006) has conducted ethnographic research into individuals who decide to resign their posts and go freelance. However, in retrospect, urban-to-rural moves by the young, many of whom are “corporate refugees” (Benson and O’Reilly 2009b: 1) and invest in lifestyles of choice in their quest for a better way of life, have been largely neglected to date, with more attention having gone to “retirement migration,” as Gaspar also observes (Gaspar in Torkington, David, and Sardinha 2015: 14). Exceptions are Rosenberger’s ethnography of individuals engaging in organic agriculture as an alternative lifestyle (2014, 2017); Osawa’s research (2014) on new farmers (shinki shūnō), that is, urbanites with no family history of farming who migrate to rural areas with the purpose of engaging in agriculture; and my own (2016, 2017) research on disaster volunteers who decide to remain in Tohoku to engage in alternative lifestyles.

Individuals seek a “less conventional, less hurried lifestyle” in a different, often romanticized environment based on the classic image of the “rural idyll,” although some have to accept that it eludes them (O’Reilly 2014: 218, 234). In fact, numerous interviewees mentioned the gap between the life of anticipated rural tranquility and the lived reality of a higher workload than in their urban setting—the only difference being that postrelocation, the distinction between work and leisure was fluid. In many cases, these work and leisure activities were voluntary posts or work for the community, again, something that related to their work in various ways. Numerous interviewees described their lifestyles after relocating as a “work-life mix,” whereas they had a clear-cut divide between work and leisure in their previous careers in urban areas; some narratives suggested that individuals’ original ambitions to break out of corporate constraints in fact had been brought to naught as a result of their dedication to their projects and the fact that work and interest coincided. For example, an interviewee in his early thirties whom I had interviewed six years ago discussed his joyful sea fishing trips and his agricultural work; he had opted out of an elite corporate trajectory and relocated to a remote island to set up his own company that provided services in the field of regional revitalization. Six years later, the company that had been housed in a ramshackle building next to the local municipal agency had moved to a picturesque historic building, the workforce had grown by more than half, and our interviewee admitted that he hardly had any leisure time because he and his company have more work offered than they can accept. When I ask him about his work-life balance, he replies that now is the time to focus on work and deliver—if he took a rest now, he would lose everything he had achieved so far. Ultimately, his present reality is that he commutes between his home and office apart from his frequent business trips mostly to Tokyo and he can hardly recall the last day he took off. Outings to the seashore are not on the agenda of what I now refer to as a “lifestyle workaholic”; he mentions that his only form of recreation is meditation and soaking in a hot bath in the morning.

Another male interviewee is in his early forties and looks back on a successful career in human resources in a well-known elite company in Tokyo. Originally from a small town in Kyushu, he remembers that he thoroughly enjoyed his previous job as it entailed trips across Japan. Yet now he is situated on a remote island with his family; when I ask about his motivation for accepting the offer of managing a local cramming school (juku) with an aim to improve the educational success rate of island children, he responds that it was a combination of gut feeling, a sense of contributing something to society, and the challenge of starting from scratch. He clearly sees his mission as contributing something positive to Japanese society by turning this cramming school into a success story for the island. Rather than harboring romanticist notions of a slow life in the countryside, he sees his life on the island as part of his career trajectory—it is evident that he is not planning to stay forever, but that he intends to do his utmost to turn the project into a success.

This vignette of the manager illustrates the major shift that has become evident in Japanese society: the viability of changing jobs, linking “experience” and “challenge” to one’s personal contribution to societal innovation while working on one’s career, even if this involves decisions that seem unconventional. Generally, the factor of “personal challenge” or “happiness” has featured increasingly in considerations of work, as testified by a recent edition of the journal Neko Mook on the issue Work Style Book: Working in a Happy Manner (shiawase na hatarakikata). The quest for waku waku (positive energy and drive) is high on the agenda. Six years ago, initial fieldwork on the Oki Islands brought only a few encounters with pioneer migrants in their late twenties; they were perceived as highly talented but eccentric “dropouts,” even if they had elite backgrounds. Now, corporate warriors from Tokyo in their forties have relocated to the island after more than ten years in classic urban careers. These migrants often mention personal connections as the first stepping-stone to their place of relocation; some respondents had friends, acquaintances, or former working colleagues who already lived at the new location. Conversely, others lacked personal connections but mentioned media coverage as having caught their interest so that they decided to pay an initial commitment-free visit. However, on arrival, these potential migrants were greeted by local government representatives as if they had already decided to settle. Some of the long-term pioneer settlers hinted at their disappointment in migration altogether, since with increasing societal acceptance of migration, more and more migrants decide to move to a given place since some of their acquaintances or older peers had gone first; in the view of senior settlers, this mainstream turn had resulted in the decreased creativity of newcomers. In short, they suggested that it has become “hip” to relocate to rural areas and that individuals are not as motivated by genuinely personal incentives as they were five or ten years ago. Younger migrants who have settled more recently, in turn, perceive their senior peers as “distanced” (interview on 23 November 2016). In other words, areas with a high influx of urbanites offer new settlers the chance to engage in social relations with other migrants; yet, within this migrant community, different groups have emerged that tolerate each other but do not necessarily befriend one another.

Lifestyle Mobilities

The interviewees introduced in this monograph could also be categorized as participants in “lifestyle mobility” (Cohen, Duncan, and Thulemark 2013), defined as “on-going semi-permanent moves of varying duration” that constitute a more flexible conceptual lens for analyzing mobility since the boundaries between travel, leisure, and migration are blurred and their narratives make collapsing work and leisure divides evident. Contrary to Benson and O’Reilly’s definition that implies a clear-cut divide, Cohen, Duncan, and Thulemark suggest a more fluid category.

Japan is a highly centralized country with the majority of the representative government institutions and companies centered in Tokyo and Osaka. Recently, some efforts have admittedly been made to relocate some government institutions to other areas to prevent administrative damage potentially resulting from a major earthquake in the Tokyo area. However, a fair number of the nation’s elite universities are still located in Tokyo, and the mindset that one needs to go to Tokyo to have a real career is still deeply ingrained. So why would young aspiring individuals make the move down the career ladder, away from corporate safety, urban convenience, and around-the-clock entertainment?

Motives for relocation include self-realization, self-fulfillment, food safety (in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami), concerns about physical and mental health due to consistent overwork in corporate jobs, aspirations for a better work-life balance, time to think about what one really wants to do with one’s life, time to establish a start-up enterprise, realizing one’s long-held dream of opening a café or shop, and more generally taking on a challenge and personal development.

One example would be an editor and writer from Tokyo who relocated to Okinawa with his wife. Before, both of them were so caught up in their daily work routines that they hardly spent time together. Only once their relocation was complete did she conceive their first child, and consequently they successfully led a balanced family leisure life together. About their former life in Tokyo, he observes, “During the week I was busy with my job as an editor, on weekends there were career events and more work so employment occupied 95% of my time and I felt a sense of unease about my lifestyle” (Pen 2016: 72). The family lives in the gaijin jūtaku, literally, foreign accommodation, which was constructed in the postwar period until Okinawa’s return to Japan for staff working at the US military base. He observes that the unique architecture of the foreign accommodation gives the place an exotic feel, which he really likes.

Similarly, a family from Tokyo wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One Lifestyle Migration and Mobility: Negotiating Urban Lifestyles in Rural Communities
• Chapter Two The Countryside between Aging, Lack of Perspectives, and Creative Depopulation through the Lens of Female Settlers
• Chapter Three Post-Growth Forms of Living and Working: Countryside as Experimental Ground and Social Imaginary
• Chapter Four Between Agency and Anomie, Possibility and Probability: Lifestyle Migrants and the Neoliberal Moment
• Chapter Five Convergence of Work and Leisure: Blessing or Plight?
• Chapter Six Liminal Belonging and Moratorium Migration: Lifestyle Migrants between Limbo and Purpose of Life
• Chapter Seven Social Entrepreneurs between Self-Determination and Structural Constraints: Examples from Miyagi and Tokushima Prefectures
• Conclusion Deconstructing Japan’s Rural-Urban Divide
• References
• Index
• Back Cover