Asia's New Ruralities

As post-industrial societies across the world confront aging populations, many countries are replacing state-subsidized social welfare with privatized care, especially in rural areas where facilities are difficult to maintain. In Japan, in recent years there is increasing attention to the outsourcing of social welfare from previously government and corporate-based welfare to private service providers and community-based services. In many cases, local NPOs and community groups have taken up the challenge of caring for aging residents, with some critics seeing this as a sign of the neoliberalization of the Japanese welfare system.
Through fieldwork in a rural community in Nagano Prefecture, I examine how the changing national political economy of welfare services has affected the welfare systems in aging and depopulated areas. Against the backdrop of debates over privatization as well as the effects of municipal mergers, I analyze the emergence of a resilient and innovative local economy of care among local actors who have built community-based services premised on the recalibration of previous community structures and ethics.

Holthus, Barbara, Gagné, Isaac, Manzenreiter, Wolfram, and Waldenberger, Franz (eds). 2020. Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics. Taylor & Francis, Online Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003033905

Gagné, Isaac. 2020. “Dislocation, Social Isolation, and the Politics of Recovery in Post-Disaster Japan”. Transcultural Psychiatry.

Gagné, Isaac. 2017. “Religious Globalization and Reflexive Secularization in a Japanese New Religion”. Japan Review 30: 153–177. DOI: http://doi.org/10.15055/00006737

Based on in-depth case studies of small family businesses, cooperatives and revitalization programs in different fishing villages in Kyushu, this contribution explores how rural coastal spaces traditionally characterized by the presence of small-scale fisheries are being reconfigured through global flows and national policy decisions as well as local agency. The emergence of buyer-driven global commodity chains in seafood, the proliferation of large supermarket chains and a re-orientation of consumer preferences have profoundly restructured the seafood sector in Japan. High input costs and stagnating fish prices contribute to the declining profitability of local coastal fisheries, and fishers are becoming scarce and aged. In deep-sea fisheries, “technical interns” from Southeast Asia are largely replacing Japanese crews as cheap labor. Transregional and global flows and influences, however, are not limited to human agency. Environmental change – albeit in most cases caused by human action – may be even more severe for fishing livelihoods. Rising water temperatures, pollution, coastal degradation, acidification and other environmental problems pose a serious threat to marine ecosystems and lives, and thus also to fishery resources. Policy reform and development plans are directed at both the material as well as the social restructuring of rural coastal spaces. At the same time, local agency – and responsibility – must not be overlooked in these transformations. This multiplicity of influences needs to be analyzed holistically in order to understand the dynamics shaping new marine ruralities.

Ganseforth, Sonja. 2020. "Reclaiming the Global Countryside?: Decline and Diversification in Saga Genkai Coastal Fisheries". Japan’s New Ruralities. London & New York: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429331268-6

This paper attends to the blur of the urban-rural divide and the nature-culture dualism in an unlikely setting, Hong Kong, where the idea of “countryside” is often perceived to be irrelevant. While urban expansion persists in this city, young people wish to go back to the land and grow local food. An urban ecotopia, as it seems to be, however, is underpinned by human mobilities and resources from the downtown. Rather than withdrawing from the city, agricultural activists promote discourses regarding the co-development of urban and rural areas. Through examining the historical, cultural, political, and economic contexts of Hong Kong since colonial times, this paper argues that the changing landscape is both internationally oriented and informed by local context. The social changes involve social reforms and shifting meanings of the rural and the urban. In the process, food serves as a mediator that connects “urbanites and countrymen,” “human and the environment,” and “the local and the global.”

Hao-Tzu Ho. 2020. "Cosmopolitan locavorism: global local-food movements in postcolonial Hong Kong". Food, Culture & Society 23:2, 137-154. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2019.1682886

South Korea is highly dependent on the global food market. Its self-sufficiency ratio of grains is 23%, while counting in other fresh products the ratio is still no more than 47%. As if symbolically compensating for the weak food sovereignty, the public has grown interests in conserving its heritage crops over the recent decades. This presentation traces and asks the reasons for the historical formation of the social values laid upon the farmers’ varieties cultivated in South Korea, by utilizing literature and ethnographic research data. Initially referred to as ‘landraces (토종, 土種)’ by a group of agriscience researchers for their value as ‘genetic resources’ held by the nation-state, the varieties are now also attributed to a number of cultural and ecological significances by such diverse social groups as farmers, urbanites, activists, and policy makers. One remarkable aspect of this change is that ‘nationalistic’ undertones in the previous era have been largely weakened in its symbolic representations. There appear to be several factors relevant for the change—the introduction of foreign ‘heirloom’ varieties and their popularity, globalization of cuisines, urban farmers markets, urban gardening practices, online forum discussions and seed exchanges, and social characteristics of the growers. By tracking the historical change, I will show how the bedrock narrative changed through the time from one that is more associated with local economic growth to that with plenatary environmental problems, and how this has to do with the experience of ‘glocal’ reproductive crisi

Book chapter
Hwang, Heesun. “How to pursue ongoingness of life on the planet Earth?” In: Kim, Hwan-Seok et al., 2020, The Frontline of the 21st Century’s Thoughts: The Great Transformation in Thinking for the Earthly Coexistence, Seoul: Igam. pp. 31-41. (황희선, 「지구에서 어떻게 삶의 지속을 추구할 것인가?」, 김환석 외 지음, 『21세기 사상의 최전선: 전 지구적 공존을 위한 사유의 대전환』, 서울: 이성과감성, 2020년, 31-41쪽.)

Translation
Haraway, D., 2016, Manifestly Haraway, University of Minnesota Press. (도나 해러웨이 지음, 황희선 옮김,『해러웨이 선언문: 인간과 동물과 사이보그에 대한 전복적 사유』, 2019, 서울: 책세상.)

The paper analyzes local initiatives to link agricultural production and winemaking with tourism in the Kōfu Basin (Yamanashi Prefecture) to investigate the challenges of “revitalizing” Japan’s rural and semi-urban peripheries. The Kōfu Basin takes pride in its history of horticulture and alcohol production, but also faces a prolonged period of socio-economic and agricultural decline. Recently, a variety of public and private initiatives are aiming at the promotion of “Wine Tourism” as answers to pressures for a more entrepreneurial approach to agricultural production, and to relink the Kōfu Basin to the Tokyo metropolitan region both socially and economically. Based on interview data and participatory observation, the paper uncovers the conflicts and contradictions of these attempts to (re)invent the basin as a wine tourism site, which are rooted in the complex social and normative landscape that governs land use and agricultural production, and shapes the relations between farmers, winemakers, entrepreneurs, and local and prefectural administrations.

Jentzsch, Hanno. 2020. "Japan's Changing Regional World of Welfare: Agricultural Reform, Hamlet-based Collective Farming, and the Local Renegotiation of Social Risks". Pacific Affairs, 93 (2): 327–351. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5509/2020932327

Jentzsch, Hanno. (forthcoming). Harvesting State Support: Institutional Change and Local Agency in Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection Regime. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

The paper introduces a ‘patchwork ethnography’ into non-indigenous wisdom, located in Wang Chau Village—a green belt in the northwest part of Hong Kong. Despite a four-year resistance led by “non-indigenous” villagers, the government is adamant in displacing over 500 villagers, instead of building social housing units on nearby brownfield sites. Socio-spatial issues and an archaic land policy leftover by the former British colonial government, are problematic for the villagers, the concern group and the public. However amidst adversity, villager wisdom and situated knowledges continue to illuminate—confronting displacement, eviction and ecological destruction. The paper presents a villager ethnography that relates to over 51 Chinese medicinal herbs, jackfruit festivals, DIY fruit enzyme and traditional bone setting. The presentation shares participatory action research and research-creation methodologies that aim to catalyse a multi-species creative practice and sustain an indigenous wisdom amidst and after the upcoming village eviction.

Kaitlin Chan. 2018. "Imagining a post-capitalist city with Michael Leung: A creative resistance against developer hegemony". Still / Loud.. URL

The built infrastructure of mega cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong or Shanghai epitomize Asia’s rise to the world’s largest and fastest growing economy. With most scholarly attention focussing on urban growth and agglomerations as hotbed of societal transformation and cultural innovation, the countryside so far has been regarded as riddled with grave structural problems, including economic and demographic decline. This panel questions the rigid boundaries of urban/rural, progressive/backwardly, modern/traditional, and even here/there at a time when rural areas are standing at the crossroads of. Case studies from coastal fishery, mountainous villages and metropolitan farming communities examine to what degree the countryside in Asia is exhibiting new characteristics that are driven by structural changes and a complex net of translocal relations on a global scale. The nascent idea of a “global countryside” as a hybrid space considers the impact of global capitalism as well as the rich diversity of agrarian technologies and local customs to be of utmost significance to understand the spatial and scalar quality of forces giving shape to rural areas and their inhabitants in relation to their entanglement with politics, business and culture crafted in urban areas. The discussion fleshes out the ways in which old and new actors on the ground engage with global networks and processes to produce hybrid outcomes, blurring the binary distinctions of local/global and giving proof to Asia’s new ruralities.

Manzenreiter, W., Lützeler, R., & Polak-Rottmann, S. (eds). 2020. Japan’s New Ruralities: Coping with Decline in the Periphery. London & New York: Routledge. DOI:

Holthus, Barbara, Gagné, Isaac, Manzenreiter, Wolfram, and Waldenberger, Franz (eds). 2020. Japan Through the Lens of the Tokyo Olympics. Taylor & Francis, Online Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003033905

In Japan, demographic challenges of rural areas are a frequent point of academic and popular discussion. Ongoing socio-economic developments and commodification of natural and cultural assets mirror several elements of Wood’s ‘global countryside’, leading to conflicting understandings of rurality. However, it remains unclear how rural identities and their relation to well-being are negotiated between established and emerging actors. Based on semi-structured interviews in Aso, Kumamoto, we find that conflicting conceptions of rurality become apparent, whose discussion is hampered by a lack of suitable informational channels. Further, many interviewees report self-realization, a relational understanding of happiness and individual autonomy as the main driving forces behind their engagement for the region. Examining well-being from both an individual and relational approach illustrates that Aso’s ruralities are subject to dynamic transformation in terms of a ‘global countryside’, enabling new identities that are under continuous negotiation.

Fankhauser, Peter, Holthus, Barbara, & Hundsdorfer, Stefan. 2018. "Partnership satisfaction in Germany and Japan: The role of family work distribution and gender ideology". In B. Holthus, & H. Bertram (eds), Parental well-being: Satisfaction with work, family life, and family policy in Germany and Japan, 164-196.

Polak-Rottmann, Sebastian, Lützeler, Ralph, & Manzenreiter, Wolfram. 2020. "Epilogue: Think global, act peripheral in Japan’s new ruralities". In Japan’s New Ruralities: Coping with Decline in the Periphery (pp. 295-301). Routledge.