Treasure Hunts in Rural Japan: Place Making at the Limits of Sustainability

Abstract

Locality studies, a form of community mapping, emerged as a popular technique of sustainable development in early-21st-century Japan. Its proponents contend that by cataloging the features of their surroundings rural residents can "rediscover" dormant resources and mobilize civic energies to sustain homes hollowed by decades of persistent socioeconomic decline. Despite its empowering potential, the practice of locality studies also reflects a political climate of devolving responsibility epitomized by decentralization reforms that demand greater autonomy and self-reliance of Japan's regions. Through an ethnographic examination of locality studies and debates surrounding its practice in Japan's northeastern Tōhoku region, I argue that it embodies a politics of recognition suited to an era of state streamlining. Its diverse proponents encourage residents of Tōhoku's mountainous peripheries to convert legacies of marginalization into celebrations of cultural diversity as a way of shifting responsibility for the future of the depleted countryside onto its inhabitants. [sustainability, recognition, neoliberal responsibility, rural decline, community mapping] RESUMEN Los estudios de localidades, una forma de mapeo de las comunidades surgió como una técnica popular de desarrollo sostenible a principios del siglo XXI en el Japón. Sus proponentes sostienen que catalogando las características de los alrededores de residentes rurales se pueden "redescubrir" recursos no usados y movilizar energías cívicas para mantener casas vacías por décadas de persistente decadencia económica. A pesar de su potencial of residents had deployed the previous summer to catalog important attributes of the area, and the purpose of the evening's gathering was to view their findings. Onto a large screen, a projector flashed digital photos they'd taken of the surrounding district. The slide show featured rustic local scenes: weatherworn shrines nestled in greenery, a hot springs bathhouse, the mountainside remains of a copper Love • Treasure Hunts in Rural Japan 113

Biological Anthropology inAmerican Anthropologist

“…Megan Tracy's piece examines how technical innovations associated with dairy products combine with place‐specific qualities of Inner Mongolia to create a marketing niche for particular types of “Green Food” products from China. Her article fits well with the articles on food marketing (Griffith et al ; Roosth ) and place making (Ganapathy ; Love ) that appeared in the March 2013 issue of AA .…”

Creative Revitalization in Rural Japan

“…In response, the Japanese government has implemented several policies and measures since the early 1970s, including town mergers to decentralize and save on administrative costs (Rausch 2006). In parallel with government initiatives, there has been an increase in local bottom-up efforts of "self-revitalization" initiated by migrants, activists, artists, and academics (Dilley, Shinzato, and Ando 2017;Love 2013). Dilley, Shinzato, and Ando (2017) have noted the diverse names given to contemporary revitalization movements, including regional revitalization (chiikiokoshi), regional placemaking (chiikizukuri), and village making (murazukuri).…”

Ruins for the future

“…Local administrations lack the power, and national government is more invested in promoting the "leaner," neoliberal economy that is partially responsible for impoverishing rural Japan. In lieu of state support or fiscal transfers, policy makers argue that such areas should mobilize their cultural resources to boost tourism from urban centers (Love 2013). But because many regions have overlapping or near-identical traditions, religious practices, and foodstuffs, this has the unintended consequence of locking towns and villages into a zero-sum game of differentiation, each struggling to monetize its variations on common cultural practices and products.…”

“…For example, Le Mentec and Zhang (2017) have shown how visits to the “earthquake relics site” in Wenchuan, China, fell as memories of the 2008 disaster receded, calling into question the sustainability of rebuilding economies around disaster tourism. Bridget Love (2013, 121) goes further: “No initiatives of local branding or heritage renewal,” she writes, “seem adequate to overcome the demographic and economic decline” that comprises the region's legacy of “uneven development vis‐à‐vis Japan's center.” After 3.11, attempts to realize such renewal have paradoxically required that survivors continue living among the ruins of that development—leaving things unreconstructed, as the inn proprietress said, so that outsiders would come and see. This might ensure that coming generations never forget the tsunami, but advocating turning places into “disaster remains towns” ( shinsai ikō no machi ) would, ironically, also justify new policies that further burden the future.…”