Aso 2.0 and beyond: Reflections on a decade of rural well-being research in Japan

While determinants of Anglo-American well-being concepts have been studied at large, more research on these has yet to emerge regarding “emic” Japanese well-being constructs. One of the predictors most determinant of “etic” well-being is extraversion. This study anticipates that extraversion is more strongly associated with emic well-being. Stratified Japanese data (n = 2,500) was examined using regression analyses. The results illustrate the importance of extraversion as a determinant of well-being overall and of emic aspects in particular, also exhibiting a stronger moderation effect on social-level well-being predictors with emic well-being. Results also point to extraversion in well-being -motivated behaviors, specifically U-turn migration behavior, while showing little regional variability. The implications of these findings for personality psychology and the etic and emic understanding of well-being are discussed. This research lends further support to the idea that extraverts can lead a “happy” life in the Japanese context, despite tropes of the contrary.

This presentation, part of an ongoing research project, focuses on the transformation of the former “Sato no Yu” Onsen in a small village in rural Gifu. By applying Actor-Network Theory (ANT) alongside the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault, this study frames the bathhouse as a social actor within its evolving environment, exploring how material structures actively shape cultural, economic, and social networks in rural Japan. The closure of the bathhouse, which once played a central role in the local tourism strategy, and subsequent transformation into a French-run restaurant reveal its ability to shape the social dynamics of the village, affecting interactions between locals, tourists, city planners, and business owners, thereby creating new socio-spatial realities. The goal of this study extends beyond the onsen, encompassing other spaces in the village, such as a former school, a vacation home, and an artist’s farm. Each of these spaces, like the bathhouse, acts within a network of human and non-human agents, contributing to the complex dynamics that define rural Japan’s changing landscape.

In July 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic started to take hold globally, Kuma Village in the Kumamoto Prefecture experienced one of its worst floodings ever recorded. The village was already facing various challenges, similar to many rural areas struggling with the impacts of demographic and economic decline. The compounded disasters of flooding and infectious diseases, however, highlighted the unique vulnerabilities and insecurities experienced by rural communities. The rapidly aging and declining population and the increased chance of catastrophic disasters create a new and challenging problem, even for Japan, which has built up a solid and effective response to disasters. By drawing on the human security approach, we can illustrate the problematic balance between the protection and empowerment of a local community that faces complex and interconnected challenges before and after the disaster. The findings of this presentation are based on research conducted with Lisette Robles for the JICA Ogata Research Institute.

Aso is a crucial research base for the humanities due to its exceptional collection of historical materials. The area's grand landscape is connected with Shintoism and Buddhism, leading to the creation of numerous mythological and historical documents. The medieval documents of the Aso clan are renowned as vital sources in political history, while the modern archives of the Aso shrines offer rare insights into modern religious policies. Additionally, Aso is rich in historical materials related to community research, with past studies, including Aso 1.0 from the University of Vienna, contributing to the body of knowledge. However, the use of Aso’s diverse historical materials is often confined to individual academic fields, and there has been little coordinated research. This talk will introduce a project to build a unified archive to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and discuss the role of Aso 1.0 within this framework.

Shifting from an initial exploration of parental well-being to delving into the intricacies of well-being in rural Japan during the Aso project, my research trajectory has since evolved to spotlight the significance of pets. Rooted in an intensive study conducted in the Aso region, where encounters with furry companions were frequent – but initially disregarded, I found myself compelled to redirect my sociological focus from human-to-human interactions, organizations, and structures to the realm of human-non-human interactions. I realized the need to comprehend the involvement of non-human actors in rural Japanese life, thereby acknowledging their profound impact on well-being. In this presentation, I revisit visual and interview data from Aso (jointly conducted with W. Manzenreiter) and illustrate how the project has branched out from there. The exploration now extends to questions of ownership, community dynamics, and consumption patterns of pets, as well as the nuanced understanding of animal welfare, both in rural and urban Japan. This journey has not only unearthed urban-rural disparities in the importance attributed to pets but has also uncovered their pivotal role in disaster prevention and management.

Despite well-known shortcomings in infrastructure and lower income compared to urban areas, rural Japan consistently shows similar levels of subjective well-being. This paper argues that one of the main factors in explaining these similar levels of well-being is social capital. Furthermore, it strives to differentiate between different dimension of social capital, namely community social capital, access to social support and the “dark side” of social capital.
By comparing the association of social capital and subjective well-being in rural and urban samples, the predictive properties of different types of social capital for subjective well-being will be determined and urban-rural differences will be highlighted.
Although the results show only minor urban-rural differences, indications of a rural trade-off between material depletion and social amenities can be established. Specifically, the negative effect of lower income in rural areas can be offset by higher levels of social capital.

I researched the Aso region to clarify the multilayered area of the regional circular and ecological sphere and the method for its construction. The largest area is the basin of six class A rivers flowing down from the Aso region as a regional circular and ecological sphere. Approximately two million people live in this basin, and 2.3 million people in the Fukuoka metropolitan area also use its water resources. It is estimated that the population in the Aso area will be reduced by half by 2050. In the Aso area, there are more than 20,000 hectares of semi-natural grasslands, which play a significant role as a groundwater recharge area. The area of the grasslands is decreasing year by year due to the aging of the people involved in maintaining and managing them, and it is predicted that more than half of the grasslands will be lost by 2050 compared to 2003. To halt the decline in grassland areas, it is necessary to reduce the amount of labor required for burning at the end of winter.

This paper addresses urban-rural migration in Japan as a problem for sub-municipal local self-governance. The sustainability of many rural communities in Japan is threatened by long-term outmigration and rapid aging. Urban-rural migration is commonly seen as a lifeline for these areas and has been promoted actively by all levels of government. The literature on urban-rural migration and the related policies and concepts has been growing rapidly. Yet, the focus of this literature tends to be on the experiences and aspirations of urban-rural migrants themselves, the impact of increased mobility on rural areas, and the obstacles urban “lifestyle migrants” may face in their new environment. Rarely is urban-rural migration analyzed from the perspective of the “receiving” community, let alone as a problem for sub-municipal local self-governance. Based on evidence from field research on so called regional management organizations, an emerging form of civic self-governance promoted by the central government since 2015, this paper analyzes how these organizations attempt to govern in-migration at the sub-municipal level. Their efforts reflect and in some ways reproduce conservative local social structures, but also help to alleviate some of the tensions surrounding urban-rural migration. Moreover, they point to a growing gap between national and municipal programs to encourage urban-rural migration and the needs and demands of rapidly aging rural communities.

This presentation explores the recovery of Aso Shrine and regional revitalization, focusing on Aso's disaster history and recovery support. The Aso region, prone to natural disasters like floods and ash falls, has faced multiple recoveries. Post-1950s floods, large-scale river improvements stabilized agriculture. Around the same time, Aso Shrine's festivals were designated a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, enhancing its reputation as a symbol of faith in nature's fertility. The 2012 Northern Kyushu floods and the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake inflicted severe damage, making the restoration of Aso Shrine’s collapsed tower gate a recovery symbol in the media. With external support offers and local government’s push for UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status, Aso Shrine is increasingly seen as a symbol of reverence for nature, especially volcanoes, and a focus on disaster prevention.

Rural Japan is generally associated with tightly knit homogeneous communities rather than with diversity. Yet, there are multiple signs pointing to ongoing diversification: There is a growing number of foreign lifestyle migrants and rural municipalities across Japan have increasingly started organizing events targeting non-Japanese as well as single urbanites potentially interested in rural relocation. Traditionally, the most desirable newcomers were young married couples, preferably with offspring and those migrants who promised to “bury their bones” in their newly chosen community. Now, catchphrases such as “log house living” (koyakurashi), “solo camp” and “single migration” (soro ijuu) have emerged. The aim of permanent settlement has gradually been replaced with multi-local living. Drawing on extensive fieldwork across rural Japan, this paper examines multilayered understandings of subjective well-being and diversity in the narratives and practices of foreign as well as nomad lifestyle migrants and their strategies in creating meaningful relationships in and beyond their chosen places of residence.

To conduct a scientific study of rural communities, it is crucial to gather both qualitative and quantitative data on-site. This presentation will explain the extent to which secondary statistics analysis can also provide valuable insights. At times, secondary statistical analyses are conducted as a replacement for primary research when the area under investigation is inaccessible for any reason. Alternatively, they may be used to gather background information to better prepare for subsequent field research. This presentation aims to highlight a third function: embedding the study area in a broader regional context.
Firstly, this presentation gives a very brief overview of the most important secondary statistics available for rural areas in Japan at a small-scale level. It then illustrates the usefulness of secondary statistical analyses by examining municipal-level census data on internal migration, using the example of the Aso region and Kumamoto Prefecture. Finally, the limitations of this approach are discussed.

For more than half a century, research on rural Japan has been casted by the doomsday discourse on the devastating regional effects of outmigration, infrastructure decay and population aging (kaso chiiki). The negative assessment has been aggravated by newer key notions of ‘marginal settlements’ (genkai shūraku) and the ‘extinction of communities’ (chiiki shōmetsu). Cities, by contrast, are said to be better prepared for the future due to the spatial concentration of institutions and resources that enable urban places to excel over the countryside in terms of labor and employment opportunities, social welfare, health care, education and entertainment. But there is no evidence that the general trend toward urbanization is paralleled by an overall increase in happiness: “There are many benefits of big-city living; high levels of happiness are not among them” (Berry and Okulicz-Kozaryn 2011: 872).
My research on rural life in Japan challenges the master-narrative of rural decline by engaging in ethnographic fashion with local notions of happiness and the significance of social relatedness for making life worth-living to those who stayed (behind) or moved into the countryside. My approach is situated in the tradition of the Vienna School of Japanese Studies, evidently by revisiting the same research site in southwestern Japan that Josef Kreiner and other researchers from Vienna chose in the late 1960s for the first time-ever field research project in Japan by a European research team. Drawing back on lessons from the first and the current project, I adopt a long-term perspective to explore the notions of rural happiness in the light of changing family and social relations, new mobilities and shifting moralities.

Women carry multiple responsibilities. These include (amongst others) childcare, senior care, household duties and work, as well as others in their networks (as in, their friends, family and neighborhood). These responsibilities can be or become mental and physical burdens that negatively impact the health and life of women. This paper aims to further understanding of the influence of these responsibilities on the wellbeing of women by interviewing 21 women of the rural Aso region of the Kumamoto prefecture.
First results include: Senior care is often seen by the women, of whom many are in their thirties, as a concern of the future, as their parents (or their parents-in-law), who are in their seventies or eighties, are still active. Many women describe their children as a majorly positive aspect of their lives, even though worries about their future are also present.

The quest for a better quality of life, work-life balance and individual happiness leads people in different stages of their life to settle in rural areas of Japan. This change in individual values combined with the advance of digitalization, marks rural areas as places of opportunities for all ages. However, rural areas’ rise in popularity is not without its challenges. An increasing diversification of lifestyles and mindsets within rural communities may lead to conflict between newcomers and long-time residents. Based on field research in the Nangō Valley in Kumamoto, this study explores how newcomers and residents of rural communities interact with each other and how they relate their community life to their subjective well-being.

A variety of factors contribute to people´s well-being, which can change over the course of a lifetime. My research focused on identifying the various factors that influenced the well-being of a specific group of women over the age of 60 living in vicinity to the most active volcano in Japan. Despite the administrative merger with the prefectural capital of Kagoshima, Sakurajima retains its rural character that creates a unique dynamic. Field research conducted in September 2022 aimed to understand how these women perceive their current state of well-being and conditional influences. Interviews were conducted with the help of an innovative method (Holthus and Manzenreiter 2019), which enables structured data collection through structure-laying-technique of predefined tokens and reflective interviews. The results offer insights into the complex relationships between individual well-being, living environment and advanced age in the specific contextuality of Sakurajima.

During the initial visit to the Aso-region as a PhD student and as part of an interdisciplinary research team on rural well-being in 2018, my respondents linked the good and bad things in their lives to the Kumamoto Earthquake of 2016 and its long-lasting effects on the region. Several months later, analysing my data and preparing for a fieldtrip in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made people in Aso – including researchers – adapt to the disaster, again shaping their views on well-being. It is not by chance that now, after having finished my thesis as part of the Aso research group, my current focus centres on how the resilience of rural communities in Japan can be provided despite demographic decline. This paper begins by reflecting on how resilience played a decisive role for understanding the well-being of my respondents during my research in Aso. Second, it outlines how this led to my current project on spaces of resilience in contemporary rural Japanese communities.

Rural communities and societies are often portrayed as closed, static and traditional. However, rural residents are mobile in their everyday lives to shop, commute to work, further their education and organize their leisure time. Urban-rural migrants who have moved to Kyūshū since 2011 are even more mobile. Some have more than one residence, others stay only for short periods, and still others have a history of transnational mobility and travel extensively. Drawing on the experiences of migrants in Taketa, the neighboring municipality of Aso in Ōita Prefecture, I will examine the mobilities of urban-rural migrants and analyze how they create their own networks that extend beyond Taketa into the Aso region. I will discuss how they cross social, geographical and administrative boundaries through their mobility and what this means for the social structure of rural communities.

This study examines the professional identity of nurses (kaigoshi) in rural Japan using a qualitative approach. Through semi-structured interviews with nurses from the Aso Region, supported by the use of sensitizing-booklets, the professional self-image is explored in terms of the individual, social and collective identity domains. This work highlights the motivations, self-perceptions and daily experiences that shape the understanding of professional identity, as well as the challenges and dynamics of rural care. The findings reveal a strong sense of professional self-worth, extensive professional self-reflection and a strong identification with the local community and collective values. These results contribute to a nuanced understanding of the professional identity of rural nurses and reveal relevant starting points for addressing the existing and upcoming challenges and needs of this professional field.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the well-being and difficulties Japanese female lifestyle migrants experience when living in rural settlements by analyzing what they want from life in their destination, how they make a living, and how they build relationships with residents and other migrants. In rural areas, women have fewer employment opportunities than in cities, and many residents take the gendered division of labor for granted. In this situation, migrant women are more likely to be recognized by the local population as someone's wife or daughter than as independent individuals. Studies of lifestyle migration in Japan have not adequately discussed the tactics women use to overcome such difficulties and live happily in their migrant community. This presentation will shed light on these issues through the cases of women who have migrated to Kinomoto-cho, Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture.

This study uses historical records, statistical data from national and prefectural levels, interview and survey data on local leaders, authorities, and residents to examine the effectiveness and limitations of traditional approaches to grassland conservation in the Aso region. Even though the economic value of grassland resources has disappeared in modern times, communities continue their efforts to prevent the transition from grassland vegetation to forest and thereby contribute to the preservation of landscapes, ecosystems, and water resources. Amidst declining management capacity, caused by depopulation and aging, and lack of administrative support, volunteer work has become a crucial supplement to traditional practices. Rural and environmental politics also aimed to strengthen community functions. A socio-engineering approach that strengthens social bonds and seeks the mobilization of human resources is an ideal concept for protecting commons, yet the sustainability of grassland conservation is becoming increasingly uncertain. While the management capabilities of rural communities in Aso have diversified, there is a general trend of decline, and predicting how long commons conservation activities can be continued at the community level is challenging. Although a socio-engineering approach that strengthens social bonds and seeks the mobilization of human resources is an ideal concept for protecting commons, it is impractical to assign the responsibility of conserving the vast grasslands throughout Aso solely to local residents. I propose that a new era has arrived to set the preservation of grasslands as a policy objective, which has been overlooked by public policies caught between agricultural, forestry, and environmental policies.

Alvin Toffler coined "... the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism's physical adaptive systems and it's decision-making processes" during the shift from an industrial to a super-industrial society characterized by disconnectedness and distraction (or anomy) the "future shock". How about the preparedness of the Aso region? What have been the past experiences? Will the region have the ability to develop new strategies or adapt to new challenges? In analogy to past Aso projects, the contribution represents a longitudinal projection or outlook for a possible future Aso 3.0 project in light of the present situation and challenges. The speaker will attempt to outline possible answers based on field-observations.