Activity Report
Exit-Voice Tradeoff in Ueda: Empowering Machizukuri from Career Perspectives
For this Special Research Project, the Shinohara seminar stayed in Ueda City from 9/4 to 9/8 tolisten to the voice of citizens amidst population decline. We aimed to conduct interviews to thoroughly
understand the local situation and analyze ways to deal with citizens’ dissatisfaction. During these 5 days,
we created and followed a comprehensive itinerary to yield the best outcomes.
Day 1
On the first day of the field trip, we visited the city hall and conducted 3 interviews to get a grasp of thelocal administration and obtain
available data to assess the current
Timeline
situation of population decline,
9/4 Interview with Schooling Promotion Section
community engagement, and careerprospects for young citizens in Ueda
Interview with Human Rights & Diversity Section
City. The first interview was with theSchool City Promotion Section of theInterview with Citizen Participation Promotion Section
city hall, which shared the latest
9/5 Interview with Regional Employment Promotion Section
information on education provided tolocal students, as well as the city’s planInterview with Shinshu Hamfor improving education in the future.
9/6 Interview with Ueda Chikuma High School and sending
We then carried out the secondout questionnaires
interview with the Human Rights andDiversity Section, in which we wereupdated on the support that the city
offers to women and non-Japaneseworkers. The last interview of the day
was done with the help of the city
officers of the Citizen Participation andCollaboration Promotion Section, whogave us an insight into Ueda City’sefforts to increase communityengagement.

Interview with Multicultural Coexistence Promotion
Association
9/7 Interview with Ueda High School and send out
questionnaires
Visit Machi-Camp and interview the coordinatorInterview with 3 leaders at Seed Japan
9/8 Vitis historic sites and paddy fields in Sanada area

Day 2
On the second day of the field trip, we visited the Regional
Employment Promotion Section in the morning. During this 1hour, we listened to the regional employment status, labor
shortage, as well as career prospects for young people fromthe view of city officers. In the afternoon, we dropped by
Shinshu Ham, one of the biggest livestock factories in theregion, to look into their way of attracting and supporting
foreign labor.

Day 3On the third day, we drove to Ueda Chikuma High School in theafternoon to distribute questionnaires to students and interview
teachers there. During this interview, the teachers shared theirinformation on the local high school education and careerprospects of students after high school graduation. After that, wewent to the Multicultural Coexistence Promotion Association ofUeda City next to the city hall. We were able to learn about thelocal activities organized by this association to connect local andnon-Japanese residents and the obstacles that prevent them fromfurther developing their activities.
Day 4
On the fourth day we had 3 interviews scheduled. We started by interviewing a teacher at Ueda High School,
one of the most prestigious local high schools. Most of their students choose to continue studying aftergraduation, which is a huge difference from Ueda Chikuma High School. While interviewing the teachers, wefound out that the students here have very different backgrounds, leading to different future plans.
Currently, we are still waiting for the questionnaires distributed to the students. We then continued tointerview local officials who put effort into community construction. We talked to the staff of Machi-Cam,the shared space that aims to bring the local residents and university students in the Ueda area together. We
also learned about the activities and seminars hosted there and got to witness a meeting between a local
designer and undergraduates about a culture project they were going to collaborate on. Our last interviewof the day was with Seed Japan, an organization that provides support for workers planning to relocate toUeda City and its surrounding areas. Here, they guided us through the services they provided, the local
labor shortage, and how they were trying to attract more workers from other prefectures.

Day 5
On the last day, we decided to explore surrounding areas. We got the inspiration from the casestudy of Shinshu ham. By encoporating historical tourism into the internship program, many
Vietnamese workers decided to stay in Ueda city. Therefore, we decided to visit the cultral
hiratages and paddy fields in Sanada area. During the trip, we also got to talk with the local
residents who were selling their harvest in farmers’ markets.
Conclusion
After this 5-day trip, we successfully conducted qualitative interviews with local businesses, teachers, city
officers, and foreign workers, as well as a quantitative survey with high school students in Ueda City. We
also carefully identified career issues with the youth as the key to overcoming the city's population decline.
These descriptive data gained from the trip will be used to make recommendations to Ueda city and create
our proposal in the Public Policy Forum in November 2023.