IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2020) 11-1

Research article
erd

Empowerment of Rural Community and its Resilience:
A Case Study of a Small-Scale Rural Community in a
Mountainous Area in Japan
KAKO INOUE*
University of Miyazaki, Miyazaki, Japan
Email: kako.inoue@gmail.com
Received 15 January 2020

Accepted 27 May 2020(*Corresponding Author)

Abstract Japanese rural communities have experienced an aging population with a drastic
decline in its size while more economic functions and workplaces have become concentrated
in urban areas. Some rural communities in remote mountainous areas even face the further
serious problem of extinction of their own community. Even with such a difficult situation,some rural communities have been successful in achieving the migration of their young
generation back to their rural areas, and even in reviving their energy year by year. The
objective of this paper, therefore, is to demonstrate how rural communities in remotemountainous areas in Japan can become empowered and resilient regardless of the serious
threat of further depopulation and marginal settlement through a case study of a small-scale
rural community in a remote mountainous area of Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan. The paper first
overviews how rural communities have experienced depopulation over time together withchanges in livelihood along with changes in lifestyle. Then, by describing how a small
community in the study area was challenged to implement a series of projects by themselves,utilizing their local resources and cultures, it explains how a depopulated community could
revive and gain confidence in themselves while receiving a lot of attention from visitors fromoutside. The study results show that the aged female population in the community is the key
human resource as they can actually play an important role in the rural community, producing
local valuable products and services. Moreover, the study points out the importance of
maintaining and passing on rural communities’ identities to the next generations, while
explaining why some of the young population now choose to live in such remote rural areas‒ a shelter from the overly globalized and industrialized modern society.
Keywords community empowerment, resilience of rural community,
small-scale community in mountainous area, aged population

INTRODUCTION
This study seeks to stimulate the frank discussion that is required if researchers, practitioners andpolicymakers of any nation under the economic development stage are to work effectively with ruralcommunities in responding to the possible transitional changes impacting rural declines over time.
This paper describes the experience of, and lessons learned from, a small-scale rural community thatexperienced serious declines in the last 50 years but struggled to sustain the community.
The notion of rural decline in Japan since the 1960s (i.e. due to the rapid economic growth andchange in industrial structure that happened around the 1960s) is firmly established in the literature(Ono, 2005; Odagiri, 2009), and is supported by demographic trends that depict many small ruralcommunities in remote, hilly and mountainous areas gradually shrinking in population, making thecommunity age as well. Odagiri (2009) pointed out that the “decline” has been particularly witnessedin three dimensions, namely i) population reduction, ii) abandoned agricultural and forestry land, andiii) weakened community functions, leading to a loss of pride in one’s own community. An economic
and population imbalance has also been found between large cities and smaller remote ruralcommunities in Japan. There are similar concerns about the fate of small rural communities asⒸ ISERD

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economic and demographic pressures have also been noted in many developed countries in Europe,
North America and Australia (Forth and Howell, 2002; McManus et al., 2012).
What this paper wants to focus on is not the decline itself but critical factors involved insustaining the rural communities regardless of the serious threat of their extinction with gradualemptying and aging at a high rate. To explore the possible efforts made by rural communities to react
to the pressures of rural declines, this paper pays close attention to the key concepts of “resilience”
and “community empowerment” by analyzing the real case of one small-scale rural community in a
mountainous area in Japan.
“Resilience” and “Community Empowerment”
Japan’s depopulating rural communities received significant attention when a report, the so-called“Masuda Report,” was released in May 2014. The report predicted that almost half of themunicipalities might disappear due to a population decline and weakened administrative functions.
“Municipalities at risk of extinction,” mostly located in rural areas, have been listed and the urgent
need to cope with rural community issues cannot be avoided, with words like “revitalization” and“renewal” being used in the policy arena in Japan. Throughout this debate, Japan has experienced
other kinds of negative impacts brought about exogenously that have often hit rural communities(such as huge natural disasters, for example the Great East Japan Earthquake), and the concept of“resilience” has been debated (Itonaga, 2012; Hattorie et al., 2013).
Resilience is a complex concept, being used as an ecological term (i.e. the ability of a system toregain the status quo after a major shock), and extended to other domains and applied in social
contexts where resilience is understood as the capacity to adapt seamlessly to largely exogenous
events (McManus et al., 2012). The critical feature of the notion of resilience is the idea that there
are some factors about a rural community that enable it to cope with changing circumstances. Such“factors” can be social capital (Putnam, 1993) or, more specifically, trust and norms of reciprocity(Bridger and Alter, 2006), but they cannot be simplified and based on a single factor. Rather, thispaper suggests that communities are empowered through a number of events involving theparticipation of all community members, increasing confidence and the mutual respect of people
living in a depopulated and aged rural community.
The concept of empowerment originates from the effort of a local community or marginal
people to gain power, leaving their voiceless or powerless conditions behind (Sianipar et al., 2013;
Sutawa, 2012). To discuss how a rural community can cope with a changing environment, especiallywhen the weakening function of the community is under serious threat, this paper attempts todemonstrate how a community can be empowered even under the situation of depopulation and aging.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how ruralcommunities in remote mountainous areas in Japan canbecome empowered and resilient regardless of the serious
threat of further depopulation and marginal settlement
through a case study of a small-scale rural community inthe remote mountainous area of Miyazaki Prefecture,
Japan (Fig. 1). By looking closely at the case of a smallscale rural community of less than 100 people, this paper
tackles the following research questions: 1) How has the
depopulation of the community evolved over time?; and 2)
What triggered the community to revive themselves, andhow has the community been empowered? By analyzing
the results, this paper attempts to discuss critical factors
for resilience in fighting back from rural declines.
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Community
Power
Pressure of declines

Community
Empowerment

Triggering resilienceTime

Fig. 1 Rural declines, resilience andcommunity empowerment

IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2020) 11-1

RESEARCH METHOD AND THE STUDY TARGETThe study is conducted based on a series of field observations carried out since 2016, interview
surveys held in August 2016, July 2019 and September 2019, and documents collected from thetarget community and village.
When the land of Japan is classified into the four categories of i) urban areas, ii) flat farming
areas, iii) hilly farming areas and iv) mountainous farming areas, in accordance with the guidelinesof the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery in Japan, hilly and mountainous areas (i.e. iii
and iv) account for about 36% of the total farming area and output (MAFF, 2017). The study target
community is located in the village of Nishimera , Miyazaki Prefecture, in the Kyushu region ofJapan. Approximately 88% of the prefectural land is hilly and mountainous and about 37% of theprefectural population reside there (Miyazaki Prefecture, 2019). Among the 26 municipal cities,
towns and villages of Miyazaki Prefecture, Nishimera village has the smallest population with 1,132
people (580 households) as of October 2019, and 96% of the land is categorized as mountainous
areas. The village has eight traditional
communities, and this study focuses on oneof those, “Ogawa Community,” which islocated about 40 minutes from the village
center by car, and it takes more than 1.5 hours
to reach the nearest commercial area. The
Ogawa Community has a population of 92
people. This community has experienced
drastic population declines over the last 50
years and has been implementing a numberof projects to revive its own community for
20 years. The study focuses on the case of
Ogawa Community to demonstrate thecritical factors required for a small-scale ruralcommunity to be resilient regardless of theFig.2 Location of Ogawa Community,
long-term socio-economic change brought
Nishimera Village, Miyazaki, Japan
about from outside the community.
RESULTSHistory and Transitional Change of Ogawa Community (RQ1: How has Depopulation
Evolved Over Time?)
The Ogawa Community has a long history as the center of Nishimera Village with the feudal lords’
residence (i.e. castle) having been there for about 200 years in the Edo era with. The shrine of thecommunity is said to have been built about 500 years ago. At the time of the Meiji restoration in the1860s, the landlord (i.e. the feudal lord) had kindly allocated all his forest land to local dwellers
equally, making people’s livelihood quite stable. With such forestry resources, the community
traditionally had a unique way of living with two residences, one in the forest (called a Sakugoya)and the other in a residential community center. Table 1 shows the transitional changes experienced
in the Ogawa Community over the last 50 years. There was a drastic population movement since1960 from rural communities to urban areas due to changes in the industrial structure in the higheconomic growth period and the stagnant wood prices due to imported wood caused the forest
industry to shrink and the population in forest areas to decrease. The Ogawa Community also
followed the trend, and it has about 550 people left from the community in 50 years. As the workingage population migrated out of the community during the high economic growth period, the people
who were left in the village 50 years later became old, while less and less children were born in thecommunity, leading to school close, making difficult situation for younger generations to continue
to stay or to come back there.
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Table 1 Changes in the local situation along with modernization and forestry declines
Year: Population
1960: about 650

1980: about 250

2000: about120

Local situation, lifestyle, etc.
- People had a traditional lifestyle of staying at theircottage for forestry work, and coming back to theirofficial house to live in Ogawa Community.
- Neighboring communities had been submerged due
to reservoir construction. (Many construction
workers came to construct the dam.)- 1970s: Rapid forestry decline and forestry work did
not require many laborers anymore due totechnological improvements.
- Modern work style with one house, commuting bycars to fields, was commonly found.
-1980: % of population aged 65 or older in Nishimera
village: 13.6%.
-1989: Primary and Junior school closed due to lackof students (no high school in the village).
-1994: Public bus service to the community has
terminated its operation.
-2000: % of population aged 65 or older in Ogawa
Community and Nishimera village is 71% and 36%,
respectively. => 63% and 41% in 2010,
respectively.

Events and trends in Japan- Early 1960s: Crude oil
imports were liberalized, andpetroleum replaced coal as themain player in Japan’s energy.
- Timber self-sufficiency: 87%- 1970s: Rapid increase in thenumber of private cars andvehicles.
- Timber self-sufficiency: 32%.
- Continuous decline in timber
prices(importedtimberbecomes dominant in themarket).

- Timber self-sufficiency: 18%.

Note: Source of timber self-sufficiency rate is “Learning Museum of the Forest and Forestry,” and source of % of
population aged 65 or older is from Nishimera Village documents for Ogawa, and from e-stat.com for Nishimera village.

Community’s Initiative and Community Empowerment (RQ2: What Triggered theCommunity to Revive Themselves, and how the Community has been Empowered?)In 2000, Nishimera village officers came to explain about the estimated future population of the
Ogawa Community, informing dwellers: “[T]his community will be extinct if the current situation
continues.” People were shocked and held many meetings, discussing what they should do. Having
gained a consensus among all the dwellers of the community that they could not die without taking
any action, the local people decided to utilize what they had locally; specifically, they used theirhands to collect resources from the forest (i.e. edible wild plants). Having collected these forest
resources, they decided to hold a festival, serving the local resources to visitors. All the dwellers of
the community participated in the festival, and there were about 300 visitors in the first year. Due toits popularity, the number increased to more than 1000 in the second year. In receiving more visitorsfrom outside communities (10 times more visitors than its population), local people started to realizethat their traditional food, culture and even their lifestyle were unique in the view of outsiders, whoplaced high value on their culture, which led local people to grow in confidence. After several years,
they started to say: “Festivals are held once a year, but why can’t we hold something every day, andreceive more guests?” With this in mind, a preparatory committee to develop community projects
was first established among community members in 2005. This was followed by the community’s
official management organization established in 2007, and finally the launching of restaurants andguesthouses to share their traditional food and lifestyle with guests throughout the year, which were
to be operated and managed by local people in 2009. When people began to discuss what was to be
started up, they thought they didn’t have anything special, and presented the simple idea of opening
a restaurant serving popular food, like Udon noodles, which are available anywhere in Japan.
However, after consulting with various supporters, including village officers, people started torecognize that their traditional food and even their olden-days’ lifestyle were absolutely unique
outside their community, and therefore of value to the majority of guests coming from cities. With
such findings, people decided to name their initiative Sakugoya, their traditional work cottage(second house) in the mountains, thereby maintaining and cherishing their traditions and local
identities. With this philosophy, people decided to utilize the historical area of the Ogawa Community,Ⓒ ISERD

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creating a restaurant and guesthouses built in the traditional way as shown in Fig. 3. Moreover,community members were stunned by the results of their operation as the number of visitors rose as
high as 25,000 in 2012, and economic benefits were also brought to the community, as illustrated inFig. 4.
It should be noted that as the main community’s workforce comprised elderly female dwellers,
the restaurant was managed by 10 elderly women with an average age of 72.3 years as of 2016. Theseold women who used to work in the mountains and on farmland now started to receive guests frommany places, even from foreign countries, and they became very busy every day, cooking in therestaurant kitchen, chatting to visitors, coworking with many other neighbors as colleagues and being
appreciated by community members. Such people often say that they feel happy to contribute to theirown community. In addition to local people’s initiatives, the village office supported the community
by constructing houses to receive new dwellers, leading to the arrival of 26 migrants since 2009,
including three families with children. The peaceful style of traditional living surrounded by natureand forest land attracted a number of younger people who placed importance on quality of life. With
these new dwellers, the percentage of the population aged 65 or older was reduced to 58% in 2019.

Fig. 4 No. of visitors and sales

Fig. 3 Ogawa Sakugoya

Source: Data from 2005 to 2008 aretaken from village office document, anddata since 2009 from Ogawa Sakugoya.

Source: The author edited the picture
taken from https://www.ogawasakugoyavillage.com (accessed Jan. 09, 2020).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
From the experience and lessons learned from the case demonstrated above, at least two importantfactors are to be pointed out in relation to rural community resilience. When the socio-economic
situation changes over time as a result of a weakening forest industry along with progressing
globalization and a lifestyle shifted to the modern way, the rural communities can be marginalized
to a very small level if local people continue to make their livelihood through business as usual, butsuch communities can be empowered against such pressures when local people possess thewillingness to sustain their community. Such willingness can be turned into a collective power,
making the community as a whole change themselves in order to move forwards. The sense of crisis
shared unanimously triggers a series of actions taken by local dwellers. The first important factor isthe shared vision among all community members that they do not wish to see their community
become extinct but rather that their community succeeds into the next generation, as such a sharedvision drives the community as a whole to move forward in the same direction.
Second, there existed “unrecognized” local resources, which became the strength for thecommunity to gain power. For instance, local people did not recognize the edible wild plants
available in their forest and that their traditional healthy cuisine, which they ate every day, had suchvalue for people in cities. Moreover, there were many old and hard-working women who lived in thecommunity. As many of the female dwellers typically performed unpaid work or did a relatively lesswell-paid job in the forest, on farms and in houses growing trees, vegetables and cooking, many maledecision-makers in the rural community might have not recognize that such old female members
could bring such benefits to the community. Having seen the participation of all community members,Ⓒ ISERD

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the aged female population in the depopulated community is now recognized as a key humanresource as they can actually play an important role, producing local valuable products and services.
Last, but not least, the study results indicated that many people in cities were attracted by rural
traditional values, with even younger generations migrating back to rural communities in remotemountainous areas. Those young generations now seek to enrich their life by enjoying craftmanshiputilizing natural resources, and even being part of a community of members whose connection isbased on trust. Rural communities that still retain their local identities are opposed to standardized
and regulated norms of a globalized modern society. Such communities may offer places to stay forpeople who are looking for real richness of human life surrounded by a rich culture and natural
resources from which to self-supply their own food and satisfy their needs for their everyday life.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank local residents of Ogawa community for their assistance with this research.
We are grateful that this research is supported by KAKENHI 19H03076.
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