National Development Policy andRegional–Community Studies in a Postwar JapaneseContext
Hideo Nakazawa

SummaryJapan has often been referred to as a developmentalist country symbolized by government-led andconsecutive national plans. Reacting to this reality, initial members of JARCS carried out research toinvestigate the side effects of huge development projects, guided by theories and methods referred toas “structural analysis.” The first part of the present paper describes the main research results
produced by several JARCS schools. As the Japanese economy entered into a mature phase at theend of the twentieth century, realities on communities became unclear and variegated. In attempting
to tackle this difficulty, JARCS tried to set an annual theme to illustrate these rapidly changing
realities, accompanied by hope for post-developmentalist philosophies and programs such as
endogenous development (machizukuri). However, after the Great East Japan earthquake of 2011,
another power, described by some JARCS members as “disaster capitalism,” entered the localities.
Many communities, especially those in the hinterlands, are currently struggling with this new reality,
which needs to be revised and reorganized using JARCS theories and practice.

1. Introduction“National development” or “regional development” sounds too general for community studies
scholars, at least outside of Japan. However, in the context of post-WWII Japan, these terms
carried a strong theoretical burden, both academically and politically. This policy was a secret
key to the Liberal Democratic Party’s long reign to nourish loyal voters in both urban and rural
areas.

1

Japan has often been characterized as a “developmental,” “developmentalist,” or sometimes“construction-oriented” country heavily dependent on public works (Saito 2012; Williams
2014). This tendency can be easily understood from a comparative viewpoint when you look theamount of gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) in general government (see Figure 1). Japanese
government investment in GFCF surpasses that of the private sector, which is in contrast to theother OECD countries, especially during the twentieth century.

Figure 1. Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) of the general government, per total GFCF infive OECD countries

%

year

Source: OECD National Accounts website(http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SNA_TABLE1)
There has long been debate regarding whether Japan should be called a developmentalist state.
Besides, if deemed to be developmentalist, other questions emerge, such as when was thisstructure built and what kind of effects has it brought about? To uncover the unique historicalpath of postwar Japan and entailing difficulties that Japanese community scholars had to face,2

let us examine these questions in the following sections, citing research conducted by JARCS
members.

2. Comprehensive National Development Plans(CNDP) and Critical Analysis by JARCS Members
In postwar Japanese history, the year 1960 certainly marks an epoch when the central
government launched consecutive investment strategies throughout the islands. These strategies
were referred to as “Comprehensive National Development Plans” (CNDP), which brought
fundamental change to every corner of the local landscape, including the political structures of
the hinterlands and their villagers (see Table 1). Although CNDP were supported by voters in
the hopes of catching up with the more prosperous cities in the nation (referred to as the“Tokaido Belt,” which stretched from Tokyo to Kita-Kyushu), in reality, they acted as
camouflage against the fact that the hinterlands will always lag behind under the ruthless logic
of capitalism (Fukutake 1965). From our point of view, CNDP generated serious side effects,
such as kogai (harm to the environment and human health), the destruction of local communal
ties, and tacit increases in the divide between urban areas and the hinterlands.
Table 1. Comprehensive National Development Plans (CNDP)
Plan

Year

Prime Minister

Description

1st CNDP

1962

Hayato Ikeda

Concentrated on investment in coastal industrial
cities, which are suitable locations for heavy andchemical industries and power plants.

New (2nd)

1969

Eisaku Sato

Hinterlands such as Tomakomai, Mutsu, Akita,
Shibushi were slated for development as new

CNDPindustrial areas, but this was in vain; visions forbullet trains and expressway networks throughout
Japan.
3rd CNDP

1977

Masayoshi“Vision for residential areas” aimed for local core3

Ohiracities. Also, a “techno-polis” vision aimed atinvestment for advanced information networks wasannexed later.

4th CNDP

1987

Yasuhiro

Focused on Tokyo redevelopment with private

Nakasone

investment. The “resort vision” that triggered the“bubble economy” in the 1980s was annexed later.

5th CNDP“Grand1998

2014

RyutaroTitled as “Grand Design for the 21st Century”

Hashimotowithout concrete investment plans.

Shinzo Abe

Abandoned conventional spatial Keynesianism.

DesignConcentrating on national investment in

2050”“mega-regions” of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Thisis discussed in Section 5.

Continuing debate and research on this issue was a driving force behind the establishment of
JARCS in 1975. Urban and rural sociologists, who gathered under the banner of this newacademic society, have tried to describe an overall picture of these distorted regional
developments. Many monographs have been published, many surveys performed, and several
research teams forged, as I describe in Section 3. Certainly, an empirical research spirit has
been the reason d’être of JARCS, following the tradition of prewar rural and community
research by Kizaemon Ariga, Eitaro Suzuki, and other great founders of Japanese sociology (formore information on these founders, please refer to Hasumi 2013).
Regarding the main content of this paper, I introduce outstanding research findings by several
teams of scholars who criticized the side effects of developmentalism and advocated therealities of community-dwelling individuals. Before summarizing these sociological works, I
comment on the unique terminology of “structural analysis” (kozo-bunseki) in the beginning ofSection 3.

4

3. “Structural Analysis” to Uncover Life Structures in
Communities
Representative academic works of JARCS members in the 1970–80s are often referenced
under the term “structural analysis,” which might be confusing and even misleading; this means
uncovering the life structures of ordinary people built in communities and in daily work patterns.
The sudden advent of huge development plans in urban and regional communities, triggered by
CNDP described in Section 1, caused malfunctions in peoples’ life structures, including thedestruction of community ties. “Structural analysis” unveiled the potential of people to protest
against the power of policy and capitalism, to testify for their own life rhythms, and to persuade
policymakers of the side effects of developmentalism that takes place without regard to theeveryday things in which people find value.
Here I move on to summarize respected works by initial JARCS members.

3.1. University of Tokyo group led by Fukutake, Hasumi,
and Nitagai
Tadashi Fukutake (1917–1989) was a star in the social sciences of post-WWII Japan, leading
the modernization and democratization of not only academia, but also Japanese society as awhole. Through his research on land liberation in the aftermath of WWII, he showed interest in
the democratization of rural Japanese communities through policy channels. Guided by thisorientation, he enthusiastically carried out field work in rural communities in the 1950–60s
along with students he was supervising (see Table 2). These postgraduate students became
active scholars who would go on to lead JARCS in the subsequent 10–30 years.
Table 2. Major research led by Tadashi Fukutake after 1945
Year
1946

Research Field
Shimo-kawazoe Village, Akita; Shio Town, Ishikawa; Shimokura Village,
Okayama; Kiyotaki Village, Miyagi; Niwase Town, Okayama

5

1947

Sakura Town, Chiba; Ujiie Town, Tochigi; Tajima Town, Fukushima; Ota Village,
Iwate

1948

Ota Village; Sakura Town

1949

Kuga Village, Kyoto; Konan Village, Nagano

1950

Fuse City, Osaka; Komatsu Village, Ibaraki; Nishiyama Village, Okayama; Hikinai
Village, Akita [Fukutake 1954a]1951

Mio Village, Wakayama; Koise Village, Ibaraki

1953

Nishi-shioda Village, Nagano; Asagami Village, Yamanashi; Shimo-ani Village,
Akita; Ukita Village, Okayama [Fukutake 1954b]

1954

Oizumi Village, Yamagata; Hitachi City and Annaka Town, Gunma; Konan Village,
Nagano; Okamata Village, Yamanashi

1955

Okamata Village, Yamanashi; Masuho Village, Chiba

1956

Sakuma Dam [Nihon Jimbun Kagakukai 1958]; Okamata Village; Kosei Town,
Shizuoka

1957

Kosei Town; Itoigawa City, Niigata [Sato 1961]

1958

Itoigawa City; Kizaki Village, Niigata

1959

Oizumi Village, Yamagata; Kizaki Village; Ujiie Town, Tochigi

1960

Sakata City, Yamagata; Fukuroi City, Shizuoka

1964

Tendo City, Yamagata; Shinminato City, Toyama; Hachinohe City, Aomori; Oi
Town, Kanagawa [Fukutake 1967]

1965

Kasagake Village, Gunma; Oi Town

1966

Oi Town

1967

Kanaura Town, Akita; Kamido Town, Okayama

6

1968

Kanaura Town

1969

Ogasawara Islands, Tokyo
Source: Fukutake 1976

Fukutake’s field research and outputs had a stable pattern. His chapters are titled as “Politics of~town,” “Community Organizations of ~town,” “Economies of ~town,” and so on, and thewriters of each theme were relatively fixed. Most of the research outputs are based on municipal
administrative documents, which Fukutake efficiently drew out from city hall archives,
sometimes informally (no formal public information access system was in place at that time).
According to Kamon Nitagai, who was also trained by this team, these research outputs were
finalized immediately after all interviews had been conducted, in the weeks when members of
the research team were still staying in rural inns. This unknown but key aspect of the Fukutake
team enabled them to publish their findings prolifically, but at the same time, it underlined
criticism that the research contained few theories and shallow observations (Shimazaki 1979),
as if “baking bread every morning.”
Following Fukutake’s achievements and retirement, Otohiko Hasumi and Kamon Nitagai
became professors at The University of Tokyo, and the focus of research shifted to more
urbanized areas. Considering Japan as a whole experienced very rapid urbanization in thehigh-growth era, it was an appropriate strategy, but naturally, they needed a larger group of
researchers (for example, in “Tokyo Research 1992–94”, which is mentioned later, some 20
JARCS members participated on the team).
Table 3. Research led by Hasumi and Nitagai
Year

Field

Output1976–80

Fukuyama City, Hiroshima (1st)1986–89

Kobe City, Hyogo

Hasumi and Nitagai 1990

1989–90

Fukuyama City, Hiroshima (2nd)

Nitagai and Hasumi 1993

1992–94

Chiyoda, Setagaya, and Ota wards in

Hasumi 1983

7

Nitagai 1995

Tokyo Metropolis

In addition, they introduced a more systemic method for surveys and interviews. For example,
they introduced an analysis method to re-categorize financial papers by object municipality inorder to better comprehend the structure and dynamics of public and private bodies, social
movements, and communities. The conclusion of “Kobe Research” (Hasumi and Nitagai 1990)
stressed a subcontracting trend from public administration to private and civic bodies, while theconclusion of “2nd Fukuyama” (Hasumi and Nitagai 1993) pointed out failures of the city’s
governance and proved that the government had arbitrarily selected subsiding civic bodies thatthey found favorable. Nitagai argued that this was a typical strategy in the low-development age
that saw financial crises among numerous municipalities after the 1980s.
Nitagai carried out research focusing on Tokyo in the 1990s, but hindered by the complexity of
the world’s largest agglomeration, abandoned these efforts after a few years. This fact
underlined the limits of “structural analysis” after Japan’s urbanization process has completed.
Nitagai never organized another big research team after this unrealized project, but instead
focused on conducting intensive interviews with volunteers and NPOs after the Hanshin-Awaji
earthquake in 1995.

3.2. Hokkaido University group led by Tetsuji Fuse
Tetsuji Fuse (1930–1994) was a Professor in the Faculty of Education, Hokkaido University.
As shown in Table 4, Fuse developed his research field based on an examination of farmer’svillages in Hokkaido and industrial cities in and outside of Hokkaido. Fuse named his method“institutional and structural analysis” or “analysis of social production and work/life history”.
He believed that “changes in life structures of peasants and the working class will result in
structural social changes and the permeation of changing values within social institutions” (Fuse,
Iwaki, and Kobayashi 1974). In his Marxist view, it was historical fate that changes in the life
structures of ordinary people resulted in changes in the social structure. Here his research
agenda was to uncover the logical connection from micro-level life structural change tomacro-level social structural change.

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Table 4. Main research performed by the “Hokkaido Life Sociology Study Group,” which was
led by Tetsuji FuseYear

Research Field

1972

Shibecha Town, Hokkaido [Fuse 1975]

1973

Yubari City, Hokkaido (Hokutan Heiwa coal mine) [Fuse 1982]

1974

Yubari City (Mitsubishi Minami-Yubari coal mine and high schools); Omuta City,
Fukuoka (Mitsui-Miike coal mine)

1975

Daiki Town, Hokkaido [Fuse et al., 1977; 1977–78]; Yubari City (coal mine
white-collar workers and trade unions)

1976

Yubari city (coal mine white-collar workers and trade unions); Nemuro City,
Hokkaido

1977

Horonobe Town, Hokkaido [Fuse and Onai, 1979]; Kikusui and Tonden districts of
Sapporo City; Yubari City (dismissed miners)

1978

Yubari City; Sapporo City (youth and mass media); Kyowa Town, Hokkaido (juniorhigh school); Kitago Village in Miyazaki

1979

Sapporo City (mass media); Yuzawa City and Igawa Town, Akita [Fuse ed., 1985]

1981

Bifuka Town, Hokkaido [Fuse et al. 1988]; Yubari City; Sapporo City (disabledschools)

1982

Bifuka Town; Sapporo City (elementary schools); Yuzawa City; Maki Town,
Niigata [Fuse ed., 1985]; Kurashiki City, Okayama [Fuse ed., 1992]

1983

Yubari City; Bifuka Town; Hikawa Town, Shimane; Kurashiki City

1984

Sapporo City (elementary schools); Kurashiki City

1985

Sapporo City (high schools); Kurashiki City

9

1986

Chitose City, Hokkaido; Eniwa City, Hokkaido (high schools); Kurashiki City

1987

Obihiro City, Hokkaido; Sapporo City (family, youth, media, and working classresearch)

1988

Obihiro City; Sapporo City (family research)

1989

Sumida Ward, Tokyo Metropolis [Fuse et al. 1990]

1990

Sapporo City (Disabled Peoples’ Association); Kurashiki Town, Okayama

1991

Shihoro Town, Hokkaido

1992

Ishikari City, Hokkaido
Source: Hajime Kobayashi (2004)

Similar to the Fukutake School, the quantity and frequency of Fuse’s fieldwork are appalling.
A JARCS member said, “After Fuse walked away from the field, nothing remained, not evensmall weeds”. His representative works should be research on Yubari (Fuse ed. 1982) andKurashiki-Mizushima (Fuse ed. 1992). The characteristics of these works can be described as
tracing and cataloging individual life structures in detail. For example, in Yubari, he sampledover 300 families from various classes in the city and repeated half-structured interviews to
describe the life cycles and rhythms of everyday life. This attempt also enabled him to spotlightthe cruel aspects of Japanese capitalism in the phase marked by greater accumulation ofindustrial capital. At the same time, these surveys suggested that Fuse’s initial hypothesis might
be wrong. Following traditional Marxist theory, Fuse assumed that the labor class’s defensive
acts in everyday life could change existing social structures and even lead to revolution.
However, researchers on his team discovered that the labor class in both cities had instead
adapted themselves to the realities of capitalism (Asano 1996). Regardless of this inconsistency,
Fuse never gave up; instead, he planned to carry out comprehensive analyses of the Honshu
megalopolis. However, after retiring from Hokkaido University in 1993, he died while
preparing his Tokyo research.
Therefore, I conclude that Fuse’s sociology had the following pitfalls. First, admitting that his
analyses deeply cataloged individual life cycles, readers cannot understand how working-class10

lives are connected to formal institutions and organizations to change society. Second, he does
not make it clear how “classes” are defined. As I argue, his research revealed that working-classpeople tend to adapt themselves to capitalism rather than persuading themselves toward
communist revolution. This finding could have led him to reexamine a priori his use of the
traditional Marxist concept of “class,” but this never occurred to him, partially because of his
rigid political stance. Third, all members of his research group were former students of his, so it
could be said to have been homogeneous, and mutual criticism within the group was likely notvery active.

3.3. Ethnographies based on a Marxist framework by the
KamatasToshiko Kamata (wife) and Tetsuhiro Kamata (husband) are, so to say, the Japanese version of
Erik Olin Wright. Their research unveiled the working-class world, which propped thewell-known dual structure of the Japanese economy. Hokkaido was the perfect location toobserve this exploited half of the Japanese workforce, because from the early twentieth century,
modern capitals in the making—later conglomerates called zaibatsu by Mitsui, Mitsubishi, andSumitomo—focused their eyes on primitive capital accumulation in the area. Big factories andsites for coal exploitation, shipbuilding, and iron manufacturing were installed, and workers
were organized and segregated by status according to company hierarchy.
“In Japan, the lifelong employment system is dominant. Then, job hopping beyond company
borders is disabled and the labor market is divided into a two-story structure. No job analysis iscarried out that allows the wage system to reflect skill order, which results in a wage divide
according to company rank” (1983: 26). This rank is shown in a three-tier system: (A)conglomerate company full-time workers, (B) non-conglomerate company full-time workers,and (C) part-time and dayworkers. This three-tier system reflects residential area, life structure,
household socioeconomic status, and family relationships. “As workers congregate into
company-dwelling districts according to capital investment, the district becomes an extension of
the working environment, and then even the private lives of workers can be controlled by thecompany. Accordingly, the company covers the cost of reproducing the workforce, which
consists of housing construction, management fees, and annexed facilities fees…Although this11

is the case, the residential areas for company-hired workers, subcontractors, dayworkers, and theunemployed, injured, and aged were abandoned; their workforce reproduction costs werecovered by the municipality budget” (1983: 384). This divided ruling system can work as acountermeasure against trade union to prevent industrial action by workers. Although workers
are united in contending with this reality, it is difficult to unite with other companies and classes.
In addition, they want the next generation to ascend the class ladder by obtaining better
education (Kamata and Kamata 1993).
The Kamatas wanted to preserve the possibility of workers’ unity in spite of this divided rulingsystem. For this purpose, they observed the rhythm of life of working families with asympathetic attitude, and this concept of life structure was strongly connected with the conceptof class. Their view, which was inspired by Charles Launtry’s historical poverty research, isclearly shown in Figure 2, which illustrates that when categorized according to class, most of
the subcontracted and casual employees in Hokkaido remained under the poverty line.

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Loose workabilityChild marries

Launtry’s Cycle

earningMarriageChild begins

Figure2. The Kamatas’ Poverty Rise and Fall Cycle

Primary poverty line→

Kamatas’ Cycle
Conglomerate company
ffull-time workers
Subcontractor company workers
Small company workers
Casual and day workers

On the dole workers

Note: Adapted from Launtry’s diagram. Sample shown in 5-year
age increments. “Subcontractor” includes casual workers. “Casualand day workers” includes casual, dock, and construction workers,
but not seasonal (dekasegi) workers.

Source: Kamata and Kamata 1983

3.4. Other analyses by initial JARCS members
Before moving on to the next section, I should mention the other JARCS members who forged
research teams and performed comprehensive research in several fields, regardless of whether
they were referred to as structural analysis. For example, Shoji and Motojima (1980) focused on
Tomakomai City, Hokkaido, which was one of the key projects of the 2nd CNDP. Minoru
Shimazaki, a vigorous Marxist, performed his research together with his wife in several
big-project areas and criticized the brutal power exercised by capitalism and the state. He should
be remembered for advocating on the side of villagers who lost a pollution lawsuit in Gunma
Prefecture (annaka kogai saiban) (Shimazaki 1979). His contribution as having been the best13

critic of the Fukutake School should also be remembered: “In his structural analysis, there was atendency to recognize socioeconomic status (SES) and relationships among households with afeudal character…Also, his concept of SES lacks a concrete definition…With this view, village
structures are only analyzed in relation to outside pressures.” (Shimazaki 1979)

4. Variegated Reality of Regional Society and theEmerging Trend of Machizukuri
The collective research referred to as “structural analysis” ended with the death of Fuse (in1994) and coincided with the disbanding of the Nitagai team (in 1995), when his “Tokyo
research” faded out. The direct reason for this disruption can be seen as the loss of a leading
researcher, but we need to pay attention to the secondary and structural reasons. As discussed
earlier, areas uncovered by the concept of “structure” became more important for understanding
regional society, with emerging voluntarism, social movements, and NPOs on one hand, and thedeclining coherency of community and class on the other. In addition, newly introduced policies
and a financial market-oriented economy eroded the traditional order in communities and theintegrity of regional societies, which made it more difficult to discuss Japanese regionalsocieties as a whole.
After the bubble economy burst in the early 1990s, Japan struggles with a sluggish economy.
Developmentalism does not necessarily work to bolster the economy or to assure happiness.
Urban and regional communities slowly began to recognize swelling inequality both in terms ofinter-region and intra-region. Realities in communities became more and more variegated,
therefore JARCS scholars faced a new agenda in uncharted waters of the rapidly changing
realities of regional society.
As these new realities emerged around the turn of the twenty-first century, JARCS beganproposing a common theme at every annual meeting that tried to catch the contemporary
realities of Japanese communities. Table 5 shows the research themes chosen by the JARCS
Research Committee since 2001. Some readers might think that I have gone too far considering
the theme of this paper, “developmentalism;” however, this is not the case. Even a quick glance14

at JARCS themes would illustrate how JARCS and Japanese communities had to rotate aroundthe axis of developmentalism. Every year, the theme has something to do with
developmentalism and the efforts of communities to metamorphose from its residue. New key
words such as “endogenous development,” or machizukuri, came to be regarded as symbols of
the latter point of view.

Table 5. JARCS annual meeting research themes since 2000 (English translation by author)
Year
2016

2015

2014

Annual Conference Research Theme“Grand Design 2050” and Regional Society: Crisis and Rediscovery of the“Life World”
Considering “Revitalization” and “Extinction of Hinterlands” Policies froma Local Point of View
The Great East Japan Earthquake: The Vision and the Reality of the“Revitalization”

2013 Visions and Realities of Disaster Reconstruction
2012

Visions and Realities of Reconstruction from Disasters Involving Nuclear
Accidents and Tsunamis

2011 State Rescaling and Its Context in Japan
2010 State and Communities under Rescaling
2009 Vision for Community Regeneration and JARCS
2008 Realities of “Community Regeneration” from the Hinterland Point of View
2007 “Community Regeneration” under Restrictive Society
2006 Restrictive Society and Present Communities
2005 Inequality, Stratification, and the Local Community

15

2004 Inequality, Stratification, and the Local Community
2003 Reflections on Locality: Dynamism of Centrifugal and Centripetal Powers
2002

Locality in Diversity: Blurring Borders, Differentiation, and Seeking New
Governance2001 Local Transformations on Publicness
2000 Local Reorganization on Publicness

At the end of the twentieth century, the pitfalls of developmentalism were too clear for mosteducated Japanese. The burdens of governmental deficits and the intimate and cozy
relationships between bureaucrats, politicians, and constructors led to corruption and a loss ofentrepreneurial spirit. This led to the introduction of an approach called “endogenousdevelopment,” led by Kazuko Tsurumi and Ken’ichi Miyamoto, neither of whom was affiliatedwith JARCS. Tsurumi sought an ideal community of endogenous development as “a potential
place where residents, tramps, and temporal tramps could interact with each other to forge newcommon ties” (Tsurumi 1989). On the other hand, as a well-known economist, Miyamoto
defined “four principles of endogenous development” as follows: (1) initiatives by residents, (2)amenities and environment, (3) creation of complex industrial relationships, and (4) increasing
human rights and welfare for residents (Miyamoto 1989). Both views correspond with theinternational usage of endogenous development as follows: “development can be initiated andorganized ‘from inside’” (Sengenberger 1993: 310). The reason this concept is so important isthat, according to a United Nations report, “monocentric reliance on traditional large-scale,market-driven, large-organization and central-government-initiated development processes has
steadily weakened the capability of territorial communities to confront the challenges ofworldwide economic restructuring by indigenous innovation and flexibility” (Stöhr 1990:2).
Subsequently, the Japanese term machizukuri became popular; this term entails the core
meaning of “endogenous development,” which stresses grassroots, human-oriented
development without substantial investment by outside actors. Practitioners across numerous
communities adopted this wording. Also, with the enactment of an NPO law in 1997, this type16

of activity swelled in twenty-first century Japan. The term machizukuri cannot be translated
easily into English, as André Sorensen argues (Sorensen and Funck 2007: 1): “it refers to adiverse range of practices and has multiple and contested meanings.” However, “Thousands ofmachizukuri processes have been established nationwide, in an enormous outpouring of local
energy into attempts to achieve more bottom-up input into local place management in which
local citizens play an active role in environmental improvement and management processes”(ibid.). Some exemplar municipalities followed this course, although in the 1990s, most of theiractivities were suppressed and rarely reported.
Although central government policymakers somehow recognized these machizukuri trends, theofficial reactions were limited and restrained, because machizukuri itself does not need to entail
the big projects wanted by the national economic Ministry. The changes happened mainly in thecommunity policies of each local municipality. Some good practices were created in hinterland
municipalities and villages, but these were not truly applied to central government policies. An
official law that supports this trend of machizukuri only emerged in the year 2014 as the“Regional Revitalization Law１,” but this law is ambiguous because it was introduced apace
with “Grand Design 2050,” which I will describe in the latter half of Section 5.

5. Hinterlands under Siege: Municipal Mergers, theGreat East Japan Earthquake, and “Grand Design
2050”
Let us rewind the clock a little. As Japan’s high-growth period came to an end, the situation in
the hinterlands worsened even more. Reacting to the desperate voices from hinterlands votersand mayors, the National Diet enacted temporal laws called the “Depopulated Area Emergency
Measures Law” in 1970 and the “Depopulated Area Promotion Special Law” in 1980. These
were changed into the “Depopulated Area Revitalization Special Law” in 1990, and eventuallyreplaced by the “Act on Special Measures for Promotion for Independence for Underpopulated
Areas” in 2000 (this law is still in operation). Under this Act, some measures were taken, suchas the installation of officers called “shuraku shienin” (hamlet support officers) and a subsidy

17system resembling decoupling policy in Europe; however, these measures cannot stop the trendof depopulation, except for in a few municipalities. Watching this inefficiency of consecutive
laws, Koizumi administration (2000-2005) decided to accelerate “Heisei Municipal mergers” , acentral government initiative to absorb hinterland towns and villages into nearby cities, which
resulted in disappearance of half the number of municipalities (1,718 municipalities as of 2016),
compared to that number of 3,232 in the year 1998.
After few years, JARCS was in the midst of examining the pros and cons of Heisei Municipal
mergers—which took place intensively around the turn of the century—under academic concept
of “State Rescaling”. It was just this timing that the Great East Japan earthquake struck Tohoku,
one of most vulnerable hinterlands in restrictive Japan. Needless to say, it was a tremendous
shock for the nation and regional society. Every Japanese dweller recognized that this should bea turning point in Japan’s postwar history.
Major members of JARCS reacted quickly to this catastrophe by organizing a special
committee on the issue with other sociological societies. After a few years of research andpractice with communities along the coast, our vision of the future is actually not very
optimistic. Some members argue that we are witnessing “disaster capitalism”, a term coined by
Naomi Klein after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the U.S. (Klein 2007).
Certainly, it was just about three years after the disaster when the “Grand Design of National
Spatial Development towards 2050２” (henceforth, GD2050) was silently launched. During thatsummer, JARCS and Tohoku were still struggling to reconstruct broken communities, sluggish
economies, and a malfunctioning social system. The launch of GD2050 was a low-profile event,issued on the authority of the minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation,
not the prime minister, as the five preceding CNDP had been. After examining this plan under
the JARCS 2015 annual theme, we concluded that “macho developmentalism” (Motani 2013)
was being revived after 3/11, both in terms of betrayed revitalization from the Great East Japan
earthquake and the megalopolis concentration philosophy reflected in “Grand Design 2050.”
Remote islands have now been re-identified as guardians of national interest, obviously
reflecting the unstable East Asian diplomatic situation. In contrast, mountainous areas havebeen advised to “concentrate” on local cities, which this report calls “population dams.” This
policy change is clearly a declaration that “inefficient” hinterlands will be dumped.

18

Regional societies and communities, especially those located in the hinterlands, are undersiege by these policy orientations. JARCS members are therefore currently trying to defend
their life structure in different modes than in the high-growth era.

6. Conclusion
As I have discussed, the three decades from the end of the twentieth century marked an era thatwas changing far too rapidly and ruthlessly for hinterland communities. Postwar Japanesecommunities had never experienced such an unclear and variegated era. JARCS theories andpractices obviously need to be revised and reorganized to tackle these difficulties.
To conclude this paper, I point out a few personal viewpoints on this necessity. First, thetheoretical framework needs to be updated. For example, new Marxist theories that focus on
spatial realities, for example, that of David Harvey or Edward Soja, should be incorporated
more in JARCS, but accompanied by empirical proof. Second, field choices should be
multiplied by each researcher to shed light on various aspects of variegated Japanese regions.
This might seem like a high hurdle, but thanks to the advent of the new informational society
and the development of a transportation infrastructure, one can keep good relationships withdifferent informants in different fields more easily than before. Third, we should not limit our
scope of expertise to narrow themes embellished by sociological jargon. Communities arefacing difficulties as discussed in previous sections, and they need full-scale academic support.
This paper tried to limit its task to summarize initial JARCS member accomplishments, and indoing so, I hope reader understand the history and richness of community research in theJapanese language world. I also hope that these themes, problematic and methods will be
discussed with the rest of the world, to understand complex realities and social structures which
we face today.

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