Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places: What Japan Can Teach Us

Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places: What Japan Can Teach Us

Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places: What Japan Can Teach Us offers a fresh and unique view of regional society, regional economies and the future of regional places. Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places takes up contemporary and fundamentally universal regional-place tensions—regional relocation, local finance and leadership, local economies together with specifically regional economic and cultural revitalization, and the potential in higher education and resident volunteerism for regional places—and outlines how these tensions are unfolding in regional Japan. The objectives inherent in these themes are increasingly important for regional areas: drawing urbanites to relocate in regional municipalities, dealing with the instability of regional banking, addressing tax inequalities across geographically regional economies, responding to the potential loss of cultural history, and understanding the changing dynamics of higher education and local volunteerism in regional society. The responses proposed by the author build on uniquely Japanese approaches: better utilizing an akiya vacant house information bank, activating and connecting regional think tanks with regional banking, articulating the geographic inequality of a hometown tax scheme (furusato nozei) and proposing a way to achieve the objectives of the furusato nozei scheme through cultivation of regional cultural economies, and responding to policy trends in education and increasing individual interest in volunteering by turning these into resources for regional revitalization. Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places: What Japan Can Teach Us is accessible: chapters are approximately 6,000 words, keeping the book in total to 37,000 words. The content focuses directly on the themes, with sufficient but minimal extended theorization and historical background. The tensions are universal, the solutions reflect Japanese approaches, and the conclusions prompt social scientists to consider the way issues are often framed, and how solutions can emerge when the tensions, and the existing solutions, are reframed. The author has lived in and studied rural Japan for over 30 years, holds a PhD in social sciences from Monash University (Australia) and has published extensively on regional Japan.