Assessing Japan's Urban to Rural Migration Program in the Tsunami-Hit Area of Kesennuma

Mayumi Dan

A chapter in Contemporary Rural Development Programs from IntechOpen

Abstract: This chapter investigates the conditions for migrants to settle down in a depopulated area, through interviews and questionnaire surveys. In Japan, one of the major socio-economic tasks is to revive the rural areas where depopulation is proceeding rapidly, in addition to aging of the community. Japan's government has therefore been promoting regional development initiatives to create jobs and fulfill hopes of the younger generation to live in rural areas. Kesennuma was one of the most heavily damaged areas by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 11 March 2011. Despite such heavy destruction, a number of young migrants have come to live and work in the area. Following an interview survey and a web questionnaire, a large-scale questionnaire survey was implemented with Kesennuma City Office in March 2019 to assess the reasons of migration. Through statistical examination, it became clear that migrants put importance on the natural surroundings and interaction in the region. Personal mobility, dwelling, work, realization of dreams, and relation with friends and the community were the important factors for satisfaction. From these results, we assess whether the government programs have been supporting the young migrants in rural areas.

Keywords: migrants; depopulated area; tsunami; lifestyle; satisfaction; interaction in the region; government initiatives; Kesennuma; Tohoku; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/88901 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:326464

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.113965

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().