Rural emplacements: linking heterotopia, one health and ikigai in central Hokkaido

Abstract

For over fifteen years the author has conducted fieldwork in a rural area of central Hokkaido. During that time the linkage between individualistic notions of life’s meaning, wellness and location or environment have been popular conversation topics among a wide array of interlocutors both native and newcomer. This article briefly outlines three distinct theoretical strands—heterotopia, specifically its concern with emplacement; the One Health paradigm, notably the importance of more-than-human effects and affects; and ikigai, often translated as what gives life meaning. It then disembeds these frames from their common limits and contextual moorings in urban studies and art interpretation, public and veterinary health, and Japanese studies respectively, in order to weave them together via ethnographic biographies that open for comparison concerns regarding health and well-being that vary yet collectively sustain the motivation, sometimes fleeting and often liminal, to remain in rural Japan

Keywords:

• Heterotopia
• One Health
• ikigai
• rural studies
• Hokkaido

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Gensan is a pseudonym I give in my research to a northern Tokachi community. Details of this lengthy span of fieldwork can be found in Hansen (2018, 2021). The individuals I discuss also are given pseudonyms.

2 This is not to imply that Japanese scholars do not engage with Foucault or One Health (rendered in Katakana as ワンヘルス). However, inside or outside Japan there is little cross communication, despite similarities, among scholars focused on these different concepts. Ikigai is a common daily term however, used by academics and laypeople alike.

3 See also Hasegawa’s homepage for a history of the concept: https://www.hasegawa-akihiro.com/ikigai/ and a discussion of the desire to move the concept beyond a focus on Japan. Accessed 8 September 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This project has been funded by JSPS Kaken C grant 20K12339.

Notes on contributors

Paul Hansen

Paul Hansen is a Tokunin Professor at Hokkaido University. His research focuses on animal-human-technology, cosmopolitics, identity, and ethics.