Life beyond growth? Rural depopulation becoming the attraction in Nagoro, Japan’s scarecrow village

ABSTRACT

Rural villages in Japan are rapidly ageing and depopulating. On Shikoku Island, in the remote mountainous Iya Valley, is the village of Nagoro. Residents who have left or passed away have been replaced with ‘kakashi’ or scarecrows in the form of life-like dolls. Currently, scarecrows outnumber the village residents and appear throughout the community—waiting at bus stops, working the fields, and studying at the closed school. The attempt to preserve village life and identity through the scarecrow displays has begun to attract the attention of media and tourists. This paper examines this emerging rural tourism attraction in the context of Japanese rural depopulation and peripheralisation. Nagoro is representative of many Japanese villages where the rural lifestyle is disappearing. It has adopted a unique form of quiet resistance to the ending of an era viewed in the context of museumisation and abandoned landscapes. Rural communities are transitioning finding themselves between government rejuvenation policies and learning to live beyond growth.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural tourism
• depopulation
• Japan
• museumisation
• peripheralisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Miyoshi Tourism (Oboke-Iya Navi) correspondence (May 2020) indicated tourism statistics are not collected for Nagoro. However, a vine bridge, east of Nagoro, received about 5000 foreign tourists in 2019 (bridge admission charges), and the office indicated some of these tourists may have visited Nagoro.

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Council for Research in the Social Sciences – Brock University: [Grant Number None].

Notes on contributors

Atsuko Hashimoto

Atsuko Hashimoto is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Tourism Studies at Brock University, Canada. Her areas of research include Green Tourism in rural Japan, socio-cultural issues in tourism, culinary tourism, heritage tourism, and social justice in tourism.

David J. Telfer

David J. Telfer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Tourism Studies at Brock University, Canada. His areas of research include the relationship between development theory and tourism, tourism planning, heritage tourism, and Green Tourism in rural Japan.

Sakura Telfer

Sakura Telfer is a student at Ridley College, Canada. Her areas of interest include History, Theatre, and Japanese Food Culture.