EastAsian Anthropology MLへのポストによって、日本の人口減少問題についての新刊の存在を知る。
Japan's Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century: Contemporary Responses to Depopulation and Socioeconomic Decline By Peter Matanle and Anthony Rausch with the Shrinking Regions Research Group
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Photos
List of Tables
Introduction
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Impacts and Implications
Chapter 1: Introducing Japan’s Shrinking Regions
Chapter 2: Setting Japan in the Global Context: Shrinking Regions in the European Union
Chapter 3: The Historical Arc of Regional Shrinkage in Japan
Chapter 4: Contrasting Experiences of Growth and Decline in Regional Japan
Chapter 5: Geographical Peripherality and Industrial Transformation in Japan’s Shrinking Re-gions
Part II Responses
Chapter 6: Redeveloping Japan’s Regions
Chapter 7: Repopulating the Region
Chapter 8: Recovering the Region
Chapter 9: Reinventing the Region: Current Practice in Tourism
Chapter 10: Reinventing the Region: Theoretical Potential
Chapter 11: Conclusion: Embracing Depopulation in Japan’s Shrinking Regions
Notes
References
Index
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Japan’s population is shrinking. On current trends it will decline by an average of half a million people per year for the next forty years. The country is also getting older and the ratio of dependants to active workers is expected to approach 1:1 by around 2030. These two interdependent processes will deliver great changes to Japan in the coming decades.In the twenty-first century, a historic turnaround in global demographic trends will occur. Europe and East Asia are especially vulnerable to demographic shrinkage. Germany is already shrinking, as is Russia. South Korea will begin to shrink soon and, importantly, so will China from around 2035. Overall, this is good news, but it brings with it worldwide changes to ways of living and working.
Japan’s rural areas have been shrinking for decades. Entire villages have vanished, even been “sold.” Thousands of municipalities have been judged “non-viable” and merged. Thousands more private and public enterprises have collapsed leaving colossal debts, while hundreds of thousands of older people live miserable lives in neighbourless communities. Rural shrinkage has been the unseen corollary of Japan’s extraordinarily dynamic 20th-century urban expansion; indeed, Japan’s postwar economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of rural retreat.
Potentially disastrous is the negative-sum game that national depopulation triggers, as one community’s gain becomes another’s loss. Japan’s Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century reveals how communities are responding positively to these emerging circumstances, delivering a message of hope and vitality to shrinking regions worldwide. Setting Japan alongside Europe, and with an epilogue describing the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown of 11 March 2011, the book offers policy makers and practitioners up to date advice for community revival born of extensive collaborative fieldwork across the whole Japanese archipelago.
Japan’s Shrinking Regions in the 21st Century brings together the work of 18 international scholars to present the first comprehensive study of regional shrinkage under Japan’s national depopulation. Interspersed throughout with numerous illustrations, the book reveals a richly textured examination of shrinkage at the local level, from which emerges the overall story of Japan’s depopulation and its place within the trajectory of world development.
This will be an important source for all social science collections, as well as for researchers, policy makers, students, and practitioners with interests in regional development, demography, East Asia, and post-industrial change.
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なお、「限界集落」についてはhttp://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20061128/1164680050
About Peter MatanlePeter Matanle is a lecturer at the University of Sheffield’s School of East Asian Studies. Dr. Matanle’s research interests focus on the economic sociology and cultural geography of work in Japan and the United Kingdom. He is the author of several publications in these fields, including Japanese Capitalism and Modernity in a Global Era: Refabricating Lifetime Employment Relations (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), Perspectives on Work, Employment, and Society in Japan (Palgrave, 2006; co-edited with Wim Lunsing); and "Coming to a City Near You: Learning to Live Beyond Growth in Japan's Shrinking Regions" (Social Science Japan Journal, 2010). He is also the founder and general editor of the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies (www.japanesestudies.org.uk).
About Anthony RaushAnthony Rausch is an associate professor at Hirosaki University, Japan. He holds a PhD from Monash University. He is the author of A Year with the Local Newspaper and coauthor of The Birth of Tsugaru Shamisen Music and Tsugaru: Regional Identity on Japan’s Northern Periphery.
About the Shrinking Regions Research GroupThe Shrinking Regions Research Group comprises the following scholars from Europe, East Asia, and North America:
• Andrew David (US International Trade Commission)
• Philomena deLima (University of the Highlands and Islands, UK),
• Martin Dusinberre (Newcastle University, UK)
• Neil Evans (Leeds Metropolitan University, UK)
• Thomas Feldhoff (Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany)
• Christopher P. Hood (Cardiff University, UK)
• Richard Irving (Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan)
• Thomas Jones (Meiji University, Japan)
• John Knight (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)
• Peter Matanle (University of Sheffield, UK)
• Sachie Mizohata (Paris Descartes University, France)
• Naofumi Nakamura (University of Tokyo, Japan)
• Ken Ohori (University of Tokyo, Japan)
• Anthony S. Rausch (Hirosaki University, Japan)
• Philip Seaton (Hokkaido University, Japan)
• Yoko Sellek (White Rose East Asia Centre, UK)
• Richard Siddle (Hokkaido University, Japan)
• Donald C. Wood (Akita University, Japan)
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こちらは伊太利の話；
イタリアの人口６００人の村、“独立”を表明
イタリア中部の山村が、国の緊縮財政策の一環として小村廃止が浮上したことに反発、「独立」と「独自通貨導入」を目指す方針を表明した。
国の補助金削減や増税、歳出削減を押しつけられることへの反発もあり、ベルルスコーニ政権の財政再建をめぐる議論に一石を投じている。
「イタリアから離脱し、公国になる」。ローマの東約７０キロ、フィレティーノ村のルーカ・セッラーリ村長（４５）は訴える。山手線の内側より２割ほど広い７８平方キロに６００人弱が住む。
伊政府は８月中旬、全国の約２０００の人口１０００人未満の村を統合し、補助金を減らす案を示した。村長は耳を疑い、「小村独自の文化や方言が絶える。認められない」と「独立方針」を表明した。
リゾート地の村は、冬休み中なら５０００人超のスキー客らが定宿を取る観光名所。水や森林資源もあり、「独立しても財源はある」と計算できた。
村は独立後の君主を探して旧伊王家の子孫に接触。独立後の新通貨「フィオリート（『花盛りの』の意味）」の試作も始めた。
（2011年9月16日11時51分 読売新聞）
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/world/news/20110915-OYT1T00961.htm
