Attracted by the rich nature, townscapes and close community ties of the Bingo region facing the Seto Inland Sea, some families and young people have moved from urban areas, bringing their experiences and vitality to the area.
“Hello.” From the second floor of their cafe in the Tomo area of Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, a young couple greeted a regular customer on a recent morning before the place opened at noon. Hoping to create a place where people gather, they have gradually become integrated into the community since they moved to the area about a year and eight months ago.
Ryo Nagata and his wife, Kaho, both 32, moved to the area from Tokyo’s Suginami Ward in February 2022. A year later, they rented a century-old, three-story wooden building originally used as a brothel and opened an old house-style cafe named Arisorou. With recommended books on display, the couple hopes the cafe will serve as a community space for residents to gather.
When the couple had their son, Haru, in 2021, they began to seriously consider moving to a rural area. “It’s not that I don't like Tokyo," Kaho Nagata said. “But I felt it was not the best place to raise a child. We were looking for an environment with great nature and a sense of community."
The couple spent about a week in each of their candidate sites in Aomori, Miyazaki, Ehime and Hiroshima prefectures to find a suitable location.
They discovered Tomo through a friend. At an okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) restaurant, the owner and regular customers played with their son. The Tomo area and its neighboring communities had “a good balance” of elements essential for raising a child, including day care centers, integrated elementary and junior high schools, hospitals, supermarkets and more, Nagata said.
Even during the short time needed to take out the trash, neighbors always have conversations. “People in the community are looking forward to seeing our child grow up," Nagata said. “I wonder how many people I wave to in a day now," she says with a smile.
Nagata works for a company that supports entrepreneurs, while her husband, who has worked for a major apparel manufacturer and an IT company, now works as a “community manager” to connect people online. The environment that allowed both of them to work fully remotely helped push their relocation.
The couple had considered other towns in the Seto Inland Sea as possible destinations to settle in. Some towns had areas where many migrants had set up stores. But Ryo Nagata said they wanted some “blank space” where they could take up new initiatives and get involved with the local community.
They felt that the Tomo area, which is also a tourist destination, was a place where they could try something new, on top of having an advantage of much cheaper rents for stores and homes compared to Tokyo.
The cafe is open three days a week. This summer, the couple bought a 60-year-old vacant house. There are still many things they wish they had in the area, such as a bakery, a public bathhouse, a flower shop, a library and a guesthouse. They feel that in Tomo, they have the potential to realize some of them on their own.
“Because there are things we don’t have here, it makes us feel we want to do more,” Ryo Nagata says. He feels that one of the charms of the local area is this "blank space" that they can fill in themselves, building their ideal lifestyle.
Citrus farming
Walking up a slope and through a narrow path impassable by car, a citrus grove appears at the end of the road.
“This view of the sea surrounded by islands is fantastic,” says Shotaro Kojima, 30, as he looked down at the Seto Inland Sea sparkling in the sunlight, the scenery that had inspired him to move to Innoshima island in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture. “You can really feel (how great it is) if you are living on the island,” he said, smiling.
To realize his dream of living on an island in the Seto Inland Sea, Kojima moved from Tokyo to Innoshima in June 2021. In addition to the scenery, he also found its location attractive as he could get to Fukuyama and Onomichi city centers in just a 30- to 40-minute drive.
Kojima, a web media editor, said he felt there was no need to stay in Tokyo as working remotely had become widespread amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
After moving to the island, he visited the Onomichi agricultural committee, with no appointment, where he was introduced to a 1,500-square-meter hassaku citrus field that had been abandoned for more than three years. The annual rent for the farm, including storage, was just ¥15,000.
Subsequently, he rented abandoned farmland from islanders who had no successors, and cultivated ansei citrus and hassaku on a total of 8,200 square meters of land at four locations. “I was very grateful for the islanders' readiness to accept me, saying, 'Just give it a try,'" he said. He harvests about 4 tons a year and sells the fruit to restaurants in Tokyo.
Four months after moving to the island, Kojima established an organization called Comorebi Farm in the Ohama area of Innoshima to spread the word about the island’s agriculture and the deliciousness of its citrus fruits. The entity was incorporated in May this year.
So far, the company has held more than 20 farm tours, attracting a total of about 120 people from in and out of Hiroshima Prefecture.
Participants who have experienced harvesting the crops have expressed interest in helping out the farms and asked what life was like on Innoshima. “It's hard work, but it's also fun to try to make them taste even better,” Kojima tells participants. “There are things that you can only experience here.”
Kojima also heard voices that lodging facilities on the island were limited. “If we can create a place for people who want to help out in farming to stay, we can convey the charm of the island even more,” he said. Next year, he plans to open a guesthouse by renovating a vacant house in the Ohama area.
Last March, he began online sales of juice made from his citrus fruits. In addition to selling directly at events in Tokyo, he also provides his juice to a commercial complex in the Setoda area in Onomichi. The story of the citrus grown on abandoned land has been well received, and its popularity is spreading by word of mouth.
There are still many citrus fields on the island that are not managed by anyone, even though trees are fully grown and bearing fruit. To Kojima, these abandoned fields appear as a resource that attracts people.
In one example, a man in his 20s from Tokyo who met Kojima at an event decided to move to Innoshima.
“My strength is that I can tell people outside the island about the attractiveness of citrus fruits through acquaintances and on the internet,” Kojima said. “I want to expand our network of people.”
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