One factor that should not be overlooked in reviving rural communities in Japan is rural people's resistance to new people moving in. And I don't just mean to foreigners! Rural people also consider Japanese "I-turn" and "U-turn" people as outsiders. Acceptance in rural communities cannot be taken for granted.
Some rural people don't want to share local power or land with outsiders, and can be quite nasty to newcomers. To live in the countryside requires that locals welcome newcomers as PEOPLE, not just as those new city folks who now live in the old house that used to belong to so-and-so. I'm a foreigner from Alaska who has almost been accepted in the tiny town of Tsukahara (Oita Prefecture) after only eight years.
joe reinhart
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