Paper short abstract:

Based on a long-term ethnography that pays close attention to the everyday bodily engagements of newcomers to the Japanese countryside, this paper discusses how their choice to reside in the countryside allows rural newcomers to experiment anew with their bodies and their connection to the world.

Paper long abstract:

Producing food for one's own family is receiving public attention in Japan as well as in other parts of the world. Some people farm on their balconies or on little plots of land in the suburbs for entertainment and to question world food system sustainability. This paper considers more 'radical engagement' (Giddens 2008) in DIY family gardening in the form of resettlement to the countryside and pursuing a lifestyle of self-sufficiency (jikyū-jisoku). Ethnographic studies have shown that in the post-bubble era Japan, there is a growing number of young migrants into rural areas (Klien 2015, Knight 2003) with various motivations for resettlement from urban environments (Kurochkina 2015, Osawa 2014). This paper is based on a long-term ethnography that is interested primarily in the everyday bodily engagements of newcomers to the Japanese countryside. Attempting to become a part of their lives, I had a first-hand experience of the sensory and material entanglements that their quest for an alternative lifestyle pushed them to construct. From gift-giving practices to what counts as a proper bodily act for a true 'ina-ota', their attempt to make a new form of sociality engenders multiple re-negotiations of what ties them together materially and cognitively. By co-producing everyday life necessities, e.g. food, water, and energy, they make an alternative to what they concern to be problematical with the social (dis)order of contemporary Japan. Farming for the needs of the family is a meaningful activity that manifests the values of sustainable living in an era of precarity. In particular, self-sufficient lifestyles exemplify that complexity and abundance of sensory experiences are available in the countryside. Their choice to reside in the countryside allows rural newcomers to experiment anew with their bodies and their connection to the world. By everyday physical engagements with making and eating their food, direct interactions with natural environment and community, people attempt to re-gain control over their own lives and to re-connect with their pre-modern selves.