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Paper short abstract

“Communicative spaces” enable an open discussion among a diverse set of people and create a productive atmosphere supporting adaptive community practices. Based on my fieldwork in three rural regions in Japan I introduce three different examples of how communities set up and use such spaces.

Paper long abstract

Demographic change has created gaps in regional Japan, making it increasingly difficult to sustain patterns of community organisation and local activities. To address these gaps, local authorities and citizen groups alike have started initiatives in various parts of the country that implement different models to cope with the current situation. This paper understands the creation of a “communicative space” (Okada 2021) as the core of several recent revitalisation initiatives. These spaces enable an open discussion among a diverse set of people and eventually create a productive atmosphere supporting adaptive community practices.

Based on my fieldwork in three regions in Japan (Kumamoto, Tottori, rural Tokyo) I introduce three different examples of how communities set up and use communicative spaces. I demonstrate that these spaces are not limited to a specific age group, such as older adults, or based on the place of origin, such as some community associations, but exist in various shapes and contexts. In order to conceptualize a communicative space, I introduce its characteristics and requirements, resulting from a qualitative analysis of my fieldwork stays.

I conclude that communicative spaces perform a crucial role in adapting local communities to persistent risks, not only linked to demographic change, but to a more general discussion of disasters. Due to its processual nature they need to be continuously activated, but because of this very reason they also provide a space for collective action and gradual transformation.

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This paper examines a subnational way to activate the diplomatic potential of foreign returnees—often referred to as “Japan-Alumni”—against the backdrop of a rural development model originating in Oita Prefecture and subsequently introduced to China.

Paper long abstract

The so-called “Japan-Alumni” encompass a diverse group ranging from former international students to past exchange program participants. As the fruit of Japan’s international exchange efforts, they have become key practitioners in Japan’s diplomatic activities. Given that these foreign returnees possess deep knowledge of Japan and are on the path of long-term career development, the “Japan-Alumni” hold great potential to become key figures in enabling bilateral relations between their hometowns and Japan. However, to date, scholarly research on how to unlock the potential of these returnees through institutional design and practical operationalization remains insufficient.

Analyzing successful cases of non-traditional diplomacy can shed valuable light on the operational mechanisms for unlocking the potential of “Japan-Alumni” in international affairs. Oita Prefecture, despite its low profile and rurality in Japan, had successfully integrated its locally originated “One Village One Product” (OVOP) movement into Chinese top-level policy through “local diplomacy” championed by former Oita Governor Hiramatsu Morihiko. Even during the cooling of bilateral relations under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s administration in the 2000s, the OVOP concept consistently and profoundly influenced China’s rural development model. This paper seeks to answer: How did a Japanese subnational government successfully leverage people-to-people exchange programs and Chinese returnees, to the extent of influencing the Chinese side’s top-level policies?

Through an in-depth analysis of official materials from both Oita Prefecture and China, supplemented by expert interviews, this paper outlines different phases in the spread of the OVOP concept from Oita to China. It identifies the institutional arrangements at the prefectural level that facilitate long- and short-term people-to-people exchanges and categorizes the different types of returnees in China and their functional roles within this operationalization. This multi-site study aims to explore the boundary of influence that a Japanese subnational government may exert in international affairs and to discuss its operationalization utilizing human mobility, whether migratory or non-migratory, in rural contexts for the development of the origin society.

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Paper short abstract

Using political ethnography, this paper examines Okinawa’s drinking water disputes to reconceptualize resilience as a contested mode of welfare governance shaped by subnational actors and asymmetrical power relations.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the complex notion of resilience through a critical examination of safe drinking water conflicts in Okinawa, Japan, focusing specifically on welfare governance. Despite its growing popularity in policy discussions, critics often highlight its ambiguity between narratives of local endurance and adaptation. In practice, resilience frameworks sometimes privilege top-down policy approaches that preserve existing political and economic arrangements at the expense of local suffering. In the context of rural Japan, however, I further argue that conventional state–society binaries on resilience may not suffice to capture the meso-level policy dynamics where subnational governments play a central role in safeguarding residents’ everyday welfare. Focusing on Okinawa—a region often regarded as an internal colony of modern Japan and influenced by an extended U.S. military presence—the paper explores how local actors, such as civic networks and local administrations, manage resilience in the face of conflicting interests that affect access to safe drinking water. The occurrence in Ginowan-shi, which hosts the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, serves as an important case for analyzing these dynamics. Ongoing water pollution from chemical materials linked to base-related operations has triggered public outcry. The civic networks advocated against health hazards and environmental injustice through various media channels, legislative elections, and appeals at the international conferences. The Okinawa prefectural administration confronts the problem of addressing public welfare concerns under restricted jurisdiction and minimal recognition of responsibility from higher-level authorities. Drawing on political ethnography, the analysis demonstrates how structural power dynamics influence resilience practices in Okinawa, highlighting how the region's historical experiences have cultivated a distinctly robust civil society and proactive local governance. The disagreements over drinking water highlight the limitations of resilience as a technocratic policy concept and emphasize the necessity to redefine resilience from a humane welfare perspective. By investigating subnational governance and civic action, the paper contributes to broader debates on resilience by framing it not as a neutral capacity to adapt but as a contested mode of governance embedded in asymmetrical power relations in rural settings.

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Paper short abstract

This paper examines migration governance in Japan’s peripheries. Drawing on policy analysis and fieldwork, it shows how decentralization and neoliberalization shifts responsibility to local governments, which need to collaborate and innovate to sustain regional communities amid demographic decline.

Paper long abstract

Historically frontiers and springboards for imperial expansion, Japan’s borderlands today are peripheralized regions only tenuously connected to neighboring states. However, Japan’s largest and most inhabited borderlands regions, Hokkaido and Okinawa, increasingly depend on the governance of migration in sectors such as agriculture, seafood production and processing, nursing and care work, and tourism to offset a slowing domestic economy, demographic decline, and shrinking public-sector budgets. Drawing upon policy analysis and fieldwork conducted in Okinawa and Hokkaido between February and September 2025, I use a process-tracing perspective to demonstrate that the development of migration governance regimes in Japan’s borderlands needs to be understood in the context of Japan’s broader shift towards decentralized and neoliberalized governance. I comparatively trace the trajectory of policies that continue to incentivize the recruitment and retention of foreign migrants in Japan’s peripheral areas, rather than its urban cores, alongside a range of projects aimed at promoting the migration of Japanese citizens from core areas to the borderlands. The use of policy tools such as National Strategic Zones (NSZs), subnational bilateral agreements for foreign migrant recruitment, and the promotion of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the governance of both foreign and domestic migrants show how the state has shifted autonomy and responsibility for development and regional revitalization in Japan’s borderlands onto prefectural and municipal governments, which in turn must cooperate heavily with semi-public and private partners to compensate for limited resources and capacity. I introduce a typology of governance configurations based on the types of interactions between various levels of government, demonstrating that while local governments show initiative and innovation, alignment with national-level discourses and frameworks is often crucial for successful outcomes.