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Paper short abstract

I argue that communities in regional Japan are "factionalized" rather than "fragmented." Tatsuno's case study reveals resilient, intra-communal factionalism. This re-politicizes the local by highlighting the power dynamics and structural conflicts that define social organization.

Paper long abstract

Much research on Japan since the 1980s has focused on dismantling the perceived homogeneity of Japanese society. This trend continues in current scholarship on regional Japan, which has pivoted toward a postmodern focus on "fragmentation." While this shift highlights the heterogeneity of local communities in the "post-growth" countryside, it relies heavily on individual psychology and experiences. In doing so, it depoliticizes the local sphere, treating the breakdown of community as a passive byproduct of decline rather than a manifestation of active social organization.

To better account for these politics, I propose viewing "fragmentation" as factionalism. I illustrate this through a paradox in the Tatsuno district in Tatsuno City, Hyogo Prefecture. In 2019, the district was named an "Important Preservation District of Historic Buildings." Following this, the municipal authorities introduced a community development, or machizukuri, policy that aimed to bring together the district’s many separate machizukuri groups under one organization, Tatsuno Mirai-sha. Instead of encouraging cooperation, this push for "unification" led to strong factionalism among local stakeholders.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that what is perceived as postmodern fragmentation is, in fact, a continuation of intra-communal social divisions and their politics. Contemporary machizukuri initiatives, often led by urban-rural migrants, do not encounter a "fragmented" public. Instead, they are absorbed into, or even actively create, competitive political relationships. I contend that heterogeneity is not necessarily a casualty of contemporary demographic changes, but a long-standing characteristic of the Japanese rural community, rooted in its factional dynamics. By reframing "fragmentation" as "factionalism," this paper shifts the anthropological focus away from the social fragmentation and the "lonely individual" of postmodernity and back toward the power dynamics and structural conflicts that constitute social life in regional Japan. In doing so, it provides an alternative framework for understanding the political nature of social organizations that shape communities in regional Japan.