午夜剧场

This book is based on a magazine series aimed at people considering relocation. It describes the local circumstances of various regions in Japan and the lifestyles of the migrants living there, based on interviews.

I have not specialized in regional revitalization or migration research. My research has focused on the formation of national identity during the Meiji era and the post-war period, as well as the history of social movements.

However, following the Great East Japan Earthquake, I wrote a paper on the reconstruction status of the Sanriku region based on field surveys. Since then, I have maintained an interest in regional issues and have written serialized articles for local newspapers covering regional activities. The editorial department requested the magazine project for this book after seeing those articles.

The editors had already been publishing articles introducing migrants for a long time, and they possessed the knowledge and network regarding which regions had which types of migrants. This was exactly what I had hoped for. While visiting these migrants, I strove to understand each region comprehensively while also seeking to understand the general situation facing Japanese regions. This book is the result of that process.

What I felt deeply through these visits is that the problems of a single region cannot be understood in isolation. The reason a region once flourished and is now declining is that its relationship with other regions has changed. In other words, regional problems cannot be solved unless the underlying inter-regional relationships change. Ultimately, a perspective that grasps society as a whole, rather than just that specific region, is necessary.

In parallel with this book, I was conducting research to understand the lifestyles of Japanese society through three categories: the "Large Enterprise Type," the "Local Type," and the "Residual Type." In "The Structure of Japanese Society" (Kodansha), published almost simultaneously with this book, I presented these three types and examined the history of employment practices in large corporations and their differences from other countries. For me, visiting regions and researching the history of large-scale corporate employment practices were like two wheels of a cart in comprehensively understanding Japanese society.

I am not a researcher of regional revitalization. However, I would be honored if you could glean something from these regional observations conducted from the perspectives mentioned above and use them as an opportunity to think about contemporary Japanese society.

Eiji Oguma

Tokyo Shoseki

192 pages, 1,600 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.