ABSTRACT
The rapid and precipitous demographic and economic decline in rural Japan is well known. For more than two decades, the Government of Japan has tried a variety of investments and regional development strategies in a continuing attempt to reverse rural collapse. These efforts have produced poor outcomes at best. There are, numerous government initiatives, collaborative regional rebuilding efforts and even private sector strategies for rural revitalization. These efforts, however, are undertaken in an environment of growing cultural despair, the rapid aging of rural communities, and the retrenchment of industry to sites in and near major urban centers. Given that rural and small-town Japan has out-sized political power authority within the nation’s political system, it is clear that the government will continue to invest in rural development strategies. Economic and social logic suggests that the government should cut back on policy and investments designed to prevent the near-inevitable and focus its resources and time on other, equally pressing Japanese socio-economic challenges. Japan’s New Meiji would, to be successful, require either an abandonment of rural and small-town Japan rescue and revitalization efforts or a radically, values-centric reimagining of the future of these areas within the Japanese political and economic landscape.
