ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the case of a return migrant who, after several years living in Tokyo, decided to start a restaurant in her native town, which I will call Ishii, located in the Tōhoku region in northern Japan. Emphasizing the idea that local entrepreneurs engage in a process of hybridization of the cosmopolitan and rustic, I argue that this represents a process by which individuals engage in reconstructing a social and spatial context that can be understood as neo-rural, rather than traditionally rural (in opposition to urban). This reframing of rural life contributes to an ongoing process of socio-spatial depolarization of the urban and rural as locals create a new kind of rurality and rural lifestyle that blends the rustic and cosmopolitan. Research for this chapter has been conducted through annual trips to the Tōhoku region since 1989 that have focused on ethnographic data collection related to rural lifeways.
