ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of what living in this small central Hokkaido town means to some of its residents. It discusses why this place is perceived by them in positive as opposed to negative terms, how they come together as a community, and in the end, why they choose to remain. Gensan, a pseudonym, is located in the northernmost region of Hokkaido’s Tokachi Sub-Prefecture. Gensan is a setting at the fringes of the nation, a location that has from its absorption into the Japanese state been open to novel interpretations — largely related to its particular colonial history — over epic representations of an immutable national past. Nevertheless, thinking through location with assemblage theory and cosmopol-tics in mind is only one way of reframing such rur-bane communities outside the more macro narratives highlighting the presumed demise of rurality.
