Young Urban Migrants in the Japanese Countryside Between Self-Realization and Slow Life?

This chapter depicts the ongoing paradigm shift in highly centralized Japan from the perception of rural areas as stagnant backwaters to experimental grounds. I examine the reasons and motives of individual lifestyle migrants for relocating to the countryside. The findings outlined are based on multi-site ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Niigata and Shimane prefectures in 2016. Clearly, urban neophytes aspire to a better work-life balance. Their narratives and daily practices indicate that there is increasing hybridity of lifestyles in rural areas as these new settlers draw on private and professional contacts from beyond the local community to which they have relocated.