IDEAS FOR GOODKamiyama is a small mountain town located in Tokushima Prefecture. This quiet town has been drawing attention domestically and internationally for its innovative policy called “Creative Depopulation”.
It refers to positively manipulating population characteristics by attracting young, creative people from outside. The desired result is to make rural areas sustainable while accepting the realities brought by depopulation.
The need for such innovation
Kamiyama is just one of the many rural towns that have been facing a serious declining population. Currently, more than half of the residents are more than 65 years old.
Aiming to turn that tide, the town has taken some unique policies. These include inviting foreign artists to its artist-in-residence program, and even attracting satellite offices of IT companies.
To find how Kamiyama is reversing its own depopulation, we talked to the Tokushima prefectural government, a non-profit organization that is active in the town. We also got to interview the people working at the satellite offices.
Green Valley, the driving force of Kamiyama
One organization indispensable to Kamiyama’s success is the NPO Green Valley. The group is based in Kamiyama, and its activities center focuses on assisting people to move into the town. It disseminates information about Kamiyama, runs the artist-in-residence program, the satellite-office invitation campaign, the food hub project and many more activities. Green Valley’s mission is “Make rural Japan wonderful”.
Artists from around the world revive the town
Under the artist-in-residence program, the town invites one local and two overseas artists every year. Between September to November, these artists would create and display their work.
The following photo is of a work by Hideaki Idetsuki. Titled “Hidden Library,” it is a library for sharing memories. Only residents can open the door to the library, and only they can donate books to it – only three times in a lifetime: school graduation, marriage, retirement.
Other works are on display all over Kamiyama, varying from behind the temple at the top of the hill to in a hut.
Grow local, eat local – the food hub project
The Food Hub project aims to pass Kamiyama’s agriculture and food culture on to the next generation with the motto “grow local, eat local”. It also hopes to foster connections between residents by eating together as a community. Residents have been working together with town officials to start the project in 2014.
Food made from local ingredients are available at the Kamaya diner and the Kamapan & Store bakery, which are run by the food hub project.
What’s it like to work at a satellite office in Kamiyama?
Kamiyama is a popular location for satellite offices of companies with headquarters in big cities like Tokyo. Satellite offices of about 12 companies are currently located there. We visited the Tokyo-based broadcasting operations firm, Plat Ease Corporation.
About 100 people are employed at the company’s Tokyo headquarters, among which about 20 staff work here. But the Tokyo office did not transfer these employees here. Rather, most of them were recruited locally. The majority of these staff come from Tokushima prefecture, Okinawa in Japan’s south and Hokkaido in the north. Many of those who transferred in have hobbies like camping or backpacking.
Each office handles roughly the same type of work. But only the Kamiyama site is involved in video creation and editing in cooperation with local communities, particularly for the 4K Film Festival.
The Kamiyama office was established after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. The disaster created the impetus for the company to diversify the locations of its data and operational functions to hedge against the risk of a functional breakdown at its head office.
Merits to working in Kamiyama
Under the theme of “open and seamless”, an old wooden house was reformed to promote freely accessible to both staff and local residents. There’s a full kitchen in the office so staff can make lunch. There are even futon beds in the rooms upstairs so employees can stay overnight.
A dedicated phone line connects to head office. The distance poses no problems in getting work done because of video conferencing tools.. There are many merits working in a rural location: the low population in Kamiyama means the internet line is faster. The rent and other daily costs are also cheaper. The staff organize parties and events with local residents too!
Moreover, it’s easy to find fresh inspiration here. Miles of forest-covered mountains lay just outside the office, making it a great place for creative work like video production.
Why has Kamiyama succeeded?
We asked prefectural employees why Kamiyama has succeeded in attracting new residents, becoming a model for repopulation.
The first step to success was infrastructure. The Tokushima government laid Japan’s foremost optical fiber network throughout the prefecture. Because of this network, Wi-Fi is available even deep in the mountains of Kamiyama. Furthermore, the communication speed is times faster than that in central Tokyo. That superlative internet infrastructure laid the foundation for attracting IT companies to the town.
With infrastructure in place, the predecessor to Green Valley began initiatives like the artist-in-residence program and started an international exchange project that welcomed people from overseas. This helped residents feel comfortable with outsiders coming to their town. Closing the foreignness gap it even more attractive for satellite offices of domestic IT companies and other firms.
As the numbers of satellite offices and people relocating to the town have increased, more people are spending money locally. This therefore allowed a local service industry of cafes and restaurants to grow. A restaurant has begun to see local guests too, even though it was originally popular among newcomers to the town.
However, revitalising a regional economy does not work with just creating more cafes and restaurants. But doing so worked for Kamiyama. This is because it came at the end of the process of attracting new residents that has consumption power. By attracting businesses into Kamiyama, it opened opportunities to non-locals through international exchange, backed by a superior internet environment.
The effective interconnection of these varying projects is a unique characteristic of Kamiyama’s experience.
Involving the youth of Kamiyama in tackling local issues
Kamiyama is conscious that its future lies in the hands of its youth, so it includes them in the running of the town. Local entrepreneurs are invited to speak at training sessions for prefectural government employees speak. Participants also include employees of private companies, for examples, of banks. Participants form teams that mix corporate employees together with government staff to discuss issues related to the community. The conversations are wide-ranging. They could range from ideas such as the creation of a personnel development platform using a cryptocurrency, to a library where you can spend the night – like a hotel or hot spring – to create a book reading culture in Kamiyama.
It is unusual and innovative for training for prefectural government employees to be this open. An employee explains the aim of the approach: “The young employees who participate in the future will attain positions of responsibility in the future. So to remove their resistance to working together with external partners on initiatives, we purposely create opportunities at this stage.”
The lack of action in Tokushima Prefecture could lead to depopulation, and eventually the loss of Kamiyama town. With this at stake, it is putting precedence aside to earnestly explore possibilities from all fields and standpoints to achieve what it can.
This article was originally published on IDEAS FOR GOOD.
Translated by Kirsty Kawano.
