Developing counterurbanisation: Making sense of rural mobility and governance in Japan

Urbanisation has been a dominant trend in Japan over the last fifty years. However, in the context of rapidly ageing and depopulating rural areas, recent research has begun to examine the lives, motivations and difficulties of an apparently increasing number of counter-urban migrants in Japan. Despite this, the extent and policy drivers of counterurbanisation and, wider, rural in-migration remains underexamined. In this paper we examine shifts in the governance and representation of the rural, particularly in relation to rural mobilities, that have occurred in Japan in the last few decades. We subsequently draw on secondary migration data to shed light on rural mobility trends in Japan. In doing so, we highlight the way in which counterurbanisation in Japan represents a development strategy pursued by central government and underpinned by an idealisation of the countryside rather than a significant pattern on the ground. As such, we argue that Japan is characterised by two forms of counterurbanisation, an idealised form which renders counter-urban mobilities as a means to tackle rural pathologies, and a more limited material counterurbanisation observed on the ground. Finally, we suggest a need for convergence between these two forms. •We examine rural development policies aimed at encouraging counterurbanisation in Japan.•We discuss the way that the rural is framed and understood in policy and lay discourses.•We review evidence for and processes of counterurbanisation in contemporary Japan.•We demonstrate that counterurbanisation constitutes a powerful policy discourse rather than a significant mobility trend.•We conceptualise new forms of counterurbanisation (idealised and material) that fit the specific context of Japan.