response to a complex and multifaceted problem, this is ours. Our book initially investigates the characteristics and impacts of the phenomenon of regional depopulation in Japan, its social and economic outcomes, and the implications of these outcomes—in short, shrinkage. This issue is becoming sufficiently common in developed regions worldwide to warrant the interest of a growing number of scholars and policy makers and is drastic enough for the places and peoples involved to justify close examination. However, our book is also about the various responses to regional shrinkage. If an issue warrants examination, then it necessarily warrants a response as well, and we offer responses to regional shrinkage as these are envisioned, organised, and put into practice in locales across Japan. Although we do at times use the term revitalisation as a conceptual tool for investigating and analysing the response to regional shrinkage in Japan, we do so because it is the English term that is currently most commonly being used with reference to the Japanese case. Nonetheless, one question raised by our research is whether revitalisation—to the extent that it means a return to growth—is ultimately possible within the context of the protracted depopulation that the Japanese nation has only just begun to experience. We therefore invite readers to consider others concepts, such as stability and sustainability, as replacements.
This book deals with concepts and phenomena that appear worldwide without reference to national or regional boundaries, but the study is also about mapping the particularities of a place—simultaneously and recursively. It is thus about mapping a contemporary phenomenon within Japan while also mapping Japan in terms of that phenomenon. We are talking about a place, but in truth, it is less a single place than a richly diverse mixture of places grouped together to constitute regional Japan—where shrinkage is being experienced and revitalisation is being attempted.
Though we need to make mention of the following issues, this book is not an exploration of the causes of Japan’s low fertility, the ageing of society, or indeed Japan’s industrial restructuring. Detailed research into these questions can be found in abundance elsewhere. Instead, what