Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosyste ...

the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster in 2011, as local residents and the national government struggled to cope with the extraordinary level of destruction and suffering and the difficult process of rebuilding.²⁵

Such ideas about Tōhoku—as a place characterized by impediments to economic growth and aged, declining populations—often oversimplify the actual social and economic conditions in the region. William W. Kelly argues that areas of Japan like Tōhoku are complex regions characterized by agricultural production but also tied to urban centers—particularly Tokyo—that have penetrated outlying areas with institutional and ideological structures associated with the metropolitan core.²⁶ Along with images of underdeveloped regions has arisen what Kelly describes as a “faddish sentimentalism” stimulated by rural nostalgia, often among urbanites, for a countryside that has faded from an empirically evident social and geographical space into the imaginary of historicized longing for a particular Japanese past. Nonetheless, while some conceptualize Tōhoku by looking backward to an idealized agrarian antecedent to contemporary, urbanized Japan, others engage the future through the creation of places of potentiality like wildlife sanctuaries and popular sites for outdoor sports such as hiking, skiing, and camping.²⁷ One finds resorts in the mountains (hot springs and ski areas), newly constructed shopping malls, and not a few McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants like Kentucky Fried Chicken and MOS Burger both in the cities of Tōhoku and in outlying areas along routes that connect those cities, although the further one moves away from the main transportation lines, the less likely it becomes to find these types of restaurants and stores.²⁸ As Kelly notes, the Tōhoku of the early twenty-first century remains somewhat enigmatic in its blending of agricultural imagery and identity with an industrial and increasingly post-industrial political economy.²⁹

This contrast is evident in Kanegasaki where, alongside rice fields, there is an industrial park that includes a manufacturing facility for export models (left-hand drive) of the Toyota Prius C, a semiconductor factory, and a pharmaceutical company. Neighboring towns have manufacturing