Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosyste ...

growth is certainly encouraged. And one of the key features of the Act is the emphasis on creating small businesses that are able to react to social and demographic change, which is particularly important in rural areas, but is relevant to the country as a whole given the general population decline currently occurring in Japan.

The METI White Paper includes case studies of startups that made use of well-developed business plans, an approach the government is encouraging as a way to create sustainable small businesses and anticipate conditions in changing business climates like depopulating rural areas. In fact, the 2016 White Paper notes that only about 50% of small-business owners developed any sort of business plan, which may in part be due to the fact that many of these micro-businesses are family centered and thus kin-based in terms of both employment and financial support, leading to informal arrangements and informal business plans in the place of consciously developed and articulated plans.

The conceptualization of small-business startups and support for local communities can be seen in other government policies and plans. A good example is a government campaign called chihō sōsei (地方創生), whose term literally means region or countryside creation. The campaign was developed in 2014, following the beginning of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s second term and is designed to mitigate the effects of an over-concentration of population and economic activity in the Tokyo area. Japan has long struggled with an intense concentration of education, government, business, and cultural products in the Tokyo area, and this continues to represent a significant concern, particularly given the fact that the region is prone to major earthquakes. In order to shift economic activities and population to other areas and to revitalize rural areas, the government developed a set of programs aimed at promoting local and rural organizations as well as small businesses.⁴⁹ There is a large array of programs and goals under this framework, including areas devoted to professional development and strategies for developing human resources and subsidies to promote regional development.⁵⁰