Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosyste ...

have become largely “indistinguishable from those of…relatives and acquaintances who have moved to metropolitan Tokyo,” and this observation seems even more evident in the Tōhoku region of 2018.⁶⁶

People comfortably traverse regional, national, and international borders and it is common for residents of Tōhoku to have had living experiences in other parts of Japan, as well as in other parts of the world. Today’s middle-aged, college graduates in towns like Kanegasaki or Ōshū grew up at a time when study abroad was becoming more common, and even those who did not attend college may well have visited other countries for recreation or for experiences related to work—study trips for farmers have been organized for many decades in this part of Japan, meaning that it is not unusual to find a dairy farmer working his farm on the outskirts of Kanegasaki who has also spent time in Europe or the U.S. studying agricultural practices. Indeed, Hogan found in her study of globalization in rural Japan and Australia that 25 percent of participants indicated they had travelled abroad for business, pleasure, or study, and the majority of farmers and small businesspeople, teachers, and public servants felt that international connections formed an important part of their work and many of her participants noted the importance of imported commodities in daily life.⁶⁷ The emergence of regionalized social spaces and behaviors is related to a general standardization of many aspects of life patterns that has occurred throughout Japan as different parts of the country have become synchronized and integrated with metropolitan centers and reflect a mainstream or middle-class consciousness (chūryū ishiki 中流意識) continually expressed and reconstructed in various forms of media that are available throughout the country via the Internet and through television broadcasts.

This process of metropolitanization is itself situated within a postmodern demographic context of negative population growth or a situation of late-stage demographic transition where birthrates are low and death rates are high, leading to a long-term decline in population that is showing itself visibly in the Japanese countryside. This produces