Hokkaido University
“I first took notice of this trend during my research on the disaster volunteers of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. There was a significant number of volunteers from urban areas who permanently settled down in the Tohoku area and started their own business,” explained Klien.
According to her, rural areas in general have been associated with rustic, bleak images. In the aging society of Japan, rural areas have a high number of senior citizens. This entails more problems: vacant houses, tradition discontinuity, etc. Hence, the general expectation is that younger people make attempts to escape from the countryside and seek bigger opportunities in urban and industrial regions.