地域社会学会:45 Years of Regional Japanese Sociology.

Anthony Rausch, Hirosaki University [About | Email]

Volume 24, Issue 3 (Discussion Paper 3 in 2024). First published in ejcjs on 13 December 2024.

Abstract

A retrospective view of the contributions made by the Japan Association of Regional and Community Studies (JARCS; 地域社会学会) over the 45 years of its history.

Keywords: Japan, regional issues, sociology, Japan Association of Regional and Community Studies (JARCS; 地域社会学会).

The Japan Association of Regional and Community Studies (JARCS; 地域社会学会) was established in 1975. The association website assigns the motivation of its founding to be a response to ‘gaps’ that were emerging in Japan and Japanese society at the time: geographic growth gaps between urban and rural, and applied knowledge gaps between rural agriculture and urban industry. The association was thus established by social science researchers in order to investigate the various issues reflecting these gaps for local communities and to conduct empirical and applied research in a manner that would yield useful outcomes to address them (https://jarcs.sakura.ne.jp/main/outline/index.html). The association holds an annual conference, with conference programs on the website beginning from 2002, along with additional information about four research meetings held per year. The association publishes a journal—地域社会学会年報;Annals of Regional and Community Studies—which was first published in 1979. As of fall 2020, association membership was just under 400.
 
This discussion paper will use the JARCS journal—Annals of Regional and Community Studies—to chart the research trajectory of regional sociology in Japan. As above, the journal was first published in 1979, after which it had an irregular early period before becoming an annual publication in 1995. The total number of papers published in the journal over its history is just over 300, with separations between Special Issue contributions and General Papers from 1997 onward. The complete year-by-year list of articles carried in the journal is available on the website (https://jarcs.sakura.ne.jp/main/publications/index.html). The objective of this discussion paper is, on one level, simply to chart the trend of issues that were taken up by the journal over its 45-year history, and, on another level, to set the stage for the future of social science research on and in regional Japan.

The Sporadic Early Years: 1979 to 1994

As above, Volume 1 of the journal was published in 1979, with Volume 2 coming out the next year (1980). There was then a five-year break until Volume 3 was published in 1985; Volume 4 was published in 1987; Volume 5 in 1991; and Volume 6 in 1994. Volume 1 established the association’s priorities with two mirror papers: Development of urban research and current issues and Development of rural research and current issues. The next two issues (Vol. 2 & Vol. 3; 1980 & 1985) took up ‘Regional Issues’ and ‘Trends in Regional Development.’ Volume 4 (1987) was titled ‘Perspectives of Modern Urban Theory’ and Volume 6 (1994) ‘Regional Sociology at the Turning Point.’ The former (Vol. 4) embraced a clear focus on urban theory and issues, with the latter (Vol. 6) reflecting a more suitable mix of urban and rural research topics.

An Annual Journal: 1995 to 2013

From Volume 7 (1995), the journal has been published annually. It is from this point that every volume has had a specific research theme, while also accepting and publishing general papers. In general, the themes were quite diverse year by year: Prospects of Regional Sociology (Vol. 8, 1996), Sociology of Regions and Spaces (Vol. 9, 1997), Citizenship in Regenerating Local Communities (Vol. 10, 1998), Globalization (Vol. 11, 1999), Lifestyle and Regional Formation (Vol. 12, 2000), Self-Determination (Vol. 13, 2001), and Decentralization (Vol. 16, 2004). Interestingly, over this period, themes were also organised over two-year volumes, as shown below:
           
            Public Nature
            Reorganisation of Public Nature in the Region (Vol. 14, 2002)
            Transformation of Public Nature and Local Community (Vol. 15, 2003)
            Disparity
            Inequality, Disparity, Class and Local Society (Vol. 18, 2006)
            Regional Development of Class Disparities (Vol. 19, 2007)
            Shrinking Society
            The Current State of Shrinking Societies and Local Communities (Vol. 20, 2008)
            Regional Revitalization of a Shrinking Society (Vol. 21, 2009)
            Regional Revitalization
            The Reality of Regional Revitalization from a Local Perspective (Vol. 22, 2010)
            Prospects for Regional Revitalization and Regional Sociology (Vol. 23, 2011)
            Re-scaling
            Nation and Local Society under Re-scaling (Vol. 24, 2012)
            Re-scaling Theory and its Japanese Context (Vol. 25, 2013)
           
In addition to the volume themes shown above, other topical concentrations can be discerned in the general papers published in certain volumes: Volume 9 (1997) carried several papers that focused on methodology and Volume 11 (1999) carried four general papers on identity. Over this period, there were also numerous papers on themes related to the contribution that a unique ‘local’ can make in the local economy: Festivals and Local Communities (Vol. 8, 1996), Foundation for the Establishment of Citizen Business Organisations (Vol. 9, 1997), (Re)creation of Traditional Events (Vol. 13, 2001), Local Specialty Products that Utilize Everyday Resources (Vol. 16, 2004), and Local Industries that Support the Region (Vol. 20, 2008).

The Earthquake and Corona: 2014 to Present

With the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the nation’s attention turned to the plight and fate of the Tohoku region. An interesting note here is the lag between event and academic publications appearing; in the case of JARCS, the first paper taking up the earthquake was published in 2012 (Vol. 24) under the title: Experiencing the Great East Japan Earthquake – As someone involved in education and research in the affected prefecture. Volumes 26 (2014) and 27 (2015) were given over to the disaster as the volume theme, with a focus largely on post-disaster reconstruction.
 
            Great East Japan Earthquake: Reconstruction & Regional Sociology (Vol. 26, 2014)
            Great East Japan Earthquake: Vision and Reality of Reconstruction (Vol. 27, 2015)
 
The years following continued with the theme of regional rebuilding: Volume 28 (2016) Reconstruction and Regional Disappearance; Volume 29 (2017) Grand Design and Rediscovery of the Living Sphere; Volume 30 (2018) Rebuilding Communality in Local Communities; Volume 31 (2019) Reconstruction of Communality in the City.
 
Turning to the corona pandemic, the Japanese government confirmed the first Japanese case in January 2020 (Wikipedia, n.d.), with the topic constituting a volume-level focus in the journal in Volumes 33, 34 and 35 (2021 to 2023).  
 
            Disruption and Future of Local Communities in the Corona Era (Vol. 33, 2021)
            Pandemic and Cities / Regions (Vol. 34, 2022)
            Movement & Local Communities During New Coronavirus Pandemic (Vol. 35, 2023)
 
Some of the theses and keywords through these three volumes include: COVID-19 and overtourism, incorporating fluctuations into public health preparedness, mobile society and its transformation due to the pandemic, and consequences for regional areas of restrictions on international movement during the pandemic.

Keywords Found and Not Found

In a journal with as diverse a contributing population as JARCS, it is difficult to adequately assign thematic concentrations to papers such that an overall view of the research is possible. As a case in point, which category would the paper titled Urban Policy Formation and Administrative/Resident Relations in Large Cities be assigned? It has policy elements, governance and administrative elements and its focus is on resident relations. Likewise, for the paper Collaboration between Residents and Government regarding the Shared Taxi Business in Local Cities? It takes up governance and resident interaction, local business, and a relationship of collaboration. For that reason, an approach to capturing the overall focus of research was organised on the basis of title keyword frequency. The themes taken up over the 300-plus papers published are reflected in the specific terminology of paper titles such that the focus of multi-dimensional research can be generally identified. However, it is also a reality that the specific issues of research published in the journal are diverse to the degree that the level of commonality, as seen in the number of words that appear multiple times, was minimal. Looking at Table 1, the number of common terms that appeared over 50 times is just three: local, regional and development. However, the 50+ references also indicate the geographical expanse of case study research in the journal by virtue of the 50-plus research site references that are indicated. Two other interesting points can be discerned through the frequency counts: the frequency of references both to foreign research site case studies and to specific scholars that are relevant to a research theme of regional social science, both as seen in the 20-29 reference frequency group.

Table 1. Reference frequency in Annals of Regional and Community Studies

As for the terminology in the ‘under-represented theme,’ seeking out such terms is a highly subjective matter, as every reader will likely have their own specific areas of interest. For the sake of examples, the terms sustainability, stratification, finance, ICT-technology-Internet, agriculture-farming-fishery, festivals, (over)tourism, non-profit and population were used, each appearing less than five times of the course of the journals 45-year history.

Future Regional Japan Research

One value in looking at the past is to consider how it may inform the future. As in Table 1, there are general themes that will emerge as meaningful in the future and merit more rigorous research: sustainability in regional places, finance and the non-profit sector for rural economies, volunteerism in regional and local settings, the promise and risk of tourism for regional places. Additional themes can certainly be envisioned: the akiya problem for regional cities and towns; the contribution that furusato nozei makes (or doesn’t make) to regional areas, regional and local think tanks and their contribution to governance and economic vitalization, local media and the specific value-added aspect it contributes to the community, local sports enterprises and their influence on local populations (see Rausch: 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022). One hopes that social science research on regional Japan, as well as the publication of the social science research that is undertaken on regional Japan, will both continue in the pattern of the Annals of Regional and Community Studies.

References

Rausch, Anthony. 2017. The Local Newspaper in Japan: Civic Participation, Local Issues, and Critical Journalism Japan. Association of Regional and Community Studies Website Journal: http://jarcs.sakura.ne.jp/jarcs_en/papers_files/Rausch.pdf; posted 2017.
 
Rausch, Anthony. 2019. Japan’s Furusato Nozei Tax Program: Neoliberal Policy or Hometown Sentiment? electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, Vol. 19(3), at https://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol19/iss3/rausch.html.
 
Rausch, Anthony. 2021. Resolving the Contemporary Tensions of Regional Places: What Japan Can Teach Us. Kindle Direct Publishing.
 
Rausch, Anthony. 2022. Regional Think Tanks in Japan: Place Priority through Infrastructural Consulting, Information Generation and Leadership Development. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 10.1007/s10767-022-09435-w
 
Wikipedia, n.d. Covid-19 pandemic in Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Japan Accessed 25 October 2024.

About the Author

Anthony Rausch is professor at Hirosaki University, Japan. He obtained his PhD from Monash University and has published on issues relevant to rural Japan. He is author of Japan’s Local Newspapers: Chihoshi and Revitalisation Journalism (Routledge), Japanese Journalism and the Japanese Newspaper: A Supplemental Reader (Teneo Press), and co-editor of Japan’s Shrinking Regions: 21st Century Responses to Depopulation and Socioeconomic Decline (Cambria Press).

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