Rural depopulation and the concentration of people in cities are structural problems this country has carried for many years.
As young people have drained away to the cities in search of convenience and economic opportunity, the shortage of hands in the regions has grown acute, and even the survival of local culture — traditional industries, seasonal festivals — is now in doubt.
In the cities, meanwhile, overcrowding has driven up housing costs and packed the commute, eating away at the quality of life; the harms of such concentration have reached a level that can no longer be overlooked.
Faced with this situation, the government has raised the banner of regional revitalisation and rolled out a variety of measures, yet it is hard to say that they have produced any notable results.
Not everything, however, gives cause for pessimism.
Advances in information technology have made working free of any fixed location a real possibility, and the movement of people relocating to the regions in search of a richer natural setting is gradually spreading.
What matters, surely, is not to cast city and countryside as opponents but to build a relationship in which each brings out its own distinctive value and complements the other.
What is needed right now is to take each locality’s circumstances into account and, in place of uniform policy, to chart a path of sustainable development rooted in the resources and history of that particular place.
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