Rethinking Locality in Japan: What Is Local?

This book inquires what is meant when we say "local" and what "local" means in the Japanese context.

Through the window of locality, it enhances an understanding of broader political and socio-economic shifts in Japan. This includes demographic change, electoral and administrative reform, rural decline and revitalization, welfare reform, as well as the growing metabolic rift in energy and food production. Chapters throughout this edited volume discuss the different and often contested ways in which locality in Japan has been reconstituted, from historical and contemporary instances of administrative restructuring, to more subtle social processes of making – and unmaking – local places. Contributions from multiple disciplinary perspectives are included to investigate the tensions between overlapping and often incongruent dimensions of locality. Framed by a theoretical discussion of socio-spatial thinking, such issues surrounding the construction and renegotiation of local places are not only relevant for Japan specialists, but also connected with topical scholarly debates further afield.

Accordingly, Rethinking Locality in Japan will appeal to students and scholars from Japanese studies and human geography to anthropology, history, sociology and political science.

Sonja Ganseforth is Principal Researcher at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo. Her research interests include development and sustainability discourses, globalized agri-food systems, small-scale fisheries, and the political ecology of food. Her first monograph analyzed Japanese development cooperation in Palestine (2016).

Hanno Jentzsch is Assistant Professor at the Institute for East Asian Studies, Vienna University. He works on agricultural politics, central-local relations, and social welfare in Japan. His first monograph Harvesting State Support (2021) analyzed institutional change in Japanese agriculture.