Exploring ethical possibilities in a small Japanese town

Participants in the Tsuwano Conference 2019 make the “T” for Tsuwano. Tago and Nakanishi are in the front row.

Nestled in the rolling hills of Shimane Prefecture, Tsuwano has a population of 6,875. Once an important tourist attraction, the town is known as “Little Kyoto” because of the picturesque central street which once housed important local samurai families in the Edo period (1603-1867).

Participants in the August 2017 workshop on sustainable food and Satoyama landscapes.

The Tsuwano community faces an uncertain future and by 2040 it is predicted that the town’s population would fall to 3,400 if current trends continue. In 1960, the local population was over 21,000 but a combination of population ageing, falling birth rates and out-migration explain this decline. Recent data shows that 45% of the remaining population are aged 65 or older.

I first visited Tsuwano in 2015 when my friends, Masahiro Tago and Shinobu Nakanishi, set up the Tsuwano School Project. They were inspired by the need to find a practical future for the Tago family house, located adjacent to the main street. On our visit, we were guided around the town by Akiko Kamei, descendent of the former feudal lord of the region and now a national politician. We visited many local sites including the Taikodani Inari Shrine and met with the headmaster of Tsuwano High School.

Although I relocated from Japan to Australia soon thereafter, we agreed to continue our collaboration and on 5 August 2017 we organized a Summer School in the town that included two workshops on sustainable local food/Satoyama landscapes and town histories/place-making. Our brainstorming sessions took place in a Buddhist temple and we had lunch in a Meiji era hospital (constructed in 1892), recently converted into a vegetarian restaurant.

Garden as a place for cultural exchange

Gagaku performance in Tago House garden in August 2018.

One year later, on 4 August 2018 (by that time I was back in Japan), we returned to Tsuwano to organize a series of cultural events in the traditional Japanese garden behind Tago house. The garden has seen better days and our first task was clear away the overgrown parts while Tsuwano High School students constructed a bamboo stage (an idea proposed by one of the students).

Two musicians performed Gagaku – traditional court music – in the garden and were accompanied by the high school choir. A series of talks was organized on the history of Tago house and the relationship between the Tago and Kamei families. Everything was open to the public and free of charge.

I filmed high school students building the bamboo stage and the Gagaku musicians rehearsing for their performance in Tago garden.

A special session was organized at the end of the day inviting people from the town to talk about the Tsuwano School Project and to get their feedback on what kind of activities they would like to see. It was during these discussions that the notion of Tsuwano as a place where people can learn from each other emerged.

Tsuwano as a place of learning

In 2019, our engagement with Tsuwano High School deepened and several activities were collaboratively implemented throughout the year on the theme of “My Tsuwano” including mind-mapping exercises organized with professors from various universities and Google Japan. The high school students were asked to consider how their town could become more livable for everyone reflecting on the existing ethos in the town of healthy food, slow living, beautiful nature and rich historic/cultural traditions.

My presentation in the Yorokan at the 2019 Tsuwano Conference with Professor Cihangir Istek.

This culminated in the first Tsuwano Conference held on 14 December 2019, hosted in the Yorokan – former domain school of the Tsuwano clan originally constructed in 1786. This school produced a number of individuals who greatly influenced Japan’s development including the founders of Japan’s modern philosophy, Japanese textile industry, Japanese geology and horticulture. An ideal location to highlight the role of Tsuwano as a place of learning.

The Tsuwano Conference 2019 included several keynote presentations followed by workshops on the future of Tago house, on the vacant house problem and on the future potential of the town. In March 2019, I had the opportunity to visit Totnes – the UK’s most ethical town – and as a result my talk focused on whether a more ethical local economy may contribute to revitalization of Tsuwano.

My colleague from Osaka University, Professor Cihangir Istek, spoke on the potential to use co-design approaches when addressing place-making challenges facing Tsuwano. We also connected via Zoom with Jay Tompt at the Totnes REconomy Centre who talked about various initiatives designed to support citizen-led economic development including local entrepreneur forums.

Continuing during COVID19

The Tsuwano Conference continued in 2020 and 2021 under COVID19 but this meant we needed to adopt a hybrid model of face-to-face sessions combined with online zoom sessions. We organized our second conference on 5 December 2020 with sessions on visions underpinning regional development, on the potential to reshape local economies and an international session on new pathways and new possibilities. This latter session included presentations David Tseng of National Chiao Tung University, Larissa Hjorth from RMIT University and Jay Tompt, now with the world-famous Schumacher College.

We came back together again on 4 December 2021 for our third conference on the theme of “Community as a Place of Learning.” This provided a unique opportunity to share experiences from two communities in the UK (Totnes and Findhorn) and two communities in Japan (Fujino in Kanagawa Prefecture and Isumi in Chiba Prefecture). There was a fascinating presentation from Hiroshi Abe (a graduate from Schumacher College) on his experience of living in Ama town, a remote island in Shimane Prefecture, struggling with population decline, but also learning from the Totnes experience.   

I produced this video about the 2021 Tsuwano Conference with my students and guided by freelance documentary maker, Luis Patron.

Ethical seeds for future growth

In the five-year period since our first summer school in 2017, some very interesting developments have occurred in the town. Initially, we collaborated with a group called Founding Base which describes itself as a venture business set up in 2014 that works in local communities across Japan to create new economic opportunities. They participated in the 2018 Tago Garden event serving food from their business – Marugoto Tsuwano and they presented at the 2019 conference. Founding Base is well-established in the town having converted an old house into a shared office space from where they also run an online store selling local food.

Just across the road, another house has been converted into a shared living and working space by a company called ADDress (their local representative made a presentation in the 2021 conference). Active across Japan, ADDress purchases or rents (and then renovates) properties in rural communities and provides its members with options to live and work remotely, or to migrate to one or more locations in rural Japan. The emphasis is on collective action, sharing and co-living which has proven attractive to Japanese people across diverse walks of life. This is not a tourist service but is better understood as a residence service where ADDress members live and engage with local communities.

And finally, Nakanishi and Tago have set up a not-for-profit called the Tsuwano Town and Culture Creation Center (or TMC for short) that organizes the Tsuwano Conference and explores the potential to develop new economic opportunities in the town. It is based in the Tago House Annex (a converted building close to Tago House) which is also an important meeting spot for the high school students, close to the only convenience store in town. TMC’s activities involve extensive collaboration with other local partners to create new possibilities based on Tsuwano’s unique history, culture and natural assets, and hopefully with a firm ethical foundation.