[Feature: The Present State of Regional Migration] Creating "Relationship Populations" Develops Local Human Resources: Building Relationships Outside the Region in Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture

2021/07/05

Image: Otsugunai Kagura (Hanamaki City)

In response to Japan's population decline problem, triggered by Hiroya Masuda's proposal of "potentially vanishing cities," the government formulated the "Comprehensive Strategy for Town, People, and Job Creation" (hereinafter referred to as the "Comprehensive Strategy") based on the 2014 Act on Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalizing Local Economy. They have been promoting migration policies to correct the over-concentration of population in Tokyo and encourage the return of the population to rural areas.

In line with this movement, prefectures and municipalities across the country have also formulated local versions of the Comprehensive Strategy, implementing initiatives such as financial support for migration and settlement, and promoting the attractiveness of local governments.

However, regarding the initiatives in the "First Phase" from FY2015 to FY2019, the government summarized that "while the goals were to halt population decline, correct the over-concentration in Tokyo, and ensure growth potential, sufficient results have not been achieved." Consequently, they added a policy for the creation and expansion of "relationship populations" to the Second Phase Comprehensive Strategy starting from FY2020.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, a "relationship population" refers to "people who are involved with a region and its people in diverse ways, being neither the 'settled population' who have migrated nor the 'exchange population' who have come for tourism." Furthermore, it is expected that such human resources, particularly young people, are already entering rural areas and will become the drivers of community development.

In Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture, where the author works, we have been working to create touchpoints to increase the number of people involved with Hanamaki City from outside the region while addressing the problem of population decline.

In this article, I would like to overview the efforts of Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture, to create touchpoints with people outside the region, as well as the research on "Commuting Kagura" that I conducted while enrolled in the Master's program at the Graduate School of Media and Governance. I will consider the significance of creating relationship populations from the perspective of "developing local human resources."

Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture, is located in the central part of the prefecture and was formed in 2006 through the merger of one city and three towns: Hanamaki City, Ohasama Town, Ishidoriya Town, and Towa Town. It is the site of the prefecture's only airport, has a Tohoku Shinkansen station, and features multiple interchanges on the Tohoku Expressway connecting to the Tokyo metropolitan area, making it a hub for high-speed transportation in Iwate Prefecture. It is also one of the leading hot spring resorts in the Tohoku region with 12 hot springs. Furthermore, it is the birthplace of the poet and children's story writer Kenji Miyazawa and is a city rich in culture and history, with over 100 folk performing arts preserved.

The total population of Hanamaki City has continued to decline since its peak of 107,175 in 2000, falling to 94,601 in 2020. The population decline is progressing faster than the projections in the Hanamaki City Population Vision formulated in FY2015.

In response to the government's policy for "Town, People, and Job Creation," Hanamaki City formulated the Hanamaki City Comprehensive Strategy for Town, People, and Job Creation in 2015 and began efforts to promote migration and settlement.

Specifically, the city has established support measures such as a vacant house bank system to match vacant houses with potential users, the "Settlement Promotion Housing Acquisition Subsidy" to support costs related to migration from outside the prefecture, and the "Child-rearing Household Housing Acquisition Incentive" to support costs for child-rearing households living near or with parents. Additionally, the city has utilized websites for information dissemination, such as "Iitoko Hanamaki" for migration and settlement information and "Mamafre" for child-rearing support information.

While such projects are being developed in municipalities nationwide as part of the "Town, People, and Job Creation" trend, Hanamaki City has simultaneously promoted initiatives to create relationships with people outside the region in various ways.

Here, I will introduce two examples of Hanamaki City's efforts to build relationships with people outside the region.

The first is the creation of touchpoints between the community and the Local Revitalization Cooperator (hereinafter referred to as "Cooperators"), who are human resources engaged in community cooperation activities in various regions under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Hanamaki City is developing recruitment activities that emphasize "clarifying the mission of Cooperators" and "creating opportunities to build relationships with local residents involved in the Cooperators' tasks." Specifically, these include clarifying the mission, holding recruitment briefing sessions in the Tokyo metropolitan area with local residents participating, conducting local tours for prospective applicants, and permitting side jobs related to the mission.

This is intended not only to create an entry point for smoothly entering the community after taking up the post but also to build cooperative relationships with the community and people involved in the mission during the three-year term of the Cooperator.

In 2021, amid the spread of COVID-19, the city held multiple online salons involving the city, local residents, and prospective Cooperators. In these salons, participants discussed how they would utilize Hanamaki City's resources, considered issues with local people, and refined the activities the prospective Cooperators intended to perform—their missions—to propose them to the local government. This makes it possible to prevent mismatches between the Cooperator's wishes and their actual activities.

Hanamaki City has hired 18 Local Revitalization Cooperators through these efforts, and the retention rate exceeds 70%, which is higher than the national average. This is thought to be the result of a well-developed system to support relationship building between local residents and Cooperators, making it easier to gain the cooperation of local residents and thus improving the retention rate.

The second example is "Makimaki Hanamaki," a website where not only citizens but also non-residents who want to be involved with Hanamaki City can report on the content, people, and events of Hanamaki City that interest them and publish the content as articles.

Launched in 2017, "Makimaki Hanamaki" embodies the idea of involving people from outside the city as well as citizens to promote the charms of Hanamaki City. On this site, Hanamaki citizens and people who want to be involved with Hanamaki City can report on content they are interested in and act as "citizen writers."

The city held multiple study sessions with professional photographers and writers as instructors to provide opportunities to acquire skills for writing more attractive articles. Additionally, a system for operating the site was created by having Cooperators, whose mission is city promotion, serve as the editorial department.

As a result, "Makimaki Hanamaki" has grown into an information medium where people can learn in detail about life in Hanamaki City and how to enjoy it, and it received the "Good Design Award" in 2019. Even now, five years after its launch, article submissions by citizen writers continue, and it continues to function as a mechanism for sustainable involvement with Hanamaki City.

It can be said that Hanamaki City's efforts to build relationships outside the region are creating both ways for people from outside the region to get involved with Hanamaki City and ways for local residents to get involved with the outside.

Shinichiro Takahashi, a Hanamaki City official who has planned and executed relationship-building projects with the outside for six years, states that "such initiatives require the development of many human resources."

Mr. Takahashi states that for the activities and retention of Local Revitalization Cooperators, local human resources who can cooperate in fulfilling the mission and mentors who can support the Cooperators' activities after they take up their posts are necessary. Regarding Makimaki Hanamaki, he says that not only writers who post articles but also human resources to support article creation and those to teach the skills to report and disseminate content are needed. In other words, to create touchpoints with the community, it is necessary to simultaneously develop human resources to create those touchpoints.

Therefore, as part of the human resource development of city officials to solve local issues, Hanamaki City concluded a partnership agreement with the Keio Research Institute at SFC and established the "Hanamaki City Local Revitalization Institute."

I had the opportunity to participate in the activities of the institute, and while active as a performer of folk performing arts myself, I conducted research on how to resolve the shortage of performers, which I felt was an issue. I focused on the current situation where it is difficult to sustain the traditional method of securing performers from within the village due to the progressing population decline. I thought that by allowing people who live outside the village and are interested in folk performing arts to participate as performers, and by doing this in tandem with existing systems, it might lead to a solution. I also thought that through the practice of this system, the village performers themselves could expand their thinking and methods for securing performers, making it a place for human resource development.

Therefore, focusing on "Otsugunai Kagura," one of the representative folk performing arts of Hanamaki City in which I am active as a performer, I enrolled in the Master's program at the Graduate School of Media and Governance and proceeded with research on the theme of developing a "Commuting Kagura" system to secure "performers from outside the village."

"Commuting Kagura" is a form of folk performing art transmission activity where individuals perform by "commuting" from outside the village where the art is passed down.

In folk performing arts, of which there are said to be about 20,000 cases nationwide, the shortage of performers to inherit the art is an issue. Folk performing arts are said to have functions that contribute to the survival of local communities, such as the "village maintenance and regeneration function" (Hashimoto, 2015) and the "function of bringing people back" (Abe, 2014).

Until now, the arts have been passed down by securing performers through the method of training children and students in the village who are interested in folk performing arts, and having those who wish to continue after entering society become performers.

However, in the villages where folk performing arts are passed down, the number of children and students living in the village—the future performer candidates—continues to decrease along with the progression of population decline. Furthermore, the content that children are interested in has diversified, and it is thought that there are limits to securing performers using only traditional methods.

It is not only those born and raised in the village who are interested in folk performing arts. Previous research has described cases where people who move to villages where folk performing arts are passed down become performers, and initiatives where village performers pass on the art to performers from outside the village who are interested in it.

Based on these cases, I expanded the scope of securing performers beyond those born and raised in the village to include those living outside the village who are interested in folk performing arts. I developed the "Commuting Kagura Model" as a system that allows "performers from outside the village" to participate in transmission activities alongside village performers, and explored the possibility of activities to build the system together with residents from outside the village who commute.

In the research on "Commuting Kagura," I focused on how village performers would evaluate a system in which people participate in kagura transmission activities by "commuting" to the village without living in the village or its neighboring districts. Therefore, using Otsugunai Kagura as the field, and with the cooperation of a total of six students attending the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) and researchers from the Keio Research Institute at SFC, activities based on the Commuting Kagura Model were conducted from September to December 2019.

As a result, while village performers welcomed the increase in residents from outside the village involved in kagura, regarding actually working together as performers, opinions were expressed that it is necessary to assess the sustainability of the commuting activities, skills, and personality, on the premise of practicing together.

In other words, while they desire a solution to the problem of performer shortage, for residents from outside the village to continue to be involved as performers, it is desirable for them to be gradually approved while continuing activities with the village performers. On the other hand, a certain level of understanding was also born regarding the intention to secure performers from outside the village, and there were comments positively considering the Commuting Kagura method.

Furthermore, it was found that activities based on the Commuting Kagura Model can function as a system for performers from outside the village to practice in the village, experience performing on occasions approved by village performers, and repeat the cycle of improving their skills through practice, thereby deepening their relationship with village performers and gaining experience in obtaining the approval of village residents.

In this article, I have overviewed the "multifaceted touchpoint creation" conducted by Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture, and the "Commuting Kagura" initiative executed jointly by village residents and the administration.

Hanamaki City's efforts can be described as initiatives that encourage local residents to spontaneously provide touchpoints to the outside, rather than promotion where the administration unilaterally disseminates information.

These initiatives also seem likely to be effective in human resource development, as local residents delve into the things and events they are involved in and acquire the ability to open entry points for people from outside the region to get involved when attracting human resources from outside.

And in the research on "Commuting Kagura," I showed the process of utilizing resources possessed by the region and building relationships with the outside by considering methods to open up resources passed down in the region to the outside and build relationships. This case suggests that through the guidance of the art to students and working adults from outside the region, village performers explored various methods and possibilities for continuing transmission activities, which also led to the development of human resources who think about solving the problem of performer shortage.

In other words, working on the creation of relationship populations in rural areas is thought to lead to the development of human resources within the region who solve local issues while local residents themselves re-recognize the charm and necessity of the things and events they want to survive in the future, in the process of creating paths for various human resources to enter the region. It can be said that the relationship population is an entity that judges the validity of the strategies and specific initiatives put forward by the developed local residents themselves.

Despite restrictions on movement from urban to rural areas due to the spread of COVID-19, relationship building from rural areas continues through the use of online meeting tools and the holding of small-scale events with countermeasures in place. Continuing these relationship-building efforts and steadily developing human resources to solve local issues in rural areas is surely what is necessary to sustain rural areas in the future.