Abstract
This article investigates the gendering nature of depopulation and rural revitalization in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. After outlining the cultural politics of these twin phenomena, I explore them further through a case study of the depopulated community of Shintoku. By establishing the Ladies Farm School in 1996, the town hoped that the agricultural training of single urban women would eventually lead them to settle down as young (and productive) “farming ladies.” Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in the school, I examine how gender is contested and constructed by seemingly progressive changes in women's social status. The argument I make here is that we reconsider the sexual division of labor as a (historical) product of modernization, instead of interpreting it as a timeless cultural pattern.A society is deeply marked by the specific forms in which its labor power is prepared.—Paul Willis, Learning to Labour
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