Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Postgrowth Society by Susanne Klien

Abstract

Reviewed by: Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Postgrowth Society by Susanne Klien Michael Strausz (bio) Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Postgrowth Society. By Susanne Klien. SUNY Press, Albany NY, 2020. xxviii, 203 pages. $95.00, cloth; $32.95, paper. Early in Susanne Klien's recent book on lifestyle migration in Japan, she makes an interesting observation: the meaning of "rural" in Japan is changing. Instead of Japanese people discussing rural areas as "backwaters of civilization," Japanese people are increasingly treating rural areas as "fields of experimentation and pioneering grounds for diverse lifestyles" (p. 25). Who are these pioneers, and what is the nature of their experiments? To address [End Page 456] these and many related questions, Klien conducted participant observation research and 118 semistructured interviews with urban migrants to rural Japan between 2009 and 2017 (p. xxiii). The book she has produced as she analyzes these data combines careful analysis of the details of the lives and choices of her interview subjects with intriguing observations about the bigger picture both for Japan and for broader theories of migration and mobility. The migrants Klien discusses in this book are not a part of a "back to the land" movement. Indeed, more than one of her interview subjects describe themselves as "indoor" people who do not enjoy spending time outside (p. 127). And, despite living in rural locations, the "indoor" subjects that Klien interviews (not all of her subjects) do not appear to spend much time outdoors. "Jun" works in an electronics shop (p. 126) and "Haru" lives in a collective housing project that he has founded where he develops computer apps (p. 127). Indeed, Haru notes that he "only ventures out rarely to buy tobacco products and occasionally joins common local activities in order to maintain good relations with the local community" (p. 128). Klien notes that many of her interview subjects "conceded that 'the countryside' and 'country lifestyle' was not the key incentive for their move. Instead, for the majority the countryside seemed the perfect setting for selfgrowth, challenge, and furthering their career goals" (p. 2). Despite their abstract commitment to furthering career goals, however, she often found interview subjects discussing their migration as an alternative to deciding on what they would like to do with the rest of their lives. Klien calls this approach "moratorium migration," "migration that is used by migrants as an instrument to gain time to postpone rethinking what they wish to spend their lives on due to a lack of more appealing alternatives" (p. 124). At first glance, "moratorium migration" may seem like a tool that migrants can use to resist conventional expectations of Japanese society. However, Klien paints a much more complex picture. She references Arjun Appadurai's distinction between an "ethics of probability," which is apparent "in the modern regimes of diagnosis, counting, and accounting," and an "ethics of possibility," which "is intricately related to hope, aspiration, and perspective as it 'expands the fields of the imagination'" (p. xv). While it initially may appear that lifestyle migrants like the ones Klien studies are operating with reference to an ethics of possibility and against an ethics of probability, Klien argues that "the line between these apparently dichotomous poles is not as clear cut as Appadurai suggests" (p. xv). Instead, Klien observes how her research subjects often inadvertently reproduce the ethics of probability-based institutions they are purportedly resisting. This is particularly clear in the case of a research subject Klien calls Motoki. Motoki moved to Kamiyama in Tokushima Prefecture after having worked full time in high-powered jobs in advertising for nine years. [End Page 457] In Kamiyama, he started a restaurant. This restaurant supports the local community, both by buying produce from local farmers and by giving a discount to locals who buy their food. While Motoki compares his new life in Kamiyama favorably to his life in Tokyo because he is able to work on something in which he believes, he has continued to work extremely long hours and has little time for his family or leisure. Klien argues that "Motoki's trajectory serves as intriguing evidence of the extent...