| You are correct, but maybe I should rephrase? I have never gotten the sense that Tokyo people think that Japan would be better off if everybody living in rural areas were to drop dead tomorrow. Rather, in grocery stores, foods and fruit proudly proclaim their prefecture of origin -- Iwate, Aomori, Hokkaido. Tokyoites go to the countryside for vacation, for hot springs, to visit farms, that sort of thing. Popular sentiment is that Japanese are sad that the countryside is dying, and there's a lot of push -- albeit with very limited success -- to get younger people back out there, because at some point, somebody has to grow the food. Japan only produces 50% of the calories it needs to feed the population -- the rest are imported. That's a scary place to be in the world right now. Rural brain drain is a real phenomenon, and related to the fact that Japan... and maybe all governments and large organizations, when I think about it, have a strong centralization pressure, to pack everything together in one place. It takes active measures to resist that. Distribution is hard, but it pays dividends in terms of resilience and awareness. |