Environmental activity gaps and how to fill them: rural depopulation and wildlife encroachment in Japan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of wildlife encroachment in depopulated rural Japan as a form of peripheralization. It does so by adopting an “energetical” approach to depopulation in upland areas (focused on the changing human relation to the land) and applies this approach to three examples of diminished environmental activity—cutting (vegetation), picking (fruit) and chasing (animals)—associated with wildlife crop-feeding. This waning human activity regime can become associated with the demise of the village as a human space and even its reclamation by the forest. There is, however, an alternative possibility: that, despite the fall in its residential population, the upland village’s activity regime can be at least partially reconstructed and villager frictions with wildlife alleviated. This possibility is considered by describing attempts to fill the three environmental activity gaps that rely on help from an assortment of actors, nonhuman as well as human, along with greater efforts from the remaining villagers themselves.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationJapan’s new ruralities: coping with decline in the periphery
EditorsWolfram Manzenreiter, Ralph Lützeler, Sebastian Polak-Rottmann
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter16
Pages276-294
ISBN (Electronic)9780429331268
ISBN (Print)9780367354183, 9780367341053
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Feb 2020

Keywords

  • Japan
  • rural depopulation
  • conflict with wildlife
  • environmental change

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