Home > Research > Research Overview

Faculty of Agriculture

Research on Mechanism that Creates Exchange between Cities and Farming Villages

Rie Watanabe
Associate Professor
Department of Food, Life and Environmental Sciences

 


1. Tourists from Tokyo visiting the Kunugidaira rice terrace in Asahi Town

Anthropogeography is My Specialty

Paying my attention to Japan's urban structure, I have been studying its change from the beginning to the present form. In metropolitan areas, allotment farms have been increasing in recent years. Urban dwellers are doing agricultural work in their spare time and increasing people spend some days in nearby farming villages. City dwellers are now spending their leisure and money in diversified manners, attracted by things and atmosphere that cannot be found in cities. I have been doing research for the past seven years or so on the change of urban land utilization and how to make sustainable link between cities and farming villages in accordance with that change. I'm looking at farming villages from a city point of view.


2. Taiwanese tourists visiting Iide Town in January, where the massive snow is a tourism asset

Flow of People from Cities to Farming Villages

A few years ago, tourists from Tokyo started to come to see the Kunugidaira terraced rice paddies in Asahi Town. This changes local residents' consciousness (Photo 1). Sightseers from Taiwan flock to Iide Town in winter (Photo 2). The Nakatsugawa area of the town is active in attracting foreign tourists.


3. Farmers from nearby villages regularly visit
rapidly graying Tsuruoka City to sell vegetables


4. Discussing the future with local residents
in Asahi, Tsuruoka

Scenery as Asset

Why do city dwellers go to farming villages? In the above example, why do these tourists visit the rice terrace in Asahi Town? The important keyword is the "scenery." The scenery is a landscape combined with people's lives and includes streetscapes and homestead woods. People are now making active efforts to preserve the scenery for future generations. The scenery may be an everyday view for local residents. But when they recognize it as something that should be preserved for the future, it arouses city dwellers' interest and links scenery preservation with community development.