Citation

Watanabe S. J. Rural Stud. (Osaka) 2014; 21(1): 14-25.

Vernacular Title

中山間地域における歴史実践とその問題 -- 経済成長と集落の変容の位置づけをめぐって──

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014)

DOI

10.9747/jars.21.1_14

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The residents in many of the villages in hilly or mountainous areas in contemporary Japan have to confront pessimistic prospects on their life conditions. They are suffering from irreversible depopulation and ageing, the decline of the local economy, and the deterioration of farming land and forest. In this situation, a mind-set that the current and future situation cannot be improved prevails among the residents. By exploring the discourse and action of a man born in 1944, who is active to improve the life environment of a village which is located in the western part of Kanto region, this paper aims to examine the difficulty of his attempt to compete against the prevailing mind-set and to imagine the alternative history of the village. He is eagerly trying to collect and investigate forgotten pasts of the village which, in his theory, demonstrates the "communal mind" or the "harmony" of villagers which had existed before the postwar economic growth and then disappeared. The man insists that his investigation will finally make other residents recollect what they have forgotten and, as the result, the residents will be able to solve the contemporary predicaments. However, when the people like him, who belongs to the generation which built bases for their livelihood on the outside of the village in the period of economic growth, criticize the current situation, the other residents question the position of their discourses. Some say why they can dogmatically maintain their privileged position to blame others in spite that they are also responsible for the current predicament. Others even blame that most of the members of the generation once abandoned their duties for the village and played a central role in bringing down the current predicaments. In the course of examining this difficulty, the author would also pursue what kind of historical praxis, reorganizing the relation between the past and the present, is needed in the life in the period of the past economic growth.

Language: ja