Geography Contributing to Japan’s Transformation to a Knowledge Information Society

Abstract

Geographers should contribute to promoting Japan’s transformation into a knowledge information society by publishing and providing their scientific research results that integrate human sciences and natural sciences comprehensively, overviewing the past, present, and future. To make this contribution and improve the geographic awareness of the Japanese public, faculties of geography should be established at many universities as bases for integrated, systematic research and education in geography.

Japan’s basically hierarchical and vertical structures in administrative and social systems, as well as people’s mindsets, have been interfering with Japan’s transformation into a horizontally networked society via information and communication technology and the Internet. As a result, Japan faces growing discrepancies in economic and information resources between greater Tokyo and other areas. That has also resulted in Japan’s relative decline in national power in an increasingly globalized world. In order to address these problems, Japan should redesign its national land structure into a horizontally networked one by relocating capital functions from Tokyo to another region. In addition, people’s mindsets should become more horizontally networked.

Geographers can and should be united and make essential contributions to transforming Japan in the 21st century on the basis of society’s grand visions.