Abstract
Many recreational facilities and community centers have been built to revitalize rural communities in Japan by utilizing various government subsidies for the past forty years. Most of the rural communities, however, have not been revitalized despite of the huge investment. In fact, those rural communities have faced issues such as aging and depopulation more than ever under globalization. As a result, the gap in the size of population, unemployment rate, and amount of income between metropolitan areas and rural areas has been getting larger. On the other hand, some rural communities are being revitalized while others are still struggling to revitalize their communities. It is noted that those communities are under similar conditions. In this paper, it is pointed out that "community capacity" plays a significant role in revitalizing rural communities, and that human capital is a vital factor for enhancing this capacity. With this recognition, this paper analyzes the Akita community capacity development seminar, which has been co-hosted by the Center for Regional Sustainability Initiatives (CRESI) of AIU and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery of Akita prefecture since 2005.
