2011 Volume 23 Pages 19-33
This paper describes how municipalities in Sorachi area has drawn to the result of almost bankrupted situation after the landslide mine closures in 1980s. The case of Yubari city, once called “coal capital of the north" but now owes over 300 million US$ debt because of the over-investment for non-contextualized tourist attractions, lies at the heart of this failure. To depict this process necessarily request researchers to analyze how and why conventional regional policies of the state kept failing to“regenerate" these depopulated area. The problem factors I shall suggest includes the tendency to obliterate the history of rnining, policy orientation to depend on public construction works rather than social education, and uncoordinated investments. We should remove this inertia stemrning from conventional developmentalist regime, and should seek for true regeneration through contemplating the historical meaning of coalmining, which has been the incubator industry of high-tech Japan.
