都市とのつながりが農山漁村を生かす

──京都府伊根町を事例として──

抄録

The relationship between rural communities and urban areas is constituted by two vectors: one leading from the rural communities to urban areas, and the other leading from urban areas to rural communities.

The first vector is constituted by movements of people and agricultural products from rural communities to urban areas, a development that harks back to Japan's urbanization in the wake of the project of modernization in the 1880's. In order to survive in urban areas, people from the same hometown created so called Dokyo-kai, mutual aid associations made up mostly of lower middle class and working class members.

The second vector, leading from the urban centres to the rural communities, is constituted by (1) the increasing penetration of urban lifestyles and modes of production in the countryside，(2) the establishment of factories in rural areas，(3)the diversification of dwellers in the countryside，(4) the temporal influx of city dwellers into rural communities for recreation and tourism，(5) state subsidies redistributing tax wealth from urban areas to rural communities, (6) the ‘export' of waste material and dangerous facilities such as nuclear power plants, and (7) the flow of remittances and other contributions from urban migrants to their rural hometowns and relatives (e.g. aged parents).

Through this mutual exchange relationship with urban centres, rural communities sustain and reinvigorate their own production.