Reconsidering Depopulated Areas as Regional Blocs that Encompass Depopulated Areas

Based on the relationships between seniors living in depopulated areas and their children who have left for nearby provincial cities

Abstract

Today’s underpopulated rural village communities show a weakening of the tendency toward containment of residents’ livelihoods completely within the community, due to the growth and diversification of social networks with both internal and external components. Amid growing social mobility using private vehicles, residents increasingly move back and forth across a wide area on an everyday basis, even as their livelihoods remain based in underpopulated rural village communities. Such everyday mobility in fact supports the livelihoods of seniors living in un- derpopulated rural village communities. Even if we treat seniors living in under- populated rural village communities as senior single-person households, if their families include children who have left for other localities nearby, then in not a few cases those children will support the seniors’ livelihoods through grocery shopping and hospital visits. But it would be hard to say that sufficient analysis has been conducted on the current state of both community structure and livelihood structure in underpop- ulated communities, while taking into consideration the impact of growth in ev- eryday mobility and the actual state of relations between senior households and their families. Accordingly, in order to ascertain the community structures and livelihood structures of underpopulated rural village communities, the need to establish a category of regions that includes underpopulated areas is identified for regions consisting of underpopulated rural village communities and nearby　provincial cities. The relationship between senior households and their families of children who have left for other localities is then verified based on the results of a social survey conducted continuously in Tamagawa, Hagi, Yamaguchi Pre- fecture, Japan. By describing some aspects of the livelihood structure in a con- temporary underpopulated rural village community, clues for considering the possibility of continuation of livelihoods in underpopulated regions are identi- fied.