Abstract
The Japanese Government’s policy, that has been implemented aiming at local communities’ revitalization and the political systems to promote the policy, has overwhelmingly prevailed throughout the nation for a few years. If the fundamentals of the policy require the revitalization of local community members’ ways of life, it indicates that the iterant Hermeneutic circle (Fujii, H. G. Gadamer; Nakano, M. Heidegger) of the present ideas and their prospects toward the future on the local residents’ ways of life would be indispensable. The proper differentiation of those ideas may be required in the circle. This study has analyzed the present ideas that local communities’ disappearance may be avoided by community revitalization and prospects toward the future, particularly focusing on criticisms against those ideas. The analysis results show that the “present ideas” are indicated to be based on neo-liberalism and globalism. However, the ideological foundations and prospects toward the future seem obscure. Likewise, the criticisms against those ideas are ambiguous in their understanding. Criticisms against the present thoughts that local communities’ disappearance could be saved by community revitalization are not sufficient enough as the antithesis of those ideas that include the thought that the changes of community members’ ways of life may lead to community revitalization. Therefore, disputes between the idea that local communities’ disappearance may be avoided by community revitalization vs. criticism against this idea would not be theoretically sublated, resulting in the realization of community members’ more preferable ways of life.
