Using the city of Itoshima in the Fukuoka metropolitan area as an example, we clarified the background to entrepreneurship and longevity in its tourism industry, namely, restaurants, manufacturers and sellers of crafts and miscellaneous goods, paying attention to the relationships among the businesses. Since 2000, when the number of tourists started to increase in Itoshima, the number of tourism businesses operated by migrants from other areas and people returning to their hometowns has also increased. The main reasons that these businesses opened in Itoshima were cited as the natural environment, proximity to Fukuoka City, and the availability of food ingredients and raw materials produced in Itoshima. After opening their businesses, in addition to economic demand and employment, personal connections and co-operation between businesses enhanced satisfaction and influenced business longevity of the respondents to the questionnaire. Moreover, it was suggested that when the respondents continued with their businesses, their desire to demonstrate their abilities and experience or to contribute to the community increased their satisfaction. In particular, many respondents gave advice to those who wanted to open new business in the same or similar sectors and it was discovered that those who give such advice were more satisfied with their businesses than those who did not. In the study area, we were able to confirm that the existence of intra-industry networking may be a factor in determining migration, entrepreneurship and business longevity.

In my most recent article (Morikawa 2022a), in which I classified Japan's cities with populations of 30,000 or more, I found cities' geographical locations play an important role in city types with similar populations. In this article, I also recognized the importance of geographical locations for the analyzed cities (for population structure by age group, population change rate, net migration type, and industry employment ratio) in the 2020 population census, and including the fiscal capacity index 2020. I then classified cities by dividing metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, including rural municipalities, as follows: I – Tokyo metropolis specified districts; II – metropolitan and regional center cities ([a] five metropolitan cities and [b] regional center cities); III – cities in metropolitan areas ([a] large cities with populations of 200,000 or more, [b] medium-sized satellite cities, [c] small satellite cities, and [d] minor satellite cities); IV – core cities ([a] prefectural cities and [b] sub-prefectural cities); V – neighboring local cities ([a] medium-sized cities, [b] small cities, and [c] minor cities); and VI – remote local cities ([a] medium-sized cities, [b] small cities, and [c] minor cities), and added VII – rural municipalities. However, I must acknowledge some problems in delineating cites, such as the grouping of those with 200,000 inhabitants under core cities. The positioning of Kyoto and Kobe is also questionable. Japan's population will decline dramatically, especially in VI cities and in parts of V cities with rural municipalities (VII).