Japanese population reached its peak in 2008, and then began to decrease. According to the 2015 Population Census, the total population of Japan was 127.09 million. It has lost almost one million residents (-0.8%) since the 2010 Census. Japan has now entered the post-demographic transitional phase and is expected to see its population contract by nearly one third to 88.1 million, and its proportion of the elderly (65 years of age and over) will account for no less than 39.9% in 2065 (Population Projections for Japan 2017: IPSS). The nature of this crisis consists of below-replacement fertility and migration of the young generation seeking education and employment opportunities in the metropolitan area. To transform Japan from a shrinking society to a sustainable one, we need to take a policy science approach, setting clear targets and strategies. Thereby, the two key mega-policies are the redistribution policy, enforcing the effective demand of the working population, and the decentralization policy of capital functions (the relocation of business centers, central government ministries and agencies) for newly designed national land use. As for meta-policies, we need to develop new measures, such as planning for reduction equilibrium, infrastructure reuse-renovation, and IoT (Internet of Things) administration systems for human use.

I, as a sociologist, usually find it difficult for a government and/or social planning organization to affect people's behavior in marriage and/or childbirth. In particular, current social policies against the low birthrate in Japan have been not successful. In this paper, I argue two theoretical reasons why social planning and/or social policies against low birthrates have not succeeded. First, I suggest that there are fewer hypogamy-based couples in Japan than in Sweden or France, and that less hypogamy leads to a lower birthrate. Second, I show that young Japanese couples with low income have more children on average, and explain this phenomenon with evidence inspired by Japanese sociologist Takata Yasuma. Takata argues that higher expectations for living standards lead to having fewer children. It is reasonable to assume that social planning to improve the birthrate in Japan accelerates expectations for living standards beyond actual standards, which leads to lower birthrates. Finally, I suggest that researching discursive settings on low birthrate affects people's expectation for living standards and social planning.

My book, entitled “Reform of the Urban Planning System-A proposal for the beginning of the Post-Urbanization Period,” was published in February 2017. One of the major motions expressed in this book concerns the adoption of incrementalism in Japanese urban planning systems. In this paper, I introduce some points of discussion from my book and further elaborate on the meaning of incrementalism, in addition to presenting arguments for its applicability in regional management. Firstly, an overview of the concepts of incrementalism as proposed by Charles Lindblom and Allan Feldt is presented, along with a discussion of some differences in their comparative analyses. Secondly, extending the logic of Feldt's definition, I propose a hypothetical approach that combines incrementalism and knowledge production to enhance the advantages of this method.

In recent years, as Japan faces many complex social problems, social design—a way to cope with these problems in a decentralized and innovative manner—has been playing an important role in this country. At the same time, higher education institutions are expected to foster those who will eventually put social design into action and lead social change. In this article, we go through a couple of cases in social design education and see how the design-based thinking method is incorporated into these programs. We also analyze how educational programs for cultivating mindsets are playing important roles in social design education. Mindsets play crucial roles in innovation in general, but we explain why it is particularly important in social design.

The target of design is expanding from manufactured products and services to society itself. Also the scope of the designer's role is spreading to a wider range of players throughout society. This means we must emphasize a new facet vital to the world of design – that of accepting and understanding differing viewpoints from the diverse range of members comprising society, and create a new system based on this new foundation. These phenomena show a change in the application of design, from an industrial and consumer orientation to a societal and democratic orientation. It also indicates a change in those responsible for design, from professional designers to people who generate and establish societal habits. This paper uses several arguments as a foundation to argue that our current societal processes generate various activities that can and should be used as environments for developing designs, rather than limiting work to the designer's studio. I call this concept “Societal Design.” Discussions in this paper are based on various aspects and phenomena realized during a workshop on welfare design in which the experimental co-design process was carried out by social activists and designers. The workshop was organized as an exploration of our research program on developing the Societal Design method and methodology.

In Japan, the national government has actively launched many policies which try to improve local governance, regional disaster prevention, and revitalization of local communities through the participation of community activities for nearly 20 years. However, contrary to government expectations, the results of the governmental survey revealed that there are still a lot of people who do not participate in their community's activities. In such a situation, it is important to clarify the characteristics of non-participation.

The purposes of this paper are twofold: investigating the actual situation of people who do not participate in community activities by analyzing the nation-wide social survey entitled “Trend Survey of the Japanese National Character,” and discussing future measures based on the results. To achieve these purposes, we have conducted Latent Class Analysis to grasp the attitude of non-participants about their residential area and extracted three latent classes. Furthermore, we have conducted additional analysis which explores the relations between the extracted latent classes and some other political awareness. Based on these results, theoretical implications and applications are discussed.

This study examines the potential demand for migration candidates in order to modify a substantial migration policy for Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture, which is experiencing increasing depopulation. The study's survey targeted prefecture natives or inhabitants of adjacent prefectures intending to perform a U-turn (return to one's hometown form a large city) or a J-turn) return to the region of one's hometown. (Furthermore, the feature of this research was selecting survey targets, through a screening survey and data collection, who had previously rejected migration after actually considering it carefully. The Internet-based questionnaire conducted for this study led to 49 respondents interested in migration and 45 who rejected migration to the Noto Peninsula as valid targets. As a result, although the need for housing and daily life features was an important concern as in numerous previous studies, the concern about social relations after migration was very low. Further, despite this pre-migration lack of concern for social relations, mutual help was an important factor in ensuring stable and lasting settlement after migration. Incorporating this knowledge in future migration promotion policies will enable contribution towards the definite procurement of many migrants.