Regional Revitalization in Nakatsugawa: Community-Based Initiatives
While working with Fulford Enterprises on Regional Revitalization, I lived for six months in Nakatsugawa, a mountain village of 200 elderly residents in Iide Town, Yamagata. The project combined food innovation, local business experiments, hospitality, and cultural exchange initiatives.
2020-2022
Revitalization Initatives
Nakatsugawa is a remote mountain village of about 200 people—most of them elderly—in Iide Town, Yamagata Prefecture. It can be described as a genkai shūraku (‘marginal village’), a term used in Japan for settlements where more than half of the population is aged 65 or older and the community’s survival is at risk due to depopulation and aging. I spent close to half a year (Jun 2020 - Nov 2020) living in the village to conduct fieldwork and work closely with residents. The project aimed to explore innovative pathways for sustaining small rural communities facing these demographic challenges.
Key Initiatives
Food Innovation: Collaborated with the Yamagata Industrial Technology Center to experiment with freeze-drying local staples and developing new food products. (video below)
Local Products & Online Business: Helped launch trial initiatives for selling village specialties such as maple syrup and mountain vegetables through online platforms.
Community Hospitality: Assisted at farmhouse B&Bs, welcoming guests and learning their motivations for visiting remote areas.
Language & Cultural Exchange: Taught English to local residents during my stay and continued online classes after returning to Tokyo.
Intergenerational Learning: Organized cooking workshops (video below) where ingredients for classic Yamagata recipes were shipped to participants nationwide, with local elderly experts (in their 70s–80s) teaching via Zoom.
This combination of ethnographic immersion and practical collaboration demonstrated how traditional knowledge, food innovation, digital tools, and intergenerational exchange can all contribute to rural resilience.
Freeze dry project:
Cooking Class Initative:
Other Photographs:
Top (Helping out at a local Marché), Bottom (Learning Shogi from Suzuki-san)
This project was carried out while working with Fulford Enterprises and was funded by ZNK (Zenkoku Nōgyō Kyōgikai) and Furusato Zaidan.