Depopulation, Aging, and Living Environments

Kenji Tsutsumi, Dr. Lit., is a Professor in the Section of Human Geography, Graduate School of Letters, Osaka University. He is a socioeconomic geographer, and his main research fields are depopulation, regional change, regional planning, regional social capital, and theory of spatial peripheralization. He often visits mountainous villages, islands, former coal mining regions, and even locally decaying sites in large cities. He holds two posts as Professor at his school and was one of the first teachers in the Erasmus Mundus Program there. He is now also a Professor for the Programs for the Leading Graduate Schools, established and sponsored by the National Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology—the “Cross Boundary Innovation Program” at Osaka University. In 2008, he was chosen as a contributor to the work of “The Shrinking Cities Project” by Philipp Oswalt and in 2014 as a contributor to The International Encyclopedia of Geography, edited by the American Association of Geographers. In addition, he is a representative of a junior sports club and is an instructor of one of the Japanese martial arts, Giwakempo (having a 6th-grade black belt), as a local leader for child education.

- Introduction: The Trajectory of the Mountainous Area Research and the Book’s Perspective.- Depopulation as a Regional Problem and Reality of Depopulation.- Analysis of Population Migration from the Depopulated Mountain Village: A Case of Kamitsue Village in Oita Prefecture.- Regional Living Functions in Depopulated Settlements in Shimane Prefecture.- Regional Living Functions and IT Support.- Social Capital and Living Environment of Rural Villages.- Reformation of a Settlement Forced to Move for the Construction of Dam: The Case of Tsukinoya, a Settlement in Kisuki Town, Un’nan City, Shimane Prefecture.- Formation of a Community by Hometown Organizations that Promote Interactions among Residents in Urban and Rural Areas: Activities by Furusato Chikara, an NPO Created by Residents in the Kinki Region and the Case of the Miyoshi Region in Tokushima Prefecture.- Social Movements and Social Capital in Senri New Town.- Peripheral Regions in the Era of Regional Crisis, Society 5.0, the Post-Pandemic, and the Post-Urban: A Concluding and Additional Chapter for the English Edition