Finding A New Commons: Re-Inhabiting the School in Post-Urban Japan

Introduction: Where did everybody go?

It’s a humid day in June, the middle of the monsoon season in Japan. I’m sitting in the passenger seat of a delivery van, in Kamiyama Village, Tokushima Prefecture, catching a ride to my next site visit. The windows are down, the air is heavy and hot, and we are driving on an unmaintained, winding mountain road. Tree branches hang too low, and rocks are sporadically scattered on the asphalt. I lean out the window. The Kamiyama River runs alongside the road, moving rapidly in the opposite direction. I’ve never seen river water as clear as this. It flows over white boulders that I recognize from the retaining walls, garden walls and buildings in the village, a local motif. 

“Why is the water so clean?” I ask the driver. He laughs darkly.

“Nobody lives here!”

The Disappearing Village

The quiet roads of Kamiyama are a stark contrast to Japan’s dynamic, sprawling, ever-evolving metropolises. Cities like Tokyo and Osaka captivate public attention as centres of culture, economy and contemporary lifestyles. Images such as the one of Shibuya Crossing continue to dominate international media as snapshots of current Japanese life. Contemporary architecture practice has primarily focused on studying and innovating in urban contexts where capital investment drives growth. As a result of the focus on cities, the fragmented states of rural regions only a hundred kilometers outside of centres such as Tokyo are often overlooked, and many are on the verge of collapse. 

This research references and builds upon the discussion around shrinking cities, which commonly refers to the effects of aging populations, vacancy, and economic decline in urban areas. This thesis addresses how these demographic changes have affected marginal rural areas. 

Rural depopulation is a problem that has evolved over the past thirty years and is primarily attributed to a rapidly decreasing birth rate and urban migration. The emptying of rural areas has resulted in socio-economic decline and disconnect to local contexts. Towns and villages dispersed throughout Japan are advancing towards an erosion of traditions, cuisines, and crafts that embody their local contexts. This ongoing deterioration of local cultural activities has resulted in a sense of national distress as Japan’s remaining rural settlements become increasingly isolated and forgotten. The term genkai shuraku, which translates to “marginal village”, was developed in 1991 by sociologist Akira Ono. The term refers to municipalities with a majority of the population being over 65 and are deemed “likely to disappear”. This term is among many words that evolved to describe the various effects of Japan’s depopulation phenomenon. 

This thesis examines the potentials of regional cultures in Japan’s countryside and asks, “what role can architecture play in preserving them?”. Using three rural communities as sites of exploration, the research proposes that architecture can facilitate material processes that will generate unique opportunities for cultural, social, and economic activity. The research assumes that Japan’s many rural cultures come together to establish Japan’s identity, and that the maintenance of their unique characteristics is critical. Nevertheless, the objective is not to look backwards, but to imagine how architecture can leverage existing knowledge and imagine local, smaller-scale, and contemporary economies.  

The questions raised in this thesis are influenced by a number of forces at play in Japanese society; the national birth rate is rapidly declining, economies are shrinking, the ratio of retired citizens to working-age adults is growing, the presence of cultural heritage is diminishing, and cities are continuously expanding. These demographic changes are influencing other societal evolutions, such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Womenomics” initiative, which advocates for a greater support of working women with families, in response to an increasingly reduced workforce. Some recent outputs of this initiative include enforcing maternity leave (though this is primarily a policy in larger corporations and institutions), subsidizing education and establishing trade programs especially geared towards women. Among all these factors, exploring a new, sustainable lifestyle in Japan’s marginal rural areas is becoming increasingly important. 

While the research is focused on the specificities of the Japanese context, these demographic changes reflect emerging trends in other countries in the Global North. In a time when productivity and development are prioritized, the shift in thinking towards communities with slower economies and smaller populations poses a challenge. In the book “Degrowth: Vocabulary for a New Era”, Giorgos Kallis, Federico Demaria and Giacomo D’Alisa define degrowth an a school of thought that critiques economic growth as “a social objective”, and encompasses a new “desired direction” where ‘sharing’, ‘simplicity’, ‘conviviality’, ‘care’ and the ‘commons’ are primary significations of what this society might look like. The work of this thesis imagines what design after degrowth in Japan might look like, contributing to an increasingly acute discourse for architects.

This thesis focuses on three geographically distinct sites where depopulation has been documented—Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture, the Kamocho Monomi in Okayama Prefecture and Kamiyama Village in Tokushima Prefecture. These sites were chosen based on existing community-driven initiatives in each to mitigate depopulation and sustain culture. Additionally, the local industries of each place are deeply rooted in their unique ecosystems and biophysical conditions, as well as the traditions of working with them. In Sado, there is a focus on developing the rice and saké industries in culturally and environmentally conscious ways. In the Kamocho region of Okayama, a number of efforts have recently emerged to revitalize the forestry industry and use of local cedar. In Kamiyama, an initiative called the “Food Hub Project” combines agricultural education, local foods and communal dining to re-invent community interaction.  

The thesis proposes design projects that build on the needs of the needs resulting from degrowth in each site. The design projects are intended to serve the existing populations, which consist primarily of elderly citizens, by integrating them in new industrial and educational activities. While the elderly population is a major stakeholder of each proposal, the designs focus on developing programmatic scenarios for the surrounding community which might encourage younger urban dwellers to return to or move to the countryside. 

Due to the broad nature of the term “culture” and its many historical meanings, this thesis uses the definition of culture as explained in Galen Cranz’s book, Ethnography for Designers. Semantic ethnography uses the word “culture” to describe a certain type of knowledge that is shared among people; in the context of this thesis, some examples include saké brewing, fishing, woodcraft, and rice farming. Culture in this case does not refer to the products that result from each activity, such as the saké itself or a piece of furniture; but rather, the knowledge and skills required to produce material objects, or “the knowledge that must be shared for communication to occur”. Cranz states that culture is learned, shared, and encoded in the language of a particular group of people, and, that by engaging with it, designers can understand the forces that organize people’s behavior in space. By understanding this shared knowledge, designers can interpret the social settings in which they are designing and improve their design interventions. 

The School: Leftover Places, Opportunities for Re-use

The Japanese school building type evokes an architectural monumentality that is connected to the political motives of the curriculum as well as its function as environmental relief infrastructure. When natural disasters damage homes and public infrastructure, the local public school auditorium is converted into temporary accommodation and a hospital. Schools are typically fortified, constructed on top of artificial topography that positions the school high above flood lines, and are often built from thick, precast concrete. The school’s high ground and structure provide a resiliency for the natural disasters that Japan faces. In the context of these disasters, the school building is adapted to house displaced members of the community. 

The typical haikō is a compelling site for architectural intervention due to the national consistency of its architecture and the curriculum it houses. The public school is a collective experience and memory shared by all Japanese citizens. Building on these factors, some depopulating communities have proposed and implemented strategies for re-inhabitations of haikō with the goal of improving social and economic conditions. The modular construction and immutable structures of the schools have demonstrated flexibility by accommodating a variety of programs.

The rigidly structured Japanese school curriculum is a response to what the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) describes as a “spread of undesirable ‘individualism’ or ‘me-ism” that “leads individuals in this society to lose their sense of responsibility, sense of justice or ambition”. The goal of this education system is not just to provide academic learning but also a sense of public responsibility and community mindedness. This overarching framework was developed after World War II, an era in which Japan was rebuilding itself as a nation and undergoing economic and social reform. These government motives are depicted in the consistent opportunities provided to Japanese children in their schools: from facilities to learning materials to activities aimed towards educating productive citizens. All proceedings within the school are executed in a highly organized and arguably disciplinary fashion that reflects the rigidity of the building’s architecture. 

Over the course of this thesis, the behaviors of users within the school and the recurring architecture were analyzed using Atelier Bow-Wow’s approach in Behaviorology and Commonalities. The new occupations of the buildings were proposed using Hannah Arendt’s theory of plurality. 

Behaviorology looks at a building as a network of relationships between humans, the natural environment, and the structure itself. Stemming from Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT), Behaviorology challenges designers to understand and visualize how architecture can be positioned as a network of “actors”, which includes objects, landscapes, processes, ideas as well as humans. In the case of Sado Island’s agricultural practices, the influence of animals and other physical and geographical factors are distinctly integrated with the actions of humans in the community. Actor Network Theory can be applied to architecture through its inclusion of non-living objects, placing an equal value on their contribution to the making of a building or landscape. These contributions, exchanges and relationships between actors constitute a network. Additionally, Actor Network Theory illustrates that as much as humans construct their artifacts, “artifacts construct and configure us”. In the context of Japanese public schools, the political influence on the design of schools is evident in its uniform construction and modularity; students are configured by their school building and move in a highly controlled manner. The Behaviorology theory addresses elements of ANT to further discuss the emotional relationships between users and architecture while including non-human actors in the discussion. Commonalities, also developed by Atelier Bow-Wow, is a theory that states that specific relationships between actors repeat themselves in various situations and can be called “common” behaviors of people and objects. Despite the Japanese context of this thesis, theoretical frameworks from Western thought are used due to their connection to the methods of Atelier Bow-Wow, which ground the methods of analysis and representation in their office’s research and design work. 

In the Human Condition, Arendt writes about the need for plurality and a space of appearance by arguing that healthy communities require a vibrant public life that allows for citizens to disclose their uniqueness. This public life is supported by a distinct place of appearance, which relies on community members coming together to act on public matters and, in the context of this research, local concern. Using the writing by Atelier Bow-Wow, Arendt, and Latour as analytical tools, the Japanese public school in its original state can be considered, despite government motives directed towards social responsibility and communal concern, an example of anti-plural space that facilitates controlled behavior. The school is part of a greater network of societal ideals propagated by MEXT: ideas which this research seeks to challenge as these spaces are adapted for new users and new norms such as enabling women and the elderly to work more consistently, and places where Japan’s rural communities can celebrate their “uniqueness”. 

  This research examines the possibility of architectural interventions in Japan’s haikō that aim to expand on the fading knowledge (processes and traditions) of its surrounding region. This is exercised through proposals implementing local production bound to the unique characteristics of the physical landscape and designing spaces for public interaction in selected sites. The industrial programs include educational saké brewing facilities, wood processing and manufacturing and agricultural labs. These industrial activities overlap with other social and public ventures. The selection and design of these programmatic opportunities was informed by fieldwork in each site. 

Inevitably, the designs propose a change of meaning for these buildings: schools that previously represented a national approach to education and identity are re-appropriated to accommodate highly specific programs bound to their local community. This will change the current anti-plural structure of the building in order to imagine new collective futures and subtle social infrastructures that empower historically under-represented groups, such as working mothers and the elderly. The projects envision a new network of relationships between a region’s natural resources, production facilities, distributors, consumers, farmers, manufacturers, and architects.

See bibliography for references.