Urban migrants in rural Japan : between agency and anomie in a post-growth society /

In contemporary Japan, a small but steady stream of urbanites moving to rural areas for personal and professional reasons is changing the meaning of rural. Klien (Hokkaido Univ., Japan) taps into this emerging migration pattern through interviews in and observations of different parts of the country. Her analysis is densest for rural areas most affected by the 2011 "Great East Japan Earthquake," which shattered lives but also catalyzed an influx of energetic urban volunteers, many of whom stayed in the countryside, serving as a crucial resource for other new migrants. Klien's descriptions are invaluable for understanding the tensions informing these migrants' lives: they are liberated yet constrained, faced with new opportunities yet blocked in ambition, seemingly new migrants who have moved multiple times. Klien carefully anchors her discussion in the literature on migration (especially lifestyle migration), resulting in a book that is both empirically and conceptually valuable. She is to be especially commended for neither simplifying the range of migrant experiences nor attempting to resolve the contradictions in their individual lives. Excellent as an update on Japanese society, but also as a useful reflection on the complexity and unpredictability of contemporary migration overall. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --David W. Haines, emeritus, George Mason University