Deconstructing / Reconstructing
Images of the Future
in
a Post-Bubble Japanese Community Revitalization Program
Journal of Future Studies, Tamking
University
David
Lindsay Wright
PhD
candidate
Communication
Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Tel: +61-7-3864 5391
Fax: +61-7-3864 2252
Email:
d.wright@qut.edu.au, dlwfuture@hotmail.com
ABSTRACT
This
article presents a critical assessment of futures images in a
post-bubble Japanese community, Ashibetsu. In this retrospective
account of an actual case study, I critique the problematic
associated with this community’s revitalization program in light
of an uncertain future and rising conflict between ordinary citizens
and the local government. From this problematic I identify a suite
of virtual fractures from which a comprehensive strategy for a
preferred future transformation can be formulated. I continue to
discuss the consequences if future-oriented social strategies are
not pursued and assess their prospects when considered within the
context of local and Japanese social realities and pressures. I
conclude by citing some of the real-world outcomes this research
facilitated.
Case
Study: Post-Bubble Futures Images in a Japanese Community
During
the uncontrollable days/daze of Japan’s legendary bubble economy
with its attendant opulence, decadence, myths of Japanese
invincibility and the almighty Yen, lurking behind the main stage
there unfolded the smaller and subtler dramas of small communities
and the particular plights they endured while the world relentlessly
focused on Tokyo. This is the tale of one such neglected post-bubble
Japanese community, Ashibetsu, affectionately referred to as the
‘nipple’ of Japan’s northern-most island of Hokkaido.
Ashibetsu
City: Brief Background to the Study Area
I
recently conducted fieldwork[1]
into a communication/futures problematic in this former booming coal
mining community. In March of 1999, the official population of
Ashibetsu had dwindled to 22,009, down 30 from just the previous
month and down from a maximum population of 75,000 less than two
decades before. Historically, Ashibetsu’s economy had been
supported by a triad of pivotal industries that included
agriculture, forestry and coal. As coal mining was phased out, city
planners and policy makers envisaged the city's future economic base
to lie in the new paradigm based on tourism, a strategy adopted by a
large percentage of Japan's rural communities.
The
insightful Kenneth E. Boulding[2]
once pointed out that all advanced economies bring forth their own
pathologies. In post-bubble Japan, Ashibetsu was no exception. Those
pathologies characterizing the nation as a whole included increases
in suicides; disappearing citizens; divorce; unemployment;
bankruptcies; homelessness and the usual high profile social ills
including a rapidly aging population, too few children, loss of
economic dynamism, developmental fatigue, breakdown in traditional
values especially among youth, and escalating poverty crimes. In
Ashibetsu, while local pathologies by and large reflected those of
the nation, local informants described a set of micro-problems
including a loss of direction; cynicism towards politics and
politicians; fear of the future; and loss of perceived control over
personal and community futures.
One
major perceive problem stood out. Riding the wave of a national
obsession with theme-parks, massive loans financed the construction
of a local theme park that came to be called Canadian World. As the
economy decelerated, loans outstanding became unpayable. The theme
park became a ghost town, virtually bankrupt, waiting for a
solution. By the mid 1990s, Ashibetsu was confronted with a mapless
future. Under this mood of pessimism, Ashibetsu citizens complained
of a hostile communication climate. Local government had failed to
openly and equitably consult with the community regarding the
construction of the Canadian World theme park. Yet, in a desperate
turnabout, once the tourism venture was forced into premature
closure, local government promptly initiated consultations with
citizens with the aim of finding solutions to the 'Canadian World
problem'. Canadian World was now everyone's problem, and everyone's
duty to solve.
Layering
the Problematic of Ashibetsu’s Futures Images
Official
descriptions of Ashibetsu's problem centered on the meta-theme of
Ashibetsu's survival and continuation as a community. Local
government, ordinary citizens and even young children, were found to
express the real fear that life in Ashibetsu was at best, rapidly
becoming less livable than in former times, and at worst, was
degenerating literally into a 'ghost-town' from which the majority
of the young and the skilled had out-migrated. The official solution
at this level was to implement a series of community revitalization
programs based on meticulously documented citizen surveys from which
a five-point ‘vision’ of the future was formulated.
Respondents
to the futures images questionnaire (in this case, a minority of
dissenters referred to in the Japanese as the katayaburi
– literally, the ‘mold-breakers’)[3]
were invited to describe what they believed was the official public
description of Ashibetsu's futures problematic and whether they
agreed with the officially reported assessment. To summarize, there
was a generally shared mood that living in Ashibetsu would become
increasingly unpleasant as the economic base became untenable. It
was pessimistically conceived that Ashibetsu could, and indeed
probably would in the near future, ultimately degenerate into a
ghost-town. Like the official discourse on Ashibetsu's future, the katayaburi
ask the same disturbing question: Does Ashibetsu have a future?
Analyzed
at a deeper level, the threat of Ashibetsu's degeneration into a
ghost-town and eventual extinction as a viable human community, had
given rise to a range of social causes which tended to cluster
around a grid of specific issues that included the failure of
Canadian World; the more general issue of Ashibetsu's lack of
economic vitality; and out-migration of population. The local
problematic was generally perceived as inextricably linked to the
nation's post-bubble economic recession. This, at least, was the
line of argument promoted by the local government via the conduit of
its influential publication, Kouhou
Ashibetsu. Consistently, the plight of Ashibetsu's future was
contextualized as a microcosm of a nationwide economic recession,
presented to the Japanese public by the national Diet as a problem
of 'bad debts' (furyou-saiken).
Local government officials had also framed the problem of Ashibetsu
as a failure of the people to accept and adopt persuasive messages
to 'try harder' – ganbaru
-- and 'to work together with government'. Local government promoted
itself as the ultimate knowers of the answers to problems and
claimed to have responsibly disseminated a variety of strategies to
re-vitalize the economy.
However,
according to government officials the people had failed to mobilize
in accordance with government prescribed recommendations. Unsaid was
the possibility that national and local crises as manifested in the
superficial symptoms of poor economic indicators, were rooted in
deeper structural crises. This point of view, necessarily gave rise
to solutions in the form of stimulatory incentives to save less and
resume consuming at pre-bubble economy rates.
If
read with post-structural scrutiny, the propaganda-like nature of
the plan starts to become prominent. The deployment of the slogan
‘Eco-Powerful-Human-Culture-Challenge Town’, fails to reflect
the concerns of the citizens. Planners of the future neglect to deal
with past failures involving the attempted transition from a coal to
a tourism-led paradigm, and the failure of local government to
communicate and consult with Ashibetsu citizens vis-a-vis the
planning and construction Canadian World, upon which the future of
the community was perceived to rest. Implied in this communicative
vacuum is that past failures are the result of collective failure,
not local government. The authority of official planners and the
plans they produce remain unquestioned, the planner remains
unaccountable. The fundament of trying within a renewed framework of
power relations, in which communication is participatory and
equitable, remains unresolved.
In
the case of Ashibetsu, regardless of the imager, the basic
orientation generally corresponded closely to the dominant discourse
of economics and Japan Inc.'s postwar 'catch-up' and overtake model.
Growth of any kind was good; a bigger population was better than a
smaller population; the outwardly genki
individual citizen is preferred over the wise or compassionate
because more genki means
more production and consumptive behaviour. However, the emergent
signs of a new type of consciousness are also present. A singular
and dominant corporatist worldview is experienced as fragmenting to
alternative micro-worldviews. Recalled here is the movement in
Hokkaido for an abolition of Japan's postwar 'company man' driven
society. This radical proposal suggests that corporatist motivated
lifestyles should be replaced by ‘local lifestyles’[4],
which interpreted in their wider sense need not mean provincial and
rural, but merely beyond Japan's materialist-consumerist worldview.
The worldview that Japan seems to be has modeled its futures
-- in pastiche form -- on an image rooted in America's Golden Age
experiment in modernity[5],
itself an extension of enlightenment ideals. As Chambon notes, the
"Enlightenment was and is a highly gendered term", where
"only men were in fact envisioned as ideal knowers"[6].
Japan's postwar ultra-corporatist, industrialist, consumerist
worldview too, is a product of elite male planners, bureaucrats,
politicians, corporatists and technologists. In contemporary terms,
it is necessary to imagine how Japan's postwar futures images might
have been framed if the designers had been other than the male
successors of Japan's defeated war elite.
Markley
and Harman[7]
note how the social constructions of reality in the form of myth and
metaphor can enslave individuals and societies to recognized
metaphors, especially contemporary economic man as servant to
industrial metaphors. Specific to Ashibetsu's futures images,
other-than-rational social mythologies found to support images of
the above reported official, social cause and worldview perspectives
reveal the existence of a binary social mythology. On the one hand,
Ashibetsu's social mythology is supported by the national matrix of
macro-myths including the vestigial ideologies of Japanese identity
and uniqueness, in which it is implied that to be Japanese means to
be fixed in an immutable core of Japanese-ness, and by Japan's
postwar corporatist national mythology. Here, Ashibetsu is captive
to both historical notions of Japanese-ness and to the metaphor of
big business.
The local mythology of Ashibetsu keeps the community tied to
a matrix of beliefs ranging from the legacy of Ashibetsu's coal
mining days, in part enshrined in the local symbols of a citizen
charter and the city emblem in which the vestigial remnants of a
modernistic, industrial, male-dominated, growth-means-bigger outlook
in which social orderliness, discipline of the self and conformity
to social norms are valorized.
Problems
and Solutions
(1)
Local Government Vision for a New Kind of Town
It
is at the level of social causes that most solutions to perceived
problems are articulated, most of which emanate from Ashibetsu's
local government initiatives. Ingeniously and industrially,
Ashibetsu planners had administered extensive quantitative surveys
to the local population which in turn were used to substantiate the
formulation of an umbrella vision for Ashibetsu's future. This
future consisted of five organizing sub-plans embodied in slogans
conspicuously worded in the English language: Eco-Town, Powerful
Town, Human Town, Culture Town, and Challenge Town. From these,
concrete plans of action were to be generated. Local government
surveys displayed a strong fixation with statistical configurations
that support existing structures, perpetuate the paradigms of the
past, and failed to incorporate alternative futures images or open
up any transformative spaces from which new futures could emerge.
(2)
‘Furusato’ and a return to origins strategy- aka Forward to the
Past
A
prominent solution in Ashibetsu's revitalization discourse included
the strategy of promoting Ashibetsu as furusato
-- (town-making) whose dubious history is unmasked by Robertson[8]
as the empty slogan to fill the hole in Japan's postwar identity,
which, with the collapse of the bubble economy has achieved even
greater momentum, yet, though promising much, delivers little for
the future. Lifetime education has also been posited as a solution.
The aim here is to revitalize the economy by ensuring an educated,
or 'skilled' population at all age levels in an approximation of
Foucault's 'bio-power', the form of power the local government,
invisibly but ubiquitously, holds over populations of docile bodies,
a community's individuals subject to constant surveillance[9],
"more powerful yet easier to direct and subjugate, and also
more calculable and easier to know, a predictable object for the
quasi-scientific knowledge of the social or human sciences"[10].
A post-structural reading of this return to cultural origins (genten)
strategy problematizes the very notion whether authentically
points-of-origin exist in the first place. Recalling archaic ways of
knowing and doing which Valorize, or worse, romanticize oppressive
past realities and afford limited practical utility to communication
of the here-and-now may be illusionary.
(3)
When all else fails, blame the population
Analyses
of Ashibetsu's futures highlighted the centrality of population as a
problem. Notions of population were perceived by all but a minority
of katayaburi as a
primary problem in Ashibetsu's future. Population as statistical
entity is strictly monitored on a month-by-month basis in the local
government's monthly newsletter. Population is variously represented
to a concerned public as out-migrating and ageing. Out-migration of
Ashibetsu's population, especially the young and skilled to
metropolitan centres, can be reframed as the inevitable outcome of
new macro and micro realities and transformed from problem to
natural cyclic phenomenon. Does population need to grow or even be
stable?
It
is a major premise of the Causal Layered Analysis technique that how
one frames the problem creates the solution[11].
Conceptions of Ashibetsu's population as a problem, when viewed
alternatively, assume different meanings. Notably, Ashibetsu's
population loss is an inevitable consequence of two phenomena. The
first is that Ashibetsu's population attained a maximum of 70,000 in
the first place as a direct consequence of the then prosperous coal
industry. Take away the coal, and the employment that first brought
population in the first place, and what one is left with is a
natural social phenomenon. Functionally, historical Ashibetsu was
constructed upon a functionalist paradigm -- in which the function,
in the form of mining, has become obsolete as the consequence of new
global energy imperatives. The loss of population masks a hidden
perception of a loss of capacity to repay outstanding loans through
citizens taxes for insurmountable debts amassed by the excesses of
the bubble economy, in particular of Canadian World.
(4)
Deconstruction and genealogy of the Canadian World heteropolis
On
the problem of Canadian World and its impact on Ashibetsu’s
futures we are reminded of the words of Inayatullah and Stevenson[12]
who spoke of the "tension caused by the pervasive tendency to
colonize our minds through the mainly Western (but not exclusively)
owners of capitol who bankroll the likes of the Disney Corporation
and, on the other, the search for clear, truthful thinking detached
from oppressive, artificial ideologies and other insistent myths
which masquerade as realities". Based on the above
observations, we find in Canadian World the result of the ideology
of corporatism parasitic upon the community of Ashibetsu who were
kept out of the consultation process about the theme of the park,
its implications for the community, and contingency plans in case
the venture failed.
Similarly,
in the current Canadian World discourse, couched in terms of what
shall we do with it now and how can we still make it profitable?'--
the question of how the theme park came about in the first place and
who was it really intended for, remains unasked. Yet, without asking
these awkward questions, offensive to the proponents of Canadian
World and analogous projects, the initial conditions that led to its
possibility will never be acknowledged. In future, despite past
failures, other Canadian Worlds can be continually justified.
Despite
the nebulous roots of the theme park that is now Canadian World,
asking the simple question is taboo: How was the future of an entire
community -- population 22,000 – gambled away on a tourist fad
based on the adolescent Anne of Green Gables, icon to a generation
of young Japanese women and newly weds, from a distant culture and
epoch? But perhaps there is an even deeper myth – the unspoken
myth that Japan's bubble-economy was no bubble, but the authentic
manifestation of a superior culture, in which, once the financial
and technology superstructure had been fixed in place, the future
would be found in the infinite pursuit of a leisure economy.
Identifying
Virtual Fractures
Non-dissonance
between dominant and alternative images
Although
it was found that differences in futures images do exist between the
official and the katayaburi,
rather than maintaining an antagonistic binary relationship as
initially hypothesized, findings from this study indicated rather,
that official and katayaburi
futures images concur as much as they differentiate. On the whole,
the assumptions that underlined the non-conventional katayaburi
futures images were characterized by high degrees of concurrence
with dominant and official futures images. However, Foucault
recognized the transformational significance of micro-difference.
For example, whereas local government perceived its own role
was to solve the future,
local katayaburi
complained that local government were the cause.
Finding solutions then, implied that it would be ordinary citizens,
not local government, who should have the responsibility of creating
futures alternative to those promoted by local government. Another
significant difference was that whereas the local government
perceived the future as the past extrapolated, and the
revitalization of the community in economic terms where economic
vitality is achieved through individual genki
(health, vitality); a reversion to the status of furusato
(home town) and the revival of ancient festivals; planning through
statistical rigour, societal orderliness and other industrial
images; katayaburi
imagined other kinds of futures.
The
semiotics of ‘genki’
Genki
is one of the most used and curious of Japanese words. The
post-structural perspective is forced to ask the simple questions:
What is genki? Why is it never far from the surface of all public
futures discourse? And
by inference, What is meant by community revitalization? Genki
is a surface reading of superficial human wellness, or outwardly
expressed vitality. Genki
must be seen -- not felt within. Genki
is tied to sub-textual notions of being vital, beholding potential
earning and consuming potential. Genki
has charismatic value. Genki
is used in the current fiscal recession for its quantitative
dimension. Individual and collective genki
fuelled the excesses of the bubble economy but has now temporarily
demobilized by external influences. Yet, post-bubble social
realities unmasked pre-bubble genki
as illusory, as a misfit accomplice of the economic paradigm
pathologically money-oriented and enemy to human physical and mental
well-being.
Issues
Impacting upon Alternative Futures
(1)
The impossibility of Communication
Multifarious
aspects of Ashibetsu's communication climate were found to
structurally impede the generation of alternative and authentic
futures images and their introduction into real-world situations.
The first virtual fracture is located in Ashibetsu's
meta-communication climate by using a term Irving refers to as
"the impossibility of communication"[13].
In reference to the influence of Samuel Beckett's literature on
Foucault, Irving eloquently expresses the idea of the impossibility
of communication in the following words: "because there is
nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from
which to express, no power to express, no desire to express,
together with the obligation to express", for the ultimate fear
is the "fear of destroying an illusion of unanimity"[14].
(2)
Universe Maintenance and the Dynamics of Social Harmony (Wa)
The
illusion of unanimity is found in the maintenance of harmony through
the term wa. Unanimity is
associated with the idea of an original Japanese character, in which
harmony and solidarity of opinion are promoted by the dominant
Japanese ideology as fundaments to Japanese culture. From a
post-structural perspective, the operation of this
harmony-maintaining ideology through wa
can also function negatively as a strategy of social control. Human
to human communication is restricted to communication modes, styles
and practices which maintain harmony, minimize chaos, conflict and
open discussion, and ultimately the possibility of articulating
images which function detrimentally to carefully manipulated
dominant ideologies. This deep myth is manifested in contemporary
Japanese society in the form of superficial and perfunctory
interpersonal relationships which, in social and political and
economic terms, privileges existing power and futures-making elites.
The implicit strategy of wa
ex-communicates the voice
of dissent.
(3)
A Panoptic Social Environment
From
the impossibility of communication emerge by-products. The first
major pertains to the apparatuses of surveillance and the
harmony-maintaining structures in Ashibetsu -- in a quasi-panoptic
social environment. Found in Ashibetsu are the attributes of the
kind of societal framework that Markley and Harman[15]
refer to as "friendly fascism"
-- a term they define as "a managed society which rules
by faceless and widely dispersed complex of
warfare-welfare-industrial-communications-police bureaucracies with
a technocratic ideology". In Ashibetsu, one witnesses the
constant overseeing of the population by the fear, not of big things
but the mundane everyday occurrences, as an unconsciously deployed,
invisible and ubiquitous strategy for keeping vigilance. The
watchful gaze of the local government remains entrenched in the
modernist-industrialist roots of a pre-war coal-producing growth
machine.
(4)
The Bind of Language
In
a Foucauldian sense, language is constructive of and organizes our
perceived social realities and delimits the ways in which we as
humans are able to engage with the world we perceive around us.
Accomplice to the panoptic social and communication environment in
Ashibetsu is the usage of contemporary Japanese language and its
impacts upon interpersonal communication and the creation of
alternative futures. Existing societal frameworks and hierarchies
are effectively maintained by the invisible and apparently natural
structure of language, in particular, those communication practices
which set inherently inequitable relations through language. The
most virulent because it is the most invisible and naturalized are
the effects of honorific Japanese (keigo).
From keigo, the social
human is fixed in a readily identifiable and knowable social
position. Tradition is revered over the novel; male over female;
senior over insubordinate; the economically productive over the
passive. Discussion between these binaries is ruled out because
chaos and conflict would be the products. The possibility of
futures-creating communication between binaries is demoted to the
status of perfunctoriness and politeness.
Strategies
for Social Reconstruction
By
applying our analysis to Ashibetsu’s community revitalization
program and the lack of viable images of the future, a matrix of
fissures, or what Foucault refers to as virtual
fractures emerged as the sites of potential transformative
social change. What was immediately apparent was the existence of a
meta-problematic situation which superceded band-aid prescriptive
responses. In this case, the meta-problematic presented itself as
consisting of a communication climate antagonistic toward the
articulation and public discussion of alternative futures.
Consequently, transformative solutions presented here do not take
the form of specific strategies to discrete problems confronted by
the Ashibetsu community – which include the bottleneck posed by
the Canadian World theme park for example, but rather, in the form
of a new Communicative Age paradigm, whose effect is the generation
of a new social reality conducive to opening up pluralistic,
authentic, alternative futures less characterized by economic
imperatives and less submissive to dominant images.
Features
of a Communicative Age Paradigm
Borrowing
from Stevenson and Lennie’s[16]
generic model, I formulate a matrix of features for a Communicative
Age paradigm appropriate to the problematic unearthed in
Ashibetsu’s community. Although both virtual fractures and
candidate transformative strategies are more complex than presented
in this abbreviated version, three major fractures form the focus of
the analysis here. These three include (1) a systematic abandonment
of overarching panoptic cultural practices indicating – as the
respondents of Ashibetsu have testified to – the dire need for new
communication modes to facilitate alternative futures; (2) a new
social paradigm in which the other is included in local policy and
social change and; (3) the creation of a learning-oriented societal
mood.
The
people of Ashibetsu have appealed to a new form of inter-personal
communicativeness, a new kind of communicator for whom revitalizing
the "art of conversation"[17]
is an organizing principle in the realization of the individual's
human potential. By the art of conversation, Stevenson and Lennie[18]
refer to "the ability to sit and patiently explore the
formation of a workable relationship with each other, by sharing
ideas, exploring, challenging, negotiating, confirming and
reconfirming. This new communicator will understand life as an
inherently chaotic. Chaos however, even when its outcome is
conflict, can be embraced as regenerative and revitalizing. Conflict
is socially possible. As
Hinchcliff[19]
puts the advantage of embracing chaos as social metaphor: "In
other words, by ignoring the total infatuation with order,
specialization and reductionism, and by exploring and accepting the
vast richness of structural complexity, we can see that chaos is an
essential aspect of reality and that we participate in and affect
this complexity". The new communicator also integrates
pluralism into the social fabric. The revived notion that there is
more than one way to do something, would catalyze the acceptability
of new notions about power. The recognition of new kinds of power
will empower the once voiceless.
Chambon[20]
advances the idea of developing new "hybrid languages of
experience" and "inventing a new accessible language for
dealing with change". Change is re-potentiated
through the conduit of de-heirarchified
language. Simultaneously, dismantling and reconstructing currently
restrictive linguistic practices would facilitate the
re-politicization of ordinary people. As language itself is
perceived as communicative rather than socially restrictive,
participation in political processes will become possible for the
previously de-politicized.
Non-dominant subgroups of society bring different values and
experiences to alternative futures images and to innovative
strategies in community revitalization more appropriate to future
needs and less burdened by paradigms of the past. Involving and
taking seriously the other also opens up new metaphoric potentials
found in the new non-corporatist metaphors. The aim here is not
perpetuate idolized mythologies of the past but to actively create
new mythologies around which preferred futures can be imaged,
articulated and applied.
Under
the umbrella of a new communicative age model, the shift away from
rote-learning, where knowledge structures are transferred from the
'expert' teacher to the student, in favour of a chaotic/active type
of learning. Wildman[21]
for example, posits the emergence of the "New Learning
Community" which actively seeks to use Chaos Theory in
community organization. Such an approach, he admits, "requires
the ability to embrace diversity and creative disagreement". It
is precisely these attributes of diversity and creative disagreement
that are denied and suppressed within the Japanese community of
Ashibetsu. In a learning society, there is psychological space to
redefine what is knowable, who knows, how it is known and how it is
operationalized in real world situations. Ultimately, social
learning will promote Foucault's important and guiding role to show
people that "they are much freer than they feel"[22].
Prospects
for Reconstruction
While
the Communicative Age model is one suggestion for a preferred future
for Ashibetsu, its emergence under present circumstances of the
community has to be in doubt given the Japanese proclivity to shun
chaotic and harmony-disturbing situations from which transformative
ways of doing and thinking can emerge. As Stevenson and Lennie[23]
note: "there are strong pressures on people to conform to
current social and cultural practices and this has the effect of
maintaining conventional ways of thinking and operating". This
is particularly so in the case of Japan and our specific study area
where futures-making elites have so much to loose. The dominant
party to any Japanese relationship, that is, the male over the
female, older over younger, the government official over the
ordinary citizen; the teacher over the student, all profit socially
and financially from inequitable relationships. Much of Japan's past
scientific, technological and economic success can be attributed to
fixed, unchallengeable and inflexible interpersonal relationships.
Where
dominant images are challenged, resistance to change is usually
experienced. Markley and Harman[24]
note that "It is a well-known phenomenon in psychotherapy that
the client will resist and evade the very knowledge he most needs to
resolve his problems. A similar situation probably exists in society
and there is suggestive evidence both in anthropology and in history
that a society tends to hide from itself knowledge which is deeply
threatening to the status quo but may in fact be badly needed for
resolution of the society's most fundamental problems”.
As
pointed out by future-oriented Japanese economist Tadashi Nakamae[25],
short of catastrophe or foreign pressure -- gai-atsu
-- Japan is unlikely to undergo transformation. Ashibetsu is, it
would seem, at the brink of a micro-catastrophe, the kind and scale
of which is much more impacting than any catastrophe that could hit
Japan as a whole. Such a catastrophe is potentially precipitated by
Canadian World and the massive debt incurred upon the citizens. The
problem with gai-atsu is
that it operates between power elites of different culture areas and
tend to prioritize the needs and political preferences of the
pressuring culture.
Consequences
of Failing to Implement Transformative Strategies
In
a study of this nature, emphasis should be afforded to seriously
considering the potential consequences for personal and community
futures if transformative strategies are not implemented. Here,
respondents from the study area speak for themselves by presenting a
wide range of worst-case futures. To illustrate, a selection of
worst-case futures are reproduced here in translated form
(translated by the author).
Repayments
of the Canadian World debt meant that local facilities and amenities
went un-maintained. Our children and grandchildren were burdened
with a debt whose origins they did not know nor understand.
Ashibetsu became an unattractive place to live, the young
out-migrated in masses to larger cities, rendering Ashibetsu a ghost
town. Scary!
The
6 billion Yen plus debt from Canadian World is still being repaid
after more than 20 years. Frustrated by the debt, the young have
abandoned Ashibetsu for other cities. The community rapidly
declines. Finally, the burden of debt repayment becomes
unsupportable for the remaining citizens, and the city declares
itself insolvent. Taken under the jurisdiction of state authorities,
Ashibetsu citizens form city restructuring organizations, but even
this is hopeless.
The
un-payable debt problem has become a chronic drain on community
resources. Taxes are drastically raised. Company bankruptcies
skyrocket. Why should I and my children have to sacrifice ourselves
for this debt! We have no choice but to leave! Soon, the population
plummets, unemployment climbs, and resentment leads to crime.
Neigbouring communities start to gossip that Ashibetsu is a
dangerous town and warn each other not to go out there at night
alone.
Ashibetsu
citizens have lost the battle against the three evils: indifference,
inactivity, and unawareness. Incapable of negotiating and
consolidating cooperative ties with surrounding communities,
Ashibetsu gains a reputation as 'the good-for-nothing town'. Private
enterprises go bankrupt and the local government is paralyzed into
inaction.
The
citizens of Ashibetsu failed to envision a new future and mobilize
themselves towards its creation. People left, businesses went bust,
companies pulled out of the area, employment opportunities dropped
and the town degenerated.
A
mood of despair has gripped the town. Local facilities including
education and welfare have been sacrificed in the face of unpayable
debts. Citizens have become increasingly skeptical and mistrusting
of government officials and have lost pride in being Ashibetsu
citizens. Nonetheless, I believe this scenario will not come about
because Ashibetsu people will be mobilized by their love of the
hometown to prevent this worst-case scenario.
Local
government drafted plans to boost tourism, but tourists found the
attractions boring and never came back. Everything the council tried
their hands at failed. The town slipped back into its old ways --
"pacified from the peaceful lifestyle" (heiwa-boke)
and "selfishness" – (riko-shugi).
Changing
the town's catchphrase from "Ashibetsu the mining town" to
"Ashibetsu the tourist spot" did not work. Instead
Ashibetsu became known as "the town that failed at mining ...
and tourism". The only thing to be seen in Ashibetsu now are
the weeds and old people. Ashibetsu is like a cowboy western where
prairie grass rolls through the town and you can hear the wind
howling mercilessly. Chilly!
The
idea of a worst-case scenario future for Ashibetsu is too terrible
to even contemplate.
Post-Research
Real-World Outcomes
Does
futures research have effects and contribute to the production of
real-world outcomes? In the case of this investigation, the answer
appears to be Yes. Of the many post-research effects observed or
reported, one was that the katayaburi
citizens of Ashibetsu were able to find an avenue which allowed them
to articulate in their own words and stories and to effectively to rewrite,
that is, positively subvert, conventional futures discourses. The
articulation of an alternative preferred futures image alongside its
reverse once committed to paper may have both a therapeutic and
invigorating effects upon the individual. This manifested in the
emergence of a revived awareness of using futures knowledge as a
tool. New types of conversations appeared to start between Ashibetsu
residents, previous questionnaire participants wanted books about
the future in Japanese, and at least one local woman suddenly became
animated to participating in local politics. The defunct Canadian
World was reopened July 11, 1999 to the public free of charge after
being locked up for several years. The decision to re-open Canadian
World, on an experimental 'wait-and-see what would happen' basis,
followed soon after the election in which the local Mayor vowed to
try and salvage the disgraced symbol of Ashibetsu's new post-coal,
post-bubble, tourism-led economy. Finally, within months of
completing the investigation, at least one team of Japanese
academics had already advertised to conduct a future-oriented
workshop on community futures and local empowerment.
Summary
It
has been shown that Ashibetsu's communication futures problematic
shares much in common with Japan's national post-bubble environment.
It has also been shown that although dominant futures images
differentiate minimally from unconventional katayaburi
futures images, that transformation, in a Japanese context is
nonetheless possible as well as desirable in light of Ashibetsu's
post-coal mining, post-bubble disorientation and atrophy of futures
images. The investigation also highlighted the pivotal roles of
communication in the generation of futures images which
theoretically function to pull the imager -- individual or
collective -- towards the imaged social reality.
The
critical aspect of this investigation has also attempted to address
the question of what is the problem with Ashibetsu? -- from an
alternative perspective. It is not for local government alone to
unilaterally frame problems, set the initial conditions that lead to
problematic situations, act as sole charge仔
for 'fixing' problems, and requesting the 'help' of 'ordinary
people' when their un-consulted projects do not behave as planned.
When addressing the problem of Ashibetsu's futures from this other
perspective, it is found that the problem is less clear-cut than
official versions suggest. To katayaburi
and other citizens, the future is more than economics and
statistics.
The
triadic problematic of Ashibetsu's communication, futures images and
revitalization, requires closure by way of a new recognition of new
identities that are multiple, pluralistic, multi-vocal, inclusive
and conflict-embracing, chaotic, need to be set free in order to
unleash the bonded potential of the bonsai tree. Revitalization
implies a new kind of vitality that transcends mere economic
performance and the need to search for and identify new symbols of
the community that express the liberating qualities of a new
communicative age.
Notes
[1]
The research presented in this paper is based on findings
conducted as part of a Masters thesis investigation undertaken
from June 1998 to June 1999.
[2]
Boulding, Elise and Boulding, Kenneth E., The
Future: Images and Processes, Sage Publications (paperback),
1995.
[3]
The kata-yaburi
may be described as a non-mainstream subculture in Japan who find
themselves at odds with the dominant culture.
[4]
Node Forum, No.
10, April/May issue, 1999, p. 58.
[5]
Chambon, Adrienne S.; Irving, Allan and Epstein, Laura
(Eds) 1999. Reading
Foucault For Social Work. Columbia University Press, p. 30.