Dressing up the place: Urban lifestyle mobilities and the production of “fashionable” tourism destinations in rural Japan

Abstract

The past three decades of neoliberal structural reforms in Japan has established tourism policy favoring privatization, deregulation, and flexible mobility of capital to encourage decentralized markets. Within this system, attracting skilled urban migrants to rural regions has emerged as a central component of planning and development. Drawing on Kawamura’s theory of fashion-ology, this study details the process of how rural tourism destinations are produced and (re)fashioned by urban-to-rural lifestyle migrants who bring new practices, aesthetics, and meanings to place. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2021/2022 in the rural coastal town of Aoshima, we outline the co-constitutive dynamic between “star migrants”, industry “gatekeepers”, and “consumers as producers” in the production and consumption of “fashionable” rural destinations. The article contributes to literature on how rural tourism destinations are governed in contemporary neoliberal societies and provides insights into the unequal urban-to-rural power relations that continue to define Japan’s regional revitalization programs.