To Continue Revitalizing Japan, the National Government Must Work on Shoring up Declining Provincial Areas

On the streets of Katsuura, a small coastal town on the far side of Chiba prefecture is a scene that one will never see on the streets of Tokyo today. Two brightly lit stores with giant "Sale!" signs specialize in the latest repertoire of portable fireworks, for people to enjoy in their backyards. The stores are not meant to be discreet. Occupying the two prime spots across each other on one of the town's main shopping streets, their wares spill onto the streets on carefully laid out tables, standing out from the other, much more dimly light lit outlets of restaurants and banks.

The resulting crowds of young people surrounding the fireworks shops would raise eyebrows in Tokyo. While the capital did not technically ban fireworks through the law, local ordinances, ranging from the rules set by wards, neighborhoods, and even parks, prevent people from simply letting a couple of sparks fly in a public space without attracting unwanted attention from residents and police. With backyards much more unlikely to be available in tiny Tokyo residences compared to the open spaces of provincial Japan, lighting up fireworks in the privacy of private homes is a luxury for Tokyoites.

The differing attitude toward fireworks between Tokyo and a small town a mere couple of hours by train show that Japanese laws and lifestyles can be quite different from place to place, despite the country being a nominal unitary state with one set of civil laws for the entire country. For matters of day-to-day life, decisions made by the national government may matter much less to local residents than those that are made by local governments as well as various semi-governmental entities that hold sway in managing and regulating every aspect of daily life in particular towns, neighborhoods, and streets.

This uniquely decentralized aspect of how Japan works is worth remembering as Shinzo Abe bids goodbye to the front and center of Japanese politics, a position he held for a record-breaking eight consecutive years without much challenge from both inside and outside the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Despite his aggressive push to revitalize the Japanese economy and international standing through vigorous programs of economic and foreign policy reforms, the results of which have been felt quite unevenly across the various towns and cities across the Japanese archipelago.

To boost the Japanese economy, Abe specifically pursued, with mixed success, a policy that focused on ensuring governments around the country had the tools they need to ensure economic growth, through both monetary and fiscal policies that provided small firms and consumers a way to increase both income and consumption. Under him, policies continued to benefit Tokyo and its major firms, at the expense of smaller cities around the country that continue to see an exodus of people, firms, and tax revenues, to the point that many have to resort to begging big-city residents to pay taxes and buy second homes as non-residents.

The diverging fortunes of Tokyo and provincial Japan have become all the more obvious during COVID-19. While the national government provided certain funds for consumers and producers across the country, encouraging local governments to do the same, provincial governments simply could not find the funding to boost productivity in these adverse times like governments of money-spinning, fast-growing wards of Tokyo. While the national government looks at the country as a whole, too many small municipalities in the remote parts of the country are slipping through the cracks.

For whoever that succeeds Abe as the next leader of the country, there needs to be a realization that reviving the economic fortunes of Japan and further boosting its international standing will require a greater focus on ensuring that its depopulating provincial areas get the necessary support they need. Abe's attempt to push the Japan narrative on the international stage has relied too much on the muscle of the central government, in the coordination of big businesses and military establishment, all of whom are seen as elites from Tokyo in a small town like Katsuura, with its own set of sometimes unrelated rules and problems.

While decentralization can be good in allowing locals who are knowledgeable about local issues to solve local problems, the system breaks down when local stakeholders do not have the necessary resources to do anything particularly useful. And as Tokyo continues to suck away resources from the rest of Japan, the powerlessness of local governments will ensure the gap between the center and the periphery continues to expand, despite all the good intentions of letting each community set its own rules. To keep Japan's revitalization on track, reversing the decline of provincial Japan should be attended to urgently.