| dc.description.abstract | Japan is a “super-aged” society with 28% of the population over the age of 65 years old. Once the second largest economy in the world and now the third, Japan has been a neoliberal model of economic development. Yet, despite Japan reaching high economic wealth through the process of capital accumulation the nation has found itself with a population that is feeling precarious. Today the country is experiencing unprecedented accelerated depopulation and economic stagnation. In particular, the issue of depopulation resulting in abandoned places has had consequential impacts in shaping rural Japan as a site of decay. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic we are witnessing urban decentralization and migration into rural areas. As urban migrants move to rural villages, these areas have become an urgent zone for people to mobilize around creating alternative ways of living and futures centered around sustainability. Based on 6 months of multi-sited fieldwork in rural Japan, I examine the ways in which the inaka (Japanese countryside) has become a key site for experimentation in alternative ways of living, aligned to degrowth values in Japanese society. How is rurality being reimagined in contemporary Japan? What new relations and systems are emerging out of capitalist decay in depopulated villages? How have visions of a prosperous future changed from post-war to post-growth Japan? In this thesis, I trace relations of revitalization, by this I mean the dialectical relationship between decay and rebirth, in which conditions of decay provide opportunity and potential for post-growth living that breaks away from neoliberal values. Although scholars have called for degrowth by design, I argue that degrowth out of decay is also worthy of attention to better understand the ways in which opportunities for degrowth are often messy and complex negotiations within existing capitalist realities. As villagers attempt to break away from the ideology of capitalist growth, I show degrowth not only as a process of downscaling, but also in relation to the emergence of new forms of growth. I show how rural revitalization is a practice of future-making guided by local governments and urban migrants with reorientated values to create a sustainable post-growth future for both humans and nonhumans to dwell in. | eng |