Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

This paper discusses mid-life return migrants to Iwate Prefecture and explores motivations for starting small businesses in an area of high risk, particularly given the growing problems associated with depopulation and dying business districts that are evident in many parts of Iwate Prefecture. What motivates individuals to return to Iwate after long periods living in major cities like Tokyo? Why are they interested in starting businesses later in life in an area with declining population? In what ways do the individuals discussed here negotiate, contest, and navigate their identities and the aging process as residents of rural Japan and as entrepreneurs? The paper draws upon several years of ethnographic fieldwork in Iwate Prefecture and focuses on case studies of entrepreneurs who have started or continued businesses over the past ten years. I argue that there is a complex interplay of opportunity and a quest for existential meaning that influences return migrants who start businesses during mid-life in neo-rural areas of Japan.