Exporting Japanese models of community development

Japan is home to many initiatives for local industrial revitalisation and community-building aimed at halting depopulation and economic stagnation in rural areas. In this project I am examining how some of these initiatives are being cultivated as models of rural development for application beyond Japan. I am looking particularly at how Japanese concepts of ‘community’, ‘leadership’, ‘autonomy’ and so on are translated across borders, and how these translations in turn alter the outlooks of those who developed the models in the first place.