How to fight depopulation issues in Nagatani Area: Analysis and Ideas
Let’s do a quiz. Which is more, the number of shrines or the number of convenience stores in Japan? The answer is shrines.
The number of shrines listed in the Agency for Cultural Affairs' "Religious Annual Report" is 88.585. Convenience stores, on the other hand, have 55.322 stores nationwide.
So why have shrines lost their importance so much?
Probably it’s because people rarely visit shrines. In recent years, famous shrines have been famous and waved the constantly rising tourism economy, and others have been buried from the eyesight of people.
First, it comes out that there are two types of shrines that are dealing with tourism properly:
- Shrines with historical value and well-known names
- Shrines with unique characteristics
First, there are Izumo Tasha Shrine, Ise Jingu Shrine and Takachiho Shrine, the birthplace of myths in Kyushu, which are historically valuable and well-known shrines. Although, the shrines are attractive because they look gorgeous, tourists flock to them in search of the value of the most famous god.
Generally, shrines earn money by selling prayer money, offering money, amulets and ema, but some large shrines also advertise shichi-go-san and wedding ceremonies. According to data released by the National Police Agency, 98.18 million people in total come to major shrines and temples throughout Japan on their first visit, which is nearly 80 percent of Japan's population.The income from famous shrines during the New Year's visit will be very large.
The second shrine has a unique feature, a shrine whose name is not well- known, but which attracts tourists with its charm that no other shrine has.
For example, there are some shrines that have great good luck, some that often have bad luck, and some that have a golden torii.
So, in which category could we put Kumano-Jinja Shrine or Aso-Jinja Shrine, the major shrines we have seen during our last field trip?
They easily could be put in the second category, shrines with unique characteristics.
The biggest characteristic of Kumano- jinja Shrine was that the characters were engraved on the cliffs, so a good idea could be selling a model including the cliffs. We just mentioned that big shrines promote shichi-go-san and wedding ceremonies. The wedding itself may still be difficult, but if you buy a model of it at the time of marriage and carve the names of the husband and wife, or if you carve the names of the children at the time of their birth, it will be a lifetime anniversary.
Up here we just analyzed the situation of japanese shrines and we just talked about how to try to solve the depopulation problem through some actions, in order to attract tourism and revitalize the local economy. The first step, however, is to do a good fundraising campaign, or all of these ideas could be impossible to realize due to lack of money.
I Social Network’s era, it is really important to learn the importance of these instruments and to use them as a powerful instrument to reach our objectives. In our case, a good Social media strategy could lead us to let the people of Kyūshū, of Japan and of the entire world, capable to know that here, in Ōita Prefecture, there is a vast amount of historical and cultural spots that otherwise could not be known by anyone.
As we have learned during class, the hardest thing to revive this kind of areas is money. Government is not giving the proper help to inaka areas to let the depopulation finish.
However, in recent times, a new and innovative way to raise money has been created: Crowdfunding.
Using websites and safe payment method such as Paypal, it is possible to show the entire Nagatani beauty, together with our ideas to promote and improve the local economy and tourism, to the whole world and ask a contribute.
World’s most famous crowdfunding websites in Japan are ReadyFor , Makuake and Campfire, buti f we want to reach a bigger crowd all over the world, the most suggested platform is surely Kickstarter.
The more this heritage will be seen by the people through the internet, the more money and tourism could reach the area, letting the project be possible and affordable, even without government’s funds.
By AlbertoLPU and なべさん
