Ms. Ryoko Hori moved to Nachikatsuura Town from Tokyo in the summer of 2021 as a Regional Development Cooperation Volunteer. We asked Ms. Hori, who decided to move to Nachikatsuura when she had finished raising her children, about her decision to move and her thoughts on living in Nachikatsuura.

I was shocked to see how people live in harmony with nature. The gap between their lifestyle and my own.

ーWhy did you decide to move to Hiroshima?
My parents were from Hiroshima, so I used to visit my relatives in Fukuyama and Onomichi when I was little. One of those relatives was married to a temple, so I often stayed there for long periods of time to help out and experience a bit of country life, which I think was my first original experience of wanting to emigrate.

While I was raising my children as a full-time housewife as an adult, I started horseback riding when I was about 33 years old. I used to drive from Ota Ward in Tokyo to Hadano in Kanagawa to commute. (Laughs) While I was going there, I started thinking that if I was going to ride horses, I wanted to go to Hokkaido, so I looked online and did a 3-week training at a riding club in Sapporo, which was a turning point in my life.

When I went to Hokkaido, I was struck by the way people lived in harmony with nature. I found myself unable to chop firewood, I couldn’t understand the autumn sky, and I realized how little human power I had. My mother makes syrup from the sap of the trees in the back of the house, makes sap beer, picks lettuce and makes salads, and so on. I saw the life that they were aiming for as a family, a vibrant family life spread out before me, and… seeing that kind of life, I realized that there was a big gap between the life I was living now in Tokyo and my ideal life. So I began to think that I would like to live like that someday.

The actual trigger for me to start thinking about emigrating was when both of my children started to grow out of it.

Just as I was thinking about emigrating, Wakayama was holding an emigration festival. I was thinking that it would be nice to move to a place that is run by locals and has traditions, rather than a place that has been renovated to some extent, like Kamakura or Hiroshima.

ーI’m sure there are many potential places to move to, but what kind of place did you want to move to?

I had decided that I wanted to move to a place where the weather was nice, the people were cheerful, and there was a culture and a flow of people. If I can interact with people who come here on vacation, I can do new things without being buried. The other requirement was that the place not be too developed and changed into something new. I was able to put together my own profile while participating in the festival, which helped me to think about this kind of thing.

I was matched with about three places as potential places to settle, but I just happened to click on Nachikatsuura (laughs).

I had been to Nachikatsuura on a family vacation in the past, but I thought I’d give it one more try, so I came here at the end of that year. I don’t know why, but I felt a thrill when I walked through the shopping street, which took only five minutes to complete, right after getting off at the station. That was the moment I thought, “I want to move here.“

If a movement is started by connecting the countryside and the city, Japan will become more affluent.

ーHow do you feel after actually moving and living in Nachikatsuura for less than a year?

When I reached a certain age, I wondered if the image I have now is the image I want to show to my children. I wondered if I am the person I want my children to see when I am old enough. I used to feel that going to my grandmother’s house was like going to a place with abundant nature. In the old days, food and life were provided by nature.

When I lived in the city, supermarkets were filled with imported and processed foods, and I shopped there, but I felt something strange about that. I felt that freshness was disappearing. I thought, “Japan was never like this.

Now that I live here, I think I can invite my friends and family over and show them this kind of life in nature. Even though I live here, I think that if I can connect with Tokyo and other places, I can solve local problems. I imagine that in this way, I can create a good cycle not only in my own life, but also in the rest of Japan.

I believe that Japan will become more affluent if we can create a movement between living in the city and living in the city. That is why I want people from all walks of life to come. I really hope that we can show each other our wealth and connect with each other. I really believe that the age of the regions is coming.

ーI understand that you moved to Nachikatsuura as a member of the Regional Development Cooperation Volunteers.
What do you do?

Regional development cooperatives differ from region to region.
In my personal way of being, my main role is to support the activities of Ota’s Township.
The first is to continuously revitalize Ota Township, and the second is to promote the Ota area. We hope that what we are doing will lead to a sixth industry, but we are also working to give shape to the resources in the area.

There are all kinds of ways to do this, and I wonder if they will eventually be connected.

Originally, I wanted to make it a place for well-wishers in the community. Based on my experience in Hokkaido, I wanted to create a place for interaction between people from outside and people in the community. I thought this would be a good opportunity for people to immigrate to the area, and for local people to be able to filter out people from outside the community. We are also trying to provide a place where people can do that by holding coffee shops in Ota-no-Sato.

Also, I would like to connect Tokyo and Ota from the perspective of building a population relationship. In this day and age, work and way of life are borderless in various fields. I hope to not only increase local production for local consumption within the region, but also to promote it outside the region, so that people will have more choices, which will lead to a richer lifestyle. This region is rich in agricultural products, traditional industry, wisdom, and history. In addition, there are many interesting people who have been attracted to Kumano’s sacred places. I keep my antennae up every day, hoping to create opportunities to connect such tangible and intangible things with people and people with people, and to have relationships that will make this a second hometown.

The mechanism can be handed down. I want to create that mechanism.

ーYou are also trying to make products using koji at Ota no Sato, aren’t you? Is that something you personally want to do?

It is not that I want to make koji, but I am doing it in the hope that someone will come along who will make koji for me. I hope that someone will say, “Oh, this is a rice farm, why don’t you make koji?“ I hope that people who think koji is good will come to me. I want to create an opportunity for people to say, “What is this?“ I want koji to be handed down, but I also want people to be able to make koji with their own hands.

I want koji to be handed down from generation to generation, but there is no one who can compete with those who have been doing it by hand for a long time, so I hope there will be people who say, “Koji is good.

I am also thinking that if we can produce a kind of liquid food, we will be able to make koji with the rice we grow when we have an aging society. If we can do that, local production for local consumption will expand. If we can increase the number of jobs, it would be a good opportunity for people to move to Nachikatsuura.

ーWhat do you want to do in Nachikatsuura?

My current mission is to connect and create a system. If people come on board with that mechanism, I think it will become an ongoing thing. If you create a product, it may or may not sell, but the mechanism can be inherited. It can be replaced by something else, so I think it is very valuable.
I can’t do it by myself alone, and I hope that people who share my feelings about this will create something new without my knowledge, or that the idea or mechanism will roll on to another place.