東京・中野の六畳ワンルームに住む三十二歳の会社員、佐藤さんは、毎月の家賃に十二万円を支払っている。築四十年の建物で、洗濯機は廊下に置かれ、窓を開ければ隣のマンションの壁が目の前に迫る。それでも駅まで徒歩五分、深夜まで開いているコンビニが三軒あるという利便性は、地方では望むべくもない都市生活ならではの贅沢である。
Ms. Sato, a thirty-two-year-old office worker living in a six-mat studio in Nakano, Tokyo, pays 120,000 yen in rent every month. The building is forty years old, the washing machine sits in the hallway, and opening the window reveals the wall of the next apartment block right in her face. Even so, the convenience of a five-minute walk to the station and three convenience stores open until late at night is a luxury unique to city life that the countryside could never offer.
一方、二年前に岡山県の山あいの集落へ移住した田中夫妻は、月三万円の古民家を借り、庭で野菜を育てながら、夜には満天の星空を見上げる暮らしを送っている。空気は澄み、子どもは野山を駆け回り、近所からは採れたての野菜が頻繁に届く。都会では金を積んだところで得られない種類の豊かさが、そこには確かにある。
The Tanaka couple, by contrast, moved two years ago to a hamlet tucked into the mountains of Okayama. They rent an old farmhouse for thirty thousand yen a month, grow vegetables in their yard, and gaze up at a star-filled sky at night. The air is clear, the children run freely through the hills, and freshly harvested vegetables arrive from the neighbors with surprising frequency. There is, undeniably, a kind of richness there that no amount of money could buy in the city.
コロナ禍を境に、地方移住への関心は急速に高まった。総務省の調査によれば、東京圏からの転出超過が続いた時期もあり、それまで地方創生を叫べど叫べど動かなかった人の流れが、初めて明確に逆転したのである。リモートワークの普及があっての変化であり、通勤という鎖から解放された層が、住む場所そのものを根本から問い直し始めた。
The pandemic became a turning point that sharply raised interest in moving to the countryside. According to surveys by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there was a stretch during which net out-migration from the Tokyo metropolitan area persisted, marking the first clear reversal of a flow that years of regional-revitalization slogans had failed to budge. The shift was possible only because remote work had taken hold; people freed from the chain of commuting began to question, from the ground up, where they ought to live at all.
ただし、ブームの熱に浮かされた移住が、必ずしも幸福な結果をもたらすとは限らない。地方の現実は、SNSで流れてくる田園風景の写真からは決して見えてこない。実際に住んでみてはじめて、想像と現実の落差に愕然とする移住者は少なくないのである。
Yet a move driven by the heat of a trend does not necessarily lead to happiness. The reality of rural life is something the pastoral photographs circulating on social media simply cannot convey. It is only by actually living there that many newcomers come to be stunned by the gap between the image and the daily reality.
田中さん夫妻が最初に直面したのは、車なしには生活が成り立たないという厳然たる事実だった。最寄りのスーパーまで八キロ、病院に至っては片道三十分の運転を強いられる。公共交通機関は一日数本のバスのみで、それすら来年には廃線になるという噂が絶えない。
The first thing the Tanakas confronted was the hard fact that life is unsustainable without a car. The nearest supermarket is eight kilometers away, and getting to a hospital means a thirty-minute drive each way. Public transit consists of a handful of daily buses, and even those, rumor has it, may be discontinued next year.
地域コミュニティとの関わり方も、移住者にとって看過しがたい課題と言えよう。都会の匿名性に慣れた人間が、濃密な近所付き合いに戸惑うことも少なからずある。地元の慣習はおろか、ゴミ出しのルール一つとっても、新参者には分からないことだらけなのが実情だ。
How to engage with the local community is another challenge newcomers cannot overlook. Those accustomed to the anonymity of the city are often disoriented by the density of neighborly interaction. Let alone local customs, even something as small as the rules for putting out the trash is, for a newcomer, a thicket of things they simply do not know.
特に難しいのが、集落の寄り合いや祭りへの参加である。出ないと「あの家は付き合いが悪い」と陰口を叩かれ、出れば出たで段取りや上下関係の細かな作法に神経をすり減らす。匿名であることの自由を当たり前として育った都市生活者にとって、隣人から常に観察されているという感覚は、想像以上の圧力となりうる。
Particularly tricky are the village meetings and seasonal festivals. Skip them, and you become the household whispered about as unsociable; attend them, and you exhaust your nerves keeping track of procedures and the fine etiquette of seniority. For a city dweller who has taken the freedom of anonymity for granted since childhood, the sensation of being constantly watched by neighbors can be a pressure far heavier than imagined.
過疎化の進行は、もはや個々の集落の努力ではいかんともしがたい段階に達している。子どもの声が消え、空き家が連なり、商店街はシャッターを下ろしたままである。集落の存続そのものが危うい地域にあって、移住者一組が来たところで、流れを根本から覆すべくもないというのが冷徹な現実だ。
Depopulation has reached a stage where no amount of effort from individual hamlets can reverse it. Children's voices have vanished, vacant houses stand in long rows, and shopping streets keep their shutters perpetually closed. In a region whose very survival hangs in the balance, one new household can hardly be expected to turn the tide.
それでもなお、地方を選ぶ人々の動機は、単なる経済的な計算では割り切れない。家賃の安さや自然環境もさることながら、人間らしい時間の流れを取り戻したいという欲求こそが、移住の根底にある。満員電車に押し込まれ、画面を眺めて一日が終わる暮らしへの疲弊が、静かに、しかし確実に広がっているのである。
Even so, the motives of those who choose the countryside cannot be reduced to mere economic calculation. Cheap rent and natural surroundings matter, of course, but at the root of the move lies a deeper longing to recover a more human pace of time. The exhaustion of being crushed into packed trains and watching the day vanish into a screen is spreading quietly, but surely.
一方、都市生活にもまた、地方では決して得られない種類の豊かさがある。深夜まで開いている書店、世界中の料理を選べる飲食店、思い立てば翌日には観られる演劇や展覧会。多様な人間と偶然出会い、新しい価値観に触れる機会の多さは、地方では望むべくもない都市の本質的な魅力にほかならない。
City life, however, offers its own kind of richness that the countryside simply cannot provide. Bookstores open until midnight, restaurants serving the cuisine of every part of the world, plays and exhibitions you can take in the very next day on a whim. The sheer abundance of chance encounters with diverse people and unfamiliar values is an essential urban appeal that no rural setting could replicate.
佐藤さんも、地方移住を検討した時期があった。しかし、転職活動や友人との会食、夜遅くまで開いている美術館を諦めるとなれば、自分が自分でなくなるような気がしたという。都市の喧騒は確かに疲れるが、その喧騒なくしては生まれない刺激と出会いがある、というのが彼女の結論である。
Ms. Sato, too, once considered moving to the countryside. But when she imagined giving up job hunting, dinners with friends, and late-night museum visits, she felt as if she would cease to be herself. The bustle of the city is exhausting, she admits, but without that bustle there can be no encounters and no stimulation either; that, in the end, is her conclusion.
近年注目を集めているのが、都市と地方を行き来する「二拠点生活」という選択肢である。平日は東京で働き、週末は山梨や長野の中古別荘で過ごすという暮らし方が、富裕層に限らず一般層にも広がりつつある。完全移住に踏み切るには勇気が要る人々にとって、これは現実的な妥協点と言えよう。
Drawing attention in recent years is the option known as the two-base lifestyle, where one lives between city and countryside. Working weekdays in Tokyo and spending weekends in a used vacation house in Yamanashi or Nagano is a way of living that is spreading beyond the wealthy to ordinary households as well. For those who lack the courage for a full relocation, this is, one could say, a realistic middle ground.
行政の側も、移住者をいきなり「定住」させようとするのではなく、地域と緩やかに関わり続ける「関係人口」という概念を打ち出すようになった。年に数回訪れる、ふるさと納税で応援する、副業として地方の仕事を手伝う——そうした多様な関わり方を認め合う仕組みが、過疎地の存続にとって最後の希望となっているのである。
Government policy, too, has begun promoting a concept called the engaged population, through which people maintain a looser, ongoing relationship with a region rather than being pushed straight into permanent residency. Visiting a few times a year, supporting the area through hometown tax donations, or helping with local work as a side job — a framework that embraces these many forms of connection has become the last best hope for the survival of depopulated regions.
理想と現実の乖離に苦しみ、結局都会に戻る移住者がいるのも事実である。だが、入念な下調べを経て、地域の現実を踏まえて移住に踏み切った人々の多くは、不便さも含めて新たな土地での暮らしに確かな手応えを感じている。田中夫妻もまた、車の維持費に頭を悩ませつつ、それでもこの選択を悔いてはいない。
It is also true that some newcomers, worn down by the gap between ideal and reality, eventually return to the city. But many who took the leap after thorough research, with a clear-eyed view of local realities, feel a genuine sense of fulfillment in their new life — inconveniences included. The Tanakas, while still wrestling with the cost of maintaining a car, have never regretted their choice.
都市か地方かという二項対立は、もはや時代に合わない問いなのかもしれない。多様な暮らし方、多様な関わり方を認め合い、個々人がそれぞれの価値観に基づいて場所を選べる社会こそ、これからの日本に求められる姿ではなかろうか。
The binary of city versus countryside may already be a question out of step with the times. A society that recognizes diverse ways of living, diverse ways of belonging, and lets each person choose a place according to their own values — is that not the shape Japan ought to be aiming for from here on?