1.a The production of the town’s image. Appropriation of the environment

On 26 October 1995, Kamikatsu celebrated its 40th anniversary as a town. It was the largest ceremony in its history. Over three hundred villagers of all ages gathered in the multipurpose sports hall of the Fukuhara School. At the entrance, the town office had arranged plastic bags for shoes, and green plastic slippers, a detailed information pack with the day’s events and a small token of participation, all wrapped in noshigami envelopes. The room was furnished with chairs and cushions, with officials sitting in the first row of chairs on the right, behind several rows of mostly unoccupied cushions on the floor. As in all town events I attended, most villagers, with the exception of a few elders, for whom the cushions are laid out, sat in the last row of chairs.

Following some introductory comments, the Mayor gave a speech and introduced the main guest: a distinguished historian who, wearing a hapi jacket, delivered a three hour paper on Japan, tradition, and the towns of Shikoku and Kamikatsu. The whole-day event was followed by numerous comments from the Mayor, the councillors and the town office delegates. Their speeches exploded with energy and optimism. The local dialect was used, mixed with honorific speech, in the endless comments on the importance of people in making the town, and contributing to its strength, health, and prosperity The event concluded with a performance by a famous Japanese singer, which cost Y 2,000 (£10). The event was filmed and observed by several reporters, being the main subject of the October and November issues of the town magazine. School children were asked to produce drawings and short essays about the town of Kamikatsu. These decorated and ‘wrapped’ the perimeter of the room. Behind the main stage, surrounded by six huge sequoia trees and decorated with flowers, the logo of the town framed the view of the event.

The event was, in fact, about the logo. The series of introductions and speeches wrapped time and event in order to unwrap and present the new ‘karakta’ (character/face) of the town to the villagers. The logo, a smiling cherub with three locks of hair resembling three moons in three colours, green (tree/sudachi colour), silver (moon’s colour) and red (momiji’s colour), was presented with all honours. It was introduced as the town’s ‘character’ or face: the image of the town. Three dolls of the cherub, in each of the three colours, sat at the feet of the presentations table, with traditional hachimaki and white stripes that resembled Shinto paper decorations. The character not only added to the previous repertoire of images: the bonsai tree, the maple leaves, the national flag and the prefectural logo of the town. The character spoke for the achievement of an image, for the consolidation of the town as an all-encompassing social entity. The town is presented as more than

a collection of five or more fragmented villages. The town is presented as an enterprise. The character created by the town office, depict the ‘essence’ of the town’s identity: ikyou to irodori no Sato (the town of the maple leaves and fun). Fun, ikyou, was a new concept. The addition of the cherub and the word ‘fun’ suggest a reformulation of the town’ s image, one in which the economic specialisation is complemented by a new specialisation in ‘tradition’ and human resources, the festival and its people. It was a felicitous metonym, incorporating nature, the people, and the traditions of the town. In the following months the logo appeared on all official correspondence, in magazines, schools and post offices. The tunnel at Fukukawa (a village in Maskaki) was re-made to include the decorative motif of the town. Underneath the nearly invisible golden Shinto replica of a temple (put there to protect against inauspiciousness associated with bridges and tunnels) a large sign of welcome was placed. Next to it appeared the written logo of the town, ‘irodori no sato’, and the smiling town’s character with the three moon-shaped locks of hair.

If the creation of the character summarises the consolidation of the town system as the main political frame for the villagers, it also represents the town’s appropriation of the environment, of traditions, and of the administration of human and economic resources. Appropriations are said to be ‘improvements’ of the town. They target the economic and tourist development of the town as a whole. The ‘improvements’ are not always welcomed, especially by new residents. For them, the incursions of tourism and ecological change, with the appropriation of landscape and production means they have lost their privilege to be in an ‘ideal countryside’, as Mie San, a woman in her mid-thirties put it:

‘I came to Kamikatsu because I thought it was far from Tokushima, no sight of heavy industry, far from consumerism. I wanted a place to go back to simple life. They are making the town now, and I wonder if it will be good. (...) They spoiled the landscape, tore down a lot of trees, the natural trees which changed colour in autumn, now there is sequoia all over. They changed the roads, put cement all over the place; it looks so ugly with cement, really. They don’ t want to know it, really, they only want to make the town.’

It is possible to argue that the success of Kamikatsu is due to the efforts of the local offices to appropriate and transform the ‘image of the town’. This can also be seen in the economic appropriation of the town’s product. Kamikatsu, due to its geographical conditions, cannot rely on a single product. From the administrative point of view, then, it is necessary to convince farmers to adopt the new mode of production, to specialise in their farms. As household economic specialisation becomes an integral part of town-making, a degree of appropriation of this production takes place. Each household is not confined to the town, having economic interests and investments well beyond the region. Most of the efforts of the town aim to retain most of the local produce within the boundaries of the town and its Japan Agriculture co-operatives. Furthermore, not only ‘production’ but also distribution is somehow appropriated.