Beyond Residents and Tourists: ‘Kankei Jinkou’ and Japan’s Response to Depopulation

Japan is at the forefront of demographic change. With a rapidly aging population, low fertility, and sustained population decline, many regions—especially rural areas—are confronting shrinking workforces, declining tax bases, and the erosion of local services. The 2025 census shows Japan’s population at 123.05 million, a 2.5% decline since 2020.¹ Population has declined in 45 of 47 prefectures, representing 96% of the total population, and the rate of decline has accelerated over time. The remaining prefectures, Tokyo and Okinawa, are projected to follow by 2040.²

Policymakers have long focused on attracting new residents or boosting tourism to help sustain declining populations, yet both strategies have limits. A growing concept suggests a third path: engaging people who maintain ongoing ties to a place without living there. This concept is known as kankei jinkou, often translated as “related population.”³

Kankei Jinkou Expands How Communities Define Who Belongs

Kankei jinkou refers to people who maintain ongoing, meaningful connections with a specific region without living there full-time. These individuals may visit regularly, work remotely, contribute skills, or participate in local activities. The concept sits between two categories: residents who live in a place full-time, and one-time visitors such as tourists. It excludes visitors whose trips are merely home visits or based solely on kinship ties. Rather than viewing population as a fixed count of residents, kankei jinkou emphasizes a broader network of sustained connections.

The concept reflects more than a decade of policy experimentation in response to rural population decline. In the 2000s and early 2010s, Japan’s regional revitalization strategies focused on increasing tourism and encouraging in-migration to rural areas. Both approaches produced localized gains but proved insufficient at scale. While tourism generated short-term, often one-time activity without lasting ties, in-migration flows remained too small to offset large-scale population decline and aging.

In response, policymakers began to recognize a “missing middle.” By the mid-2010s, kankei jinkou had entered national policy discussions, shifting the focus from one-time visits or relocation to relationships sustained over time.

Alongside accelerating population decline, several broader shifts have made this approach increasingly appealing: expanded remote work opportunities since the COVID-19 pandemic, growing interest in multi-local living, and rapid advances in AI and digital technologies that make distance less limiting.⁴

This policy emphasis has continued to grow in recent years. Japan’s Basic Concept for Regional Revitalization 2.0, approved by the Cabinet in June 2025, places kankei jinkou more explicitly within national policy by emphasizing partnerships with nonresidents who can contribute to local problem-solving, economic activity, and community revitalization.⁵

This broader policy push is supported by special local allocation tax measures for municipalities pursuing kankei jinkou and dual-residence policies, including outreach and consultation services, trial stay, coworking, and workation facilities, local exchange programs, and registration systems for dual residents or connected nonresidents. The plan sets a 10-year goal of expanding kankei jinkou to 10 million distinct individuals and 100 million cumulative engagements.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has also proposed a furusato resident registration system for nonresidents (furusato translates to  “hometown,” or “place of personal attachment.”) In fall 2026, the ministry plans to release an app as a registration and communication platform to be tested in selected model municipalities and prefectures launching kankei jinkou-related projects. The app is intended to help local governments identify connected nonresidents, share information, recruit participants, and sustain engagement.

Although some municipalities across Japan already operate membership-style programs for kankei jinkou, the new system aims to formalize these relationships and make kankei jinkou easier to track and sustain. In this context, kankei jinkou aligns with broader “smart shrinkage” approaches—strategies that accept population decline as a structural reality and focus on sustaining economic vitality, service provision, and quality of life even as the number of residents falls.

Kankei Jinkou in Practice

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism classifies kankei jinkou into two broad groups: those who visit a community regularly, and those who maintain ties from a distance.⁶

Among regular visitors, the ministry identifies several types of engagement, ordered by the strength of ties to the community: contributing directly to local projects; working in the community through side jobs or support for local businesses; teleworking from the community while doing work based elsewhere; participating in events and exchange programs; and making repeated visits for local food, shopping, or leisure.

For non-visiting relationships, the ministry points to activities, such as furusato nouzei tax donations, crowdfunding, local product purchases, online engagement, and other forms of remote support. Across Japan, municipalities are experimenting with different models to build and sustain these relationships.

Direct Contribution: Connecting Outside Skills to Local Needs

Some initiatives focus on direct contribution by connecting nonresidents with local challenges, such as tourism development, product branding, entrepreneurship, conservation, or community revitalization.

One example is Yokolab in Yokoze, Saitama Prefecture, a municipal platform that invites companies, organizations, and individuals from outside the town to use Yokoze as a field for testing ideas and carrying out community-focused projects.⁷ The town supports selected projects by connecting participants with local assets, residents, public spaces, and municipal staff.

Since launching in 2016, Yokolab has supported projects ranging from technology pilots and environmental initiatives to product development and community revitalization. The model shows how a small municipality can draw on outside skills and ideas while giving nonresidents a concrete way to contribute to local problem-solving.

Work-Based Engagement: Local Work, Remote Work, and Workation

Other initiatives build relationships through work. Some nonresidents work in the community, such as by taking side jobs with local companies or helping with agriculture, forestry, or fisheries. Others stay in the community while continuing their regular jobs remotely.

Wakayama Prefecture promotes workation as an entry point into kankei jinkou, especially through company-backed programs that send employees to the region for short-term remote work stays that include local engagement.⁸ Examples include employees participating in agricultural volunteer activities during corporate retreats, and establishing satellite offices that give remote workers a local base while creating opportunities to engage with the community.

The prefecture also makes independent workation accessible to individuals by providing sample itineraries, information on coworking spaces, lodging, and local activities, and access to local coordinators who can help plan and arrange stays. These programs show how temporary work stays can help nonresidents build relationships with host communities and encourage return visits and continued contributions.

Participation and Exchange: Building Ties Through Shared Activities

Several kankei jinkou initiatives invite people to join communities through local events, hands-on programs, training opportunities, or immersive experiences that deepen their understanding of a place.

One example is the Tanada Learning Workshop in Ukiha, Fukuoka.⁹ Through workshops held throughout the year, participants take part in rice farming—from plowing and planting to harvesting—alongside local residents. Participants are encouraged to join 15 workshops offered from April through October, thereby building relationships through repeated participation rather than one-time visits.

Another example is Pokemaru’s summer programs for parents and children, held at multiple locations across Japan.¹⁰ The overnight camps give children opportunities to farm, fish, cook, and eat with local residents, while parents have free time during the day. The program also uses online platforms before and after the camps to connect participating families with local farmers and fishers and to encourage continued purchases of local products.

Together, these examples show how shared activities can turn short-term participation into repeated contact and sustained relationships with local communities.

Interest and Consumption: Initial Forms of Engagement That Can Deepen Over Time

Some relationships begin through lighter forms of engagement, such as enjoying local food, shopping, hobbies, landscapes, or leisure activities. These activities may resemble tourism at first, but they become relevant to kankei jinkou when they are repeated at a specific place over time.

In Anan City, Tokushima Prefecture, the Anan SUP (stand up paddleboard) Town Project uses stand-up paddleboarding as a starting point for building these ties.¹¹ The project encourages paddlers from outside the city to return regularly to Anan’s beaches and rivers, creating repeated opportunities for interaction with local residents.

Over time, these recreational visits can deepen into participation in beach and river cleanups, environmental awareness activities, social media promotion, and support for local events. The Anan SUP Town Project shows how an initial connection based on leisure can serve as an entry point into more sustained community involvement.

Non-Visiting Relationships: Supporting a Place From a Distance

Kankei jinkou can also include people who maintain ties without physically visiting. These relationships may involve online engagement, information sharing, taking on work connected to the area, furusato tax donations, local crowdfunding, or buying local products.

Online platforms can help create or sustain these non-visiting ties. In Hokkaido, for example, Relations FES connects nonresidents with local communities through an online platform where participants use avatars to interact with residents, municipal officials, and local organizations engaged in regional revitalization.¹² The platform introduces participants to local areas, industries, and people.

While interactions can occur year-round, the online platform hosts an annual virtual event, during which special programs are held, including invited talks by people who have moved to these communities. Although online engagement is not a substitute for in-person relationships, it can lower the barrier to introduction and help sustain ties between in-person visits.

Another important example is furusato nouzei, Japan’s hometown tax donation program.¹³ The program allows taxpayers to direct a portion of their taxes to municipalities of their choice in exchange for tax deductions and locally sourced products, such as wagyu beef, seafood, fruit, sake, or traditional crafts.

Nationwide, both the number of donations and the total value have increased steadily, reaching approximately 5.9 million cases and 1.3 trillion yen, equivalent to US$8.6 billion, in 2024. After excluding operating costs, local governments retained 682 billion yen, or about US$4.5 billion.¹⁴ For rural and smaller municipalities, the program has become both a revenue source and a promotional tool, fostering attachment among nonresidents and, in some cases, serving as an entry point into deeper kankei jinkou.

These examples show how kankei jinkou can expand a community’s functional population without requiring full-time migration. Nonresidents may bring income, skills, labor, visibility, or social networks, without needing to become permanent residents. For communities facing long-term population decline, the value of kankei jinkou lies less in reversing demographic trends, and more in broadening who can help sustain local life.

The Challenge and Promise of Kankei Jinkou

With new policy emphasis on kankei jinkou, including fiscal support for municipalities and the furusato resident registration system, kankei jinkou is likely to become more visible and more formally organized. But whether kankei jinkou can produce durable economic, social, and demographic benefits at scale remains an open question.

Kankei jinkou is not a comprehensive solution to population decline. Key challenges include developing reliable ways to identify and estimate the size of the kankei jinkou, evaluate the broader impacts of related programs, and assess the quality, continuity, and level of participants’ engagement. Additionally, there is uneven regional capacity to attract and retain participants and sustain involvement over time. Some activities may remain closer to tourism than meaningful connection, limiting their ability to offset the deeper effects of structural population decline.

Even so, kankei jinkou offers a promising way for communities to expand their support base and adapt to shifting demographic realities by strengthening ties beyond their resident populations. In an era of long-term population loss, the future of communities may depend less on how many residents they have, and more on how many people they can meaningfully connect with, and how durable those connections become.

References

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About the Authors: Toshiko Kaneda, Ph.D., is PRB’s Senior Technical Director. Yuko Hara, Ph.D., is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Maryland Population Research Center, University of Maryland at College Park. Hara’s work is supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, population infrastructure grant P2C-HD041041.