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Surf's up: The Japanese prefecture that knows what young professionals want

Published: 26 Jan. 2026, 19:53 Updated: 27 Jan. 2026, 02:11

LEE SOO-JUNG
[email protected]

A view of the Onoji collective housing complex in Kamiyama village, Tokushima prefecture, Japan, is shown in a photo provided by the Kamiyama Tsunagu Corporation on Jan. 23. [KAMIYAMA TSUNAGU CORPORATION]

SHIKOKU ISLAND, Japan — Tokushima, a prefecture in the eastern part of Shikoku Island, has emerged as a resilient and sustainable destination for young and highly skilled professionals — notably, doctors who love surfing in the ocean.

Japan and Korea, neighboring nations in Northeast Asia, share the same chronic social problems: the lowest birthrates in the world, aging populations and regional brain drain to urban areas.

Tokushima, a community with two-thirds of its approximately 680,000 residents living in rural areas, can offer lessons for Korean provincial villages on the brink of extinction due to youth population outflow. Nowadays, under a national agenda to advance balanced regional growth, most Korean provincial and county offices are relying on cash handouts and financial vouchers to entice young people and revive their regions.

Tokushima has created a unique track to lure young professionals with specific talents that the prefecture needs, matching their environmental conditions with the targeted population's niche hobbies. A smaller town in the prefecture has allowed young residents to design and build their own collective housing units.

On Friday and Saturday, a local policymaker and residents shared how they envisioned the future of their communities and the effort that has been put into it when this reporter visited the prefecture with 67 Korean college students through the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths.

Tokushima — closer to a slow-paced society — has seemingly maintained a near balance between population inflows and outflows. In 2024, a total of 12,883 residents left the prefecture. In the same year, the region welcomed 11,158 newcomers, according to statistics provided by the Tokushima government.

What prevented the prefecture from a unilateral population drain was an understanding of targeted newcomers’ preferences and empowering residents to foster the community they envision.

Community designers and builders

Tatsuro Baba, representative director at Kamiyama Tsunagu Corporation, speaks during a media interview at Tokushima prefecture government in Japan on Jan. 23. [LEE SOO-JUNG]

In 2016, the privately owned Kamiyama Tsunagu Corporation launched a community revitalization project aimed at saving the town from potential extinction due to an aging population. Over the past 70 years, Kamiyama’s population has shrunk to about a quarter of its former size, dropping from 20,916 in 1955 to 4,594 in 2024.

The project began with passionate discussions among the villagers to establish the philosophy of the community they pictured. They cared beyond personal interests and reached a consensus that the town should be connected to future generations and have future prospects.

According to Tatsuro Baba, representative director of the corporation, the principle centered on seven core values: people, quality of life, quality of education and schools, various forms of labor, prevention of outflow of wealth and resources from the town, a sense of relaxation and a profound chance to build relationships.

In Korea, where bottom-up local autonomy was introduced, residents were found to be passive in participating in group activities to revitalize their neighborhoods, according to a 2020 academic journal article by former Inje University professor Jung Eui-tay. The study attributed the situation to an underdeveloped resident empowerment program to raise community awareness and the lack of communication among stakeholders in the community regeneration project.

Garden at Onoji collective housing complex in Kamiyama town in Tokushima, Japan, is seen in an undated photo. [KAMIYAMA TSUNAGU CORPORATION]

In Tokushima's Kamiyama village, the Onoji collective housing project for families with children embodied the principles determined by the residents.

Eight wooden buildings were constructed in phased stages from 2017 to 2020. Inside them, 20 residential units became a sustainable shelter that can be leased to people from within and outside the town. The villagers were meticulous even in selecting construction materials. They sourced lumber that was left unmanaged from nearby mountains and ran a certification system to ensure only locally sourced trees were used.

“The occupancy rate is close to 100 percent at nearly all times,” said Baba. “Leasable slots became unavailable very quickly. And I can proudly say that the average age of the community has dropped significantly since newcomers moved into the Onoji residential complex.”

The town believes that it has laid the groundwork for its grand project.

The community is now planning to refine the local high school curriculum to help young residents cultivate skills needed within the community. The purpose is to encourage children to pursue their studies locally and settle in the town in the long term.

“What matters is whether people feel at ease where they live,” Baba said. “Instead of sustaining the community by accepting large numbers of visitors and their spending, we are trying to make residents see their neighborhood in a positive light and choose to stay longer.”

Tailored appeal for young professionals

A poster for surfing competition among doctors held in Tokushima, Japan [TOKUSHIMA PREFECTURAL HOSPITALS BUREAU]

The prefectural government has also thrown its hat into the ring to attract young and highly skilled talent.

Tokushima Gov. Masazumi Gotoda said that his prefecture has observed shifting preferences among younger generations, who now seem to lean toward nature and a slow-paced lifestyle over urban living experiences.

He added that Tokushima offers financial support to aspiring medical professionals, a well-suited environment for marine sports and leisure activities to appeal to professional youths and universally free child care.

“To tackle the physician shortage in the region, our prefecture targeted doctors whose hobbies are surfing, as our eastern coast is apt for marine sports,” Gotoda said. The move appeared to prevent medical services from crippling due to the physician shortage — the phenomenon happening in rural regions in Korea as doctors flock to the metropolitan areas with better medical infrastructure and high demand.

In August 2024, the prefecture government’s hospital bureau and the Tokushima Surfing Association signed an agreement to secure medical professionals through what they labeled “regional branding.”

Gotoda told the Korea JoongAng Daily on Friday that there are surfing-loving doctors who came through this route and have settled in the prefecture.

The state-owned Tokushima University Faculty of Medicine runs a special admission track exempting students from tuition and granting scholarships if they agree to work at least nine years in the prefecture as doctors after graduation, according to the governor. The financial support program began in 2017.

“When medical school graduates leave the prefecture, it becomes our loss,” Gotoda said. “The binding promise led them to remain in our region. Now, we are seeing some desired outcomes.”

Tokushima's Onaruto Bridge and great whirlpool is seen an undated file photo. [TOKUSHIMA PREFECTURE GOVERNMENT]

Beyond the niche appeal to young people with specific skills, the prefectural government also incorporated the general public in its population policy. Tokushima’s free access to child care is intended to discourage families from moving away.

“In Tokushima, residents pay nothing for child care if their child is younger than two,” Gotoda said.

“Without basic guarantees for medical service and education, people naturally leave. That’s why we have committed to the two fields. Now, we see people settling in Tokushima.”

Preservation of heritage

A stretch of traditional Japanese two-story family homes are seen at Udatsu townscape in Tokushima, Japan, on Jan. 24. [LEE SOO-JUNG]

For Udatsu townscape, a historic merchant town that flourished during the Edo period (1603–1868), preservation equals survival.

Along the 430-meter-long (1,410-foot-long) main street, about 85 two-story traditional Japanese buildings with white walls and black roof tiles were lined. While the white exterior seems conventional, it shows ancestral wisdom to protect the town from fire. Mud walls were coated with a mixture of lime — a fire-resistant ingredient — and seaweed-based glue.

As most traditional Japanese houses were built with wood, they used to be susceptible to blazes. The town’s buildings have an additional feature named udatsu — wing structures protruding from the walls on second floors between houses — to prevent flames from spreading to other buildings.

A local guide told a group of Korean students visiting the area that property owners are not allowed to fix or demolish their buildings at their own discretion due to their historic value.

People experience indigo dyeing in Tokushima in Japan in an undated file photo. Udatsu village is famous for the dyeing. [TOKUSHIMA PREFECTURAL GOVERNMENT]

The Japanese government designated the site as the Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings and Japan Heritage Site in 1988 and 2019, respectively.

In addition to property preservation, some residents have run the Volunteer Guide of Udatsu Street for 30 years. Today, 11 active volunteers provide free-of-charge sightseeing guides in Japanese and English.

“What we want to deliver through the service is wholehearted hospitality for our visitors, which translates into omotenashi in Japanese,” said Yoshiko Miyake, a chief of the tour guide group who wishes to accommodate a larger number of visitors. "Our town used to be very popular among tourists before the Covid-19 pandemic. And, now we are trying to recover our past popularity."

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [[email protected]]