Rural Art Revitalization - A Comparative Study Between Japan and China

在日本和中国，社会参与艺术、艺术社会实践、节日旅游和创意场所制作活动作为振兴农村和周边地区的工具的力量正在受到越来越多的国际关注。从2017年开始，中国开始邀请中日两国的乡村艺术场所创造者合作开展艺术乡村振兴项目，分享最佳实践。这些新兴的跨国家/地区的“艺术嫁接”项目引发了几个多学科的研究问题，包括人文学科（艺术研究）和社会科学（地理、旅游和农村研究）。本研究旨在评估中日两国最具代表性的乡村艺术振兴项目的绩效和运作机制，以及两国之间正在出现的合作成果。这一比较旨在进一步了解艺术乡村振兴项目的异同，这些项目都是依靠艺术场所的制作来实现长期的社区振兴。本研究的意义不仅限于振兴这两个国家乡村社会的可能性；与连接日本乡村和中国乡村的新的跨国艺术复兴现象相一致，这些研究结果也将为其他亚洲和全球乡村社会的可持续发展和振兴提供工具。

The power of socially engaged art, artistic social practice, festival tourism, and creative place-making activities as an instrument for the revitalization of rural and peripheral regions is receiving more international attention in both Japan and China. Starting from 2017, China started to invite rural art place-makers from both China and Japan to collaborate on art’s rural revitalization projects and share best practices. These emerging cross-national/regional ‘art grafting’ projects give rise to several multidisciplinary research questions that encompass humanities (art studies) and social sciences (geography, tourism, and rural studies).This study aims to evaluate the performance and operation mechanism of the most representative art revitalization projects in rural Japan and China, as well as the emerging collaboration outcomes between the two countries. This comparative sets out to gain further understanding of the differences and similarities of art’s rural revitalization projects that rely on art place-making for long-term community revitalization. The significance of this research is not limited only to the possibilities to revitalize these two countries’ rural societies; in line with the new transnational art revitalization phenomenon that connects rural Japan and China, the findings will also serve as a vehicle for rural sustainable development and revitalization for other Asian and global rural societies.