Rural Art Revitalization - A Comparative Study Between Japan and China

作为乡村和周边地区振兴的工具，社会参与艺术、艺术社会实践、节日旅游和创意场所活动的力量在日本和中国都受到了更多的国际关注。从2017年开始，中国开始邀请中国和日本的乡村艺术创作者就艺术的乡村振兴项目进行合作，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，涵盖了人文(艺术研究)和社会科学(地理、旅游和乡村研究)。本研究旨在评估日本农村和中国最具代表性的艺术振兴项目的绩效和运作机制，以及两国之间新兴的合作成果。这一比较旨在进一步了解依靠艺术场所营造实现长期社区振兴的艺术乡村振兴项目的异同。这项研究的意义不仅限于振兴这两个国家的乡村社会的可能性；与连接日本乡村和中国的新的跨国艺术复兴现象相一致，研究结果也将为其他亚洲和全球乡村社会的乡村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.