As the Japanese government in Tokyo seeks to minimize the effects of the disasters through new policies, the history of restructuring and the urban bias tears the fibers between urban and rural Japan.

The disproportionate weight of rural voters in Japan gives sparsely populated parts of the country more representation — and more government largess — than urban areas, perpetuating what ...

Urban areas are more liberal, and rural areas are more conservative. In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton won metropolitan areas with more than 1 million residents and Donald Trump ...

Japan launched regional revitalization efforts in 2014 under then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to halt its population decline, as well as to promote migration to rural areas in order to address ...