Struggling Provinces Reap the Benefits as More Japanese Flee From Tokyo : Trend: As more citizens leave the big city for a more comfortable life in their hometowns, rural communities have begun luring returnees.

When Kazuaki Tamura graduated from a Tokyo university a few years back, a high-paying job at a top stock brokerage in the big city was his for the asking.

So what’s he doing in this provincial backwater, 280 miles north of Tokyo, the capital of one of Japan’s poorest regions?

Tamura’s answer is simple--but revolutionary for Japan: “I gave it a lot of thought--whether Tokyo is a good place to raise children, whether I could go fishing or walk in the mountains. I didn’t think that would be possible.”

So Tamura, 24, came home to Akita, not far from his hometown where his parents still live, and took a job at Akita Bank. He says he has no regrets.

It’s a story being heard more often these days, to the relief of struggling regions that for decades have seen their best and brightest head off for the dazzling lights of Tokyo.

It suggests a major shift in values as tolerance for cramped housing and ever-longer commutes reaches the breaking point and an economic downturn cuts job opportunities in Tokyo.

“I hear that people (in Tokyo) are commuting for three hours on the bullet train,” Tamura said. “Now it’s five minutes by bicycle. You can spend the three hours you would have spent commuting doing what you want.”

Etsuo Sasaki, editor of the Akita News Herald, said that 30 years ago, when the economy was recovering from the devastation of World War II, the Japanese needed to work long, hard hours just to buy a television set or a washing machine.

“Now people want a comfortable life. . . . It’s a change in values, and that’s what causes people to come home,” he said.

For Akita state, the change comes none too soon.

Between 1985 and 1990, its population of about 1.2 million dipped 2%, more than any other state’s, reflecting an exodus among the young from aging towns and dying professions such as rice farming and logging.

Tamura says his old grade school in the town of Noshiro used to have five classes per grade but now has only two.

Many Akita natives headed to the plain around Tokyo, where bureaucrats and politicians control the nation’s destiny and many top corporations are based. Even Tamura admits that there is no place like Tokyo when it comes to shopping and entertainment.

Local officials here, and in just about every other state outside the Tokyo region, have started to fight back with a campaign to tug at the heartstrings of natives living in Tokyo.

Akita state, for instance, sends out glossy brochures depicting local greenery and the happy life of those who “U-turn” back to their hometown, and it offers low-interest loans to buy real estate.

Other regions offer returnees money, free land or even a fishing boat in the case of Chibu, an island village in the Sea of Japan.

Whatever the reason, it appears that returnees are increasing. A survey released by Recruit Research in December of soon-to-be college graduates in Tokyo found that 34.6% planned to return to their hometowns, up from 29.8% two years earlier. The rate had declined steadily throughout the 1980s.

Recruit’s Kazuhiko Tanaka said the falling birthrate is encouraging people to go back home because many Japanese who live in big cities today don’t have siblings to take care of Mom and Dad.

Another, more recent, factor is Japan’s economic slowdown. Tokyo-based companies such as the securities firm that wooed Tamura are now cutting hiring, forcing job seekers to look elsewhere.

“Two or three years ago, it was a buyer’s market--people would employ a cat. But now it’s a seller’s market,” said Uemon Sato, an Akita official responsible for luring workers to the prefecture.

But the same shift in values that has encouraged Japanese to seek a more relaxed life away from Tokyo and other big cities also turns many off from work in the blue-collar industries that provide much of the local employment.

“We show (prospective employees) the plant, and a lot of them say, ‘Ooh, that looks rough,’ ” said Satoshi Miura, a manager at Akita Plywood, a lumber manufacturer.

It remains an open question, then, how many people will head back home.

Tanaka, for instance, acknowledged that he could probably live more comfortably in his hometown in Oita state, 500 miles from Tokyo. But in an interview at Recruit’s shiny headquarters, he said he has no intention of going back.

For his part, Tamura of Akita Bank noted that the exodus to the big cities developed over decades. “It will also take decades to reverse it,” he predicted.