“Shodansho” - A place for laughter and chatting A community led response to aging and depopulated small islands in Japan

This article is based on ethnographic research that seeks to map various aspects of the Amami Islands communicative ecologies. The rapidly declining and aging population of small island communities in Japan have had a dramatic impact on their communicative ecologies and overall wellbeing. The Naon village café of the Yamato Municipal Village in Amami Oshima, in the southwest of the Japanese archipelago, has been a community initiative that sought to find creative and sustainable ways of addressing the needs of their aging members while embracing all generations. Established by the community in 2011 after extensive “mutual aid community mapping”, it became very quickly a focal place for the community. With the nominal cost of one coin (¥100), the café was run mostly by the women volunteers and utilized local resources while generating an income to cover its cost by hiring its space and offering services. Based on the principle of “self-help, mutual aid and mutual assistance,” the emphasis has been on the village welfare and information gathering and dissemination, making it thus a key nodal point in the community’s communicative ecology.