This research investigates how one of overaged rural communities have continued their rural lifestyle against construction of nuclear power plants and protect their livelihood through cooperation between residents and amenity migrants.

The research case is the community in Iwaishima island, Japan. In this island, most of the inhabitants have been opposed to the construction of nuclear power plants on the other side of the island since 1982 and continued to live mainly on fishery and agriculture. After the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, the island attracted attention of people in Japan. Some people who sympathize with residents and are longing for living in rural areas immigrated to the island.

Through interviews and participation observation of daily lives, communal events, and anti-nuclear movements in the island, this research analyzes how the residents and migrants have cooperated and sustained their communities. Firstly, it makes clear that there are some cultural differences and conflicts between residents and migrants and how they have been solved. Secondly it investigates how the residents sustain their lives, events and movements with the help of the migrants, and how the migrants get the means and social bonds to get live on in this island. The migrants also can provide residents with resources such as new sales channel of products and activists’ network outside the island.

This research provides the understanding the possibilities that overaged rural communities can sustain themselves against demographic shrinkage and exploitation by external major enterprise.