Furusato and the Idealization of Village Life in 21st Century Japanese Media
As described in Naomi Clark's discussion


It can be furthermore speculated that a major contribution to this was the cultural fatigue of rapid modernization, industrialization, and urbanization that Japan has been charging ahead with for over a century (from the Meiji era, through imperialist expansion and WW2, to the post-war boom that ended in 1991). Such a rapid transformation of a society from a network of Close-Knit Communities to a population of urbanized, alienated individuals (i.e. from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft) inevitably spawned a reaction that idealizes the pastoral lifestyle of their ancestors.