So, what kind of discipline is regional science, which is the focus of RDIRI? Director Mori explains this as follows:

“Regional science is an interdisciplinary academic field that was established in the United States in the 1950s. The phenomena that occur in a region are multifaceted and complex, and they influence each others, like when you build a road and the economy and society develop around it. Regional science is the comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of economics, public administration, geography, urban planning, sociology, psychology, and other fields to develop a better understanding of a region."

Regional science also often deals with topics related to the sustainable development of cities and localities, such as regional economic growth, urban development, demographics, environmental protection, transportation planning, and community development. Based on the needs of the local community at hand, RDIRI also sets research topics aimed at creating a better community and conducts research in collaboration with various institutions outside the university.

“Despite being self-reliant, regions and cities are influenced by broader regional, national, and global trends. If you view a region as a combination of these overlapping spheres, then I believe you can understand social change more realistically. What’s more, setting a roadmap whereby local practices evolve into national institutional reforms is a straightforward way to achieve social progress. The mission of RDIRI is to advance this kind of research and provide theoretical and practical perspectives to solve various social problems that arise in the world," says Director Mori.

For example, Professor Emeritus Hiroshi Murayama, the first director of RDIRI, is a member of the group that created the "Kyoto Citizens' Political Attitudes Survey" commissioned by the Kyoto City Election Administration Commission, and he has conducted research based on the results of these surveys. These findings serve as the basic materials for running elections and awareness-raising projects, and at the same time, they provide a great deal of insight into citizen participation in democratic politics.

Since it was initially founded on the Kinugasa Campus, RDIRI has built up a track record of collaboration with local governments, focusing mainly on municipalities in Kyoto Prefecture such as Maizuru City, Yawata City, and Kameoka City, but also with other prefectures. Director Mori says that the role of RDIRI has been "to expand and upgrade the network with the national government, local governments, businesses, and citizens through research activities based on regional partnerships and industry-academia-government collaboration.”

In April 2015, the Institute relocated to OIC when the College of Policy Science, which is home to many of its members, also relocated there. That year, which marked the 16th year of its founding, was the same year in which the organization was upgraded from a research center to and institute. Director Mori explains the course of events as follows.

“Although our research achievements to date have been widely recognized, OIC’s three-pronged campus concept of ‘Gateway to Asia,' 'Co-creation,' and 'Regional Cooperation’ overlaps with the research fields and subjects of RDIRI. This is due to the growing importance of the Institute's role as the driving force behind this effort."

Since relocation, RDIRI has broadened the scope of its activities. In addition to expanding its scope of social and regional cooperation to include Osaka Prefecture, RDIRI has expanded its research to cover various issues in the Asian region to embody the "Gateway to Asia” concept. This is partly due to the increase in the number of international students from Asia in College and Graduate School of Policy Science, and at the same time, research exchange with Asia has become more active, creating a more global research environment than ever before.

RDIRI is currently pursuing three priority research projects. Each is composed of several units, and the research that is being promoted on an Institute-wide basis is very multifaceted.

The first priority research project is the Asia Future Project, which was launched as part of activities aimed at developing OIC's "Gateway to Asia” concept. The project looks at the future of Asia from a variety of perspectives, including politics and environmental studies, to explore topics such as the competition for resource acquisition and development that is emerging in various parts of Asia, Japan's "internal internationalization," sustainability in the East Asian region, regional circulation models for renewable resources, advanced human resources development, and risk education as public policy.

For example, the research unit on competition for resources acquisition and development in Asia uses as a case study the cycle of competition and cooperation among nations, especially over energy, water, and fisheries resources. Another feature of this project is that it conducts interdisciplinary joint research involving the Colleges of Policy Science, Business Administration, Comprehensive Psychology, and International Relations, as well as APU, other universities, and even foreign partner universities. The project team is deepening international partnerships with the Dongbei University of Finance and Economics (China), Kookmin University and the Sejong Institute (South Korea), the Institute for Strategic Studies and the National University of Mongolia (Mongolia), Sakhalin State University (Russia), and the OSCE Research Network, which includes countries in Central Asia, and it is actively presenting its finding at international conferences and other venues.

In addition, the research unit on Japan's internal internationalization is examining the mechanisms necessary for the inclusive society that Japan should build in the future by analyzing advanced social systems in Asia, Europe, and the United States. The unit is conducting research from a variety of unique perspectives—for example, examining the globalization of elderly care through the growing trend of outsourcing in-home care in Asia, or exploring how the destabilization of universal services in Nordic welfare states intersects with the global spread of populism, and what kinds of welfare policies might effectively curb such populist tendencies.

The second priority research project deals with interdisciplinary research on the rediscovery and dissemination of socio-cultural resources in the Hokusetsu region, and is more commonly referred to as the Hokusetsu Project. Focusing on the Hokusetsu region of Osaka Prefecture, which is home to OIC, the project’s research topics include supporter support and systems in region-specific social inclusion initiatives, the organization and rediscovery of socio-cultural and historical resources, and the dissemination of socio-cultural and historical resources as digital content.

The research on supporter supports and systems involves working with local juvenile and offender rehabilitation professionals and practitioners. RDIRI researchers collaborate with and participate in the projects of Yorisoi Net Osaka, a general incorporated association that works to support people released from prison throughout Osaka Prefecture, and they hold seminars together with supporters’ organizations where students can learn about the backgrounds of offenders and how they are treated.

With regard to the digitization of socio-cultural and historical resources, RDIRI researchers are engaged in international joint research with the partners including the Kule Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Alberta, Canada. Working with Ibaraki City and other partners, the researchers also focus on activities to disseminate research outcomes and feed them back into the community, including VR exhibits on disaster prevention and virtual space/metaverse experience events.

The third priority research project is the Research Project on Urban Policies in Asia at a Time of Demographic Transition. The researchers in this project analyze urban policies in Asian cities, focusing on both rapid urbanization and urban shrinkage due to declining birthrates and aging populations. This project is unique in that it cooperates closely with the Ritsumeikan Asia-Japan Research Institute to establish and expand research networks with universities overseas. A work summarizing the results of this research project was published as the first English language academic book released under the cooperative agreement between Ritsumeikan University and Northwestern University, and international symposiums with researchers invited from around the world are held regularly.

While conducting urban policy research on topics such as urban gentrification and new regional governance for a super-aging society, in FY2024, the project members began a new international joint research project to investigate circular economy systems in cities around the world. As part of this, joint surveys were conducted in Kitakyushu City and Kyoto City in Japan.

Practical research on digital local currencies is also underway with the aim of revitalizing communities, which is important in the context of how new cities take shape. As part of a joint demonstration project of OIC and Ibaraki City, a digital currency called Ibakuru Coin was released in November 2023 and remains in circulation. Furthermore, in collaboration with the Consortium of Universities in Kyoto, the "Kyoto City Policy Information Lecture,” part of the Kyoto College Civic Education Lecture Series, is being offered to share information on Kyoto City’s urban policies with the public.

Looking at this overview of RDIRI’s research activities, one can see the characteristics of internationality and practicality as well as the interdisciplinarity of regional science. Director Mori discusses the Institute’s focus on practicality and the practical application of research outcomes in society as follows.

“The Institute's research activities are mainly based on social science, and in terms of research methods, we emphasize practical methods, such as field research, to identify and consider issues while building connections with society. Many of our researchers use methods such as participatory observation, in which they enter a group or community to conduct research. The stance of confronting specific social issues could be considered one of the features of this method.

In a society with a declining population, policies for attracting businesses and industries and policies for engaging the younger demographic are likely to lose traction. Everyone will need to think proactively about how to manage their community and work to create a strong local economy and society. We at RDIRI hope to contribute to these kinds of efforts by using the resources we have at our disposal. We hope to bring together a variety of economic, political, social, and environmental insights to spur social and public innovations."

The Institute does not conduct research for research's sake, but rather it focuses on practical research that leads to empirical studies and policy recommendations with the goal of helping to solve problems. For this reason, it makes painstaking efforts to communicate its research activities and frequently holds symposiums as well as publishing papers and books. In addition to publishing a bulletin once a year, the Institute has begun publishing discussion papers that can be released in a timely manner. It also focusing its energies on actively disseminating information through the media on topics that attract a considerable amount of public attention.

In AY2024, RDIRI released the Kyoto Citizen’s Political Attitudes Survey Resources on its homepage. This is an invaluable resource for the historical analysis of the political attitudes of citizens, which form the basis of Kyoto's urban policies. By digitizing local cultural information and turning it into open data, it also aims to provide a platform where the general public can search for information and learn.

Regarding the cultivation of young researchers, RDIRI focuses on "fostering researchers who will support the next generation of research.” The Institute emphasizes practical approaches such as research in the field, and it provides researchers with opportunities to cultivate knowledge and put their research into practice by heading to the front lines of policy to conduct research and analysis in cooperation with local governments and NPOs. It also encourages researchers to give research presentations at domestic and international academic conferences and participate in overseas field surveys, and it provides an environment in which they can build personal networks with researchers at the international level.

“Based on our approach of carefully cultivating outstanding researchers, we have a research environment that encourages close discussion and dialogue. Many young researchers who launched their careers from RDIRI have made comments to the effect that engaging in active discussions in the lab helped improve the quality of their research or that they were prompted to reconsider the scope of their research from new perspectives, forming the foundation for their later academic work. We intend to provide a guided approach to training, in which we take our time to nurture researchers, for example, by discussing their research in depth with a slightly critical eye," says Director Mori.

Finally, we asked Director Mori about the Institute's vision.

“The mantra of self-help, mutual help, and public help is often used, but this does not mean you can get by if you only have one of these elements; they are all necessary. Even if you have enough money to survive alone, can you really be considered happy without connections with others? Also, the lives of those who live in connection with their communities would not be possible without public institutions. At RDIRI, we look at all aspects of self-help (individual level), mutual help (community level), and public help (government level) in total, while at the same time maintaining the inclusive mindset needed to accumulate specialized knowledge in each of these fields, with the aim of contributing to the happiness of the people living in a region."

There is a mountain of issues in the communities where we live, including financial crisis, the decline of the local economy, problems with infrastructure and vacant houses, people living alone, poverty, and truancy, to name just a few. Expectations are high for the future of RDIRI, which will surely change the future of the region through firmly grounded research activities that seek to solve problems in collaboration with research institutions, researchers, and regional policy practitioners from around the world.