Fostering Sustainable Livelihoods and Community Resilience in a Depopulated Japanese Mountainous Settlement: Connecting Local Culture and Ikigai-Zukuri Through the Ōsawa Engawa Café

Facing severe depopulation and aging, rural Japanese communities—particularly marginal settlements (genkai shūraku)—increasingly require revitalization strategies that integrate local culture and elder well-being. This study examines the Ōsawa Engawa Café, a community-led initiative in a mountainous tea-growing village, as a site of ikigai-zukuri—the active creation of life purpose among elderly residents. With the use of a mixed-methods approach, including spatial analysis, household surveys, and interviews, Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) decision tree analysis was applied to identify factors shaping distinct household café operational states: Operating, Discontinued, and Never Operated. Qualitative findings reveal that support from local leaders, experts, and the government enabled the Ōsawa Engawa café’s launch. Broad household participation, often guided by elderly women, sustained the initiative by sharing local culture—such as engawa (verandas), Zairai tea (native variety), and omotenashi (hospitality)—thereby nurturing residents’ ikigai through daily engagement. Complementing these insights, the CHAID analysis revealed a hierarchy of influential factors: high-frequency support from out-migrated family members was the strongest predictor of continued operation; in the absence of such support, co-resident family cooperation proved essential; where both were lacking, agricultural engagement distinguished households that discontinued from those that never operated. Practically, the Ōsawa model offers a replicable, bottom-up strategy that activates the Rural Cultural Landscape (landscapes shaped by traditional rural life and culture, RCL) through community engagement grounded in cultural practices and elderly ikigai-zukuri, contributing to sustainable rural livelihoods. Theoretically, this study reframes ikigai-zukuri as a key socio-cultural pillar of community resilience in aging rural areas. Fostering such culturally embedded, purpose-driven initiatives is essential for building vibrant, adaptive rural communities in the face of demographic decline. However, the study acknowledges that the Ōsawa model’s success is rooted in its specific socio-cultural context, and its replication in other cultural settings may be limited without contextual adaptation.