This book has been concerned with how people seek to achieve both self-determination and dignity during a crisis in economic and social confidence. However, although a number of committed people have dedicated their lives to improving the image of the region in both local people's and outsiders' eyes, the economics of the situation still work to undermine their efforts. Welfare dependence, a result of the economic policies implemented following the decision to replace coal with oil in the 1950s, has become a Chikuho-wide social and economic problem in the 1980s and 1990s. Certainly, most Chikuho economies are relatively static and appear unlikely to change in the near future, given the poor prospects for underdeveloped regions such as Chikuho in plans for future Japanese economic development. In this sense the story of the coalfields is the story of the underdevelopment of a region in a highly developed society.

The region's decline is related not only to the macro-economic decision to replace coal with oil, but also to the micro-economic structure of the coal industry while it was operating. The dependence of the population on the coal industry, and the culture of violence within which many miners worked, created great tensions between labour and management. In fact these tensions were stretched so taut that even the ruthless rōmu were unable to quell the tide of rebellion that heralded the unruly and disorganised demise of the industry in Chikuho.