|Japanese Towns Luring Youth|
|Detail:|| More than 60,000 Japanese towns are at risk of extinction through depopulation as a result of declining birthrate and a surging life expectancy, currently 86.05 years for women and 79.29 for men. Japan has one of the world's biggest proportions of over-65s – 22.5% of its 127 million people – and one of the smallest of under-15s, at 13%. Demographers expect the current population of 127 million to fall to 100 million over the next 50 years.|
About 200 communities have vanished in the past decade. The threat of extinction looms largest in Hokkaido, where almost 10% of towns are at risk, with half of those expected to disappear over the next decade. Kiyosato has seen its population plummet from a peak of 11,000 in the early 1960s to just 4,675 today. Almost a third of residents are over 65, 10% higher than the national average. Its five primary schools are attended by a total of 318 pupils; the smallest has just 48. Another Hokkaido town was forced to advertise several of its schools on Yahoo's auction site earlier this year owing to a dramatic fall in the number of children. Tellingly, one school was converted into a nursing home for the elderly.
Kiyosato is trying to lure back younger urbanites to rediscover their rustic roots by allowing prospective residents to live locally for up to a month at vastly reduced rents in spacious new homes. But of the several dozen people to take up the offer since last summer, none has made the move permanent.
|Source:||“Japan: Towns face extinction as young people desert roots and head for cities” by Justin McCurry, guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 July 2009|