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Village Writes Its Epitaph: Victim of a Graying Japan
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
OGAMA, Japan — This mountain village near the Sea of Japan, withered to eight aging residents, concluded recently that it could no longer go on.
So, after months of anguish, the villagers settled on a drastic solution: selling all of Ogama to an industrial waste company from Tokyo, which will turn it into a landfill.
With the proceeds, the villagers, mainly in their 70's, plan to pack up everything, including their family graves, and move in the next few years to yet uncertain destinations, likely becoming the first community in Japan to voluntarily cease to exist.
"I'm sure we're the first ones to have made such a proposal," said Kazuo Miyasaka, 64, the village leader. "It's because there's no future for us here, zero."
On a hill overlooking a field of overgrown bushes, surrounded by the sounds of a running stream and a bush warbler, Mr. Miyasaka pointed below with his right index finger. "I never imagined it would come to this," he said. "I mean, those all used to be rice fields."
Ogama's decision, though extreme, points to a larger problem besetting Japan, which has one of the world's fastest-graying societies and whose population began declining last year for the first time in its history. As rural Japan becomes increasingly depopulated, many villages and hamlets like Ogama, along with their traditions and histories, risk vanishing.
Japan is dotted with so many such communities that academics have coined a term — "villages that have reached their limits" — to describe those with populations that are more than half elderly. Out of 140 villages in Monzen — the municipality that includes Ogama — 40 percent have fewer than 10 households, most of which are inhabited by the elderly.
Rural Japan has never recovered from the long economic recession, unlike the cities. Many of its commercial main streets have been reduced to what the Japanese call "shuttered streets," and few rural areas have found economic alternatives to the huge public works projects that the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party kept doling out in return for votes.
So desperate are some rural communities that they fiercely compete for businesses that would have drawn protests in more prosperous times. Asahi, a town in Shimane, a rural prefecture on the Sea of Japan, was picked from more than 60 applicants last year as the site for a 2,000-inmate prison.
As part of his efforts to decentralize government during his half-decade in power, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi increased the strain on localities by reducing public works spending that yielded money and jobs for local construction companies. One result is that the local Horin Construction Industry Association — whose members derive about 90 percent of their projects from public works — said its business fell by 45 percent during that period. Its membership fell to 57 from 74, with many companies going bust.
Prime Minister Koizumi also cut subsidies and tax redistribution to local governments, instead giving them the power to collect taxes directly. But rural officials argue that with a decreasing population and few businesses, there are few taxes to collect.
In keeping with a nationwide movement to combine financially squeezed municipalities, Monzen merged with nearby Wajima City in February. In 2000, revenues from Tokyo to the two municipalities totaled $114 million, accounting for 50 percent of their overall revenues; in 2005, money from the capital fell to $90 million, or 44 percent of their revenues.
Fumiaki Kaji, the mayor of the merged municipality, said recent changes amounted to a "simple logic of telling the countryside that it should die."
Ogama lies in a valley on a mountain facing the sea, reached by a single-lane road that winds through a deep green forest where foxes and raccoon dogs — forest-dwellers that, according to Japanese myth, trick human beings by shifting their shapes — are spotted regularly. The road ends here.
Bunzo Mizushiri, 81, a historian in Wajima, said Ogama — which means big pot — was the place where monks cleansed themselves before climbing a sacred mountain called Takatsume.
After World War II, about 30 households were here, each with eight to nine people. Today, three couples live in one corner of the village, and two women live alone in another. A small hill rises in the center, atop which stands a Shinto shrine. Its gate was partly felled by an earthquake years ago.
Small streams flow down from the surrounding mountains, keeping the ground here moist, with patches of moss. The expanding forest has begun reclaiming once-cultivated land, hiding the ruins of abandoned houses and blocking the sunlight.
"Our house is still standing, thankfully," said Harue Miyasaka, the village leader's wife and, at 61, Ogama's youngest inhabitant. "But when you look at the houses collapsing one after another, you understand what's ahead for your own house."
"We're at a dead end here," she said, in front of her house, where the single-lane road ended. "Our children haven't come back, so there's no further growth. We'll just keep getting older. Still, if this road kept going past us, and there were other houses deeper in the mountain, I don't think we'd be talking about industrial waste."
Her husband first proposed the idea. After retiring as a seaman two decades ago and setting up a roof-waterproofing business, Mr. Miyasaka said he foresaw Ogama's shrinking future. So, about 15 years ago, he began pursuing several possibilities, including turning the area into a golf course. None of the ideas went anywhere until he approached the Tokyo industrial waste company, called Takeei, a couple of years ago. Takeei was interested.
Mr. Miyasaka summoned the entire village — he became its permanent chief three years ago after Ogama's two other men could no longer take turns as leader because of poor health — and told his neighbors about the offer.
The women, especially those who had come here as brides, quickly accepted the idea, he said. But for the men living on their ancestral land, it was a shock.
The first to agree was Setsu Yachida, 71, an optimistic woman who figured she would move to the prefectural capital to live at her son's home. The other morning, mushrooms had been left to dry outside her weather-beaten two-story house; a cane lay next to the door, indicating that her nearest neighbor, Sui Miya****a, 88, had come down the steep hill for tea.
They grew to rely on each other over the years after losing their husbands, and they trusted the village chief. "He's a good man," Mrs. Miya****a said. "When he brings something from the sea, he'll share with us."
Mrs. Yachida added, "Those mushrooms outside, also."
Nowadays, Mrs. Yachida said, she mostly stays home. A raccoon dog sometimes peers in from the outside or gets stuck under her house, she said. Twice a month, she goes into Monzen town to be treated for arthritis, thanks to a lift she gets from the Sakaguchis, at the other end of the village.
Harue Sakaguchi, 70, said she and her husband Hiroshi, 74, had talked things over with their children, who agreed to the move because the family graves would be transferred.
"We can't be the only ones left here," Mrs. Sakaguchi said, carrying spinach she had picked from her field.
It was the Taniguchis next door who had the hardest time accepting the idea, especially the husband, Kenichi, 76. A bad back and weak legs, had left him housebound in the last two years.
"If I were 10 years younger, I'd go anywhere with the rest of the village," Mr. Taniguchi said, steadying himself against a railing in his house. "But I've gotten frail, and even if they gave me a lot of money, I'd feel miserable that I can't stay here."
Still, after half a year of discussions with his children, Mr. Taniguchi gave the village chief his approval. "I didn't agree to it happily," he said. "But there was nothing that I could do."
Talks with the waste company then picked up speed. The village chief contacted other landowners and won their consent.
Officials from Takeei — who declined interview requests — began visiting Ogama. The company president even came once, as the villagers gathered at the village chief's home.
"He told us the company would build a really good facility that would not bring shame on us," Mr. Miyasaka said.
The company has taken the first step toward carrying out an environmental impact assessment. If all goes smoothly, the prefecture could approve the project within four years, and Ogama would be history.
"If young people came back, these villages could go on," Mr. Taniguchi said. "But that's not happening. They're all dying out."
Late one afternoon, his wife, Namiko, 72, stood in front of their house, her eyes fixed on a grove of Japanese cedars a stone's throw away. Almost two decades ago, she said, she and her husband planted the trees so that they would eventually grow into valuable timber for their children.
"Parents, you know, do things like that," she said. "We planted them 17, 18 years ago, and look how they've grown. If we move, what a pity."
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
OGAMA, Japan — This mountain village near the Sea of Japan, withered to eight aging residents, concluded recently that it could no longer go on.
So, after months of anguish, the villagers settled on a drastic solution: selling all of Ogama to an industrial waste company from Tokyo, which will turn it into a landfill.
With the proceeds, the villagers, mainly in their 70's, plan to pack up everything, including their family graves, and move in the next few years to yet uncertain destinations, likely becoming the first community in Japan to voluntarily cease to exist.
"I'm sure we're the first ones to have made such a proposal," said Kazuo Miyasaka, 64, the village leader. "It's because there's no future for us here, zero."
On a hill overlooking a field of overgrown bushes, surrounded by the sounds of a running stream and a bush warbler, Mr. Miyasaka pointed below with his right index finger. "I never imagined it would come to this," he said. "I mean, those all used to be rice fields."
Ogama's decision, though extreme, points to a larger problem besetting Japan, which has one of the world's fastest-graying societies and whose population began declining last year for the first time in its history. As rural Japan becomes increasingly depopulated, many villages and hamlets like Ogama, along with their traditions and histories, risk vanishing.
Japan is dotted with so many such communities that academics have coined a term — "villages that have reached their limits" — to describe those with populations that are more than half elderly. Out of 140 villages in Monzen — the municipality that includes Ogama — 40 percent have fewer than 10 households, most of which are inhabited by the elderly.
Rural Japan has never recovered from the long economic recession, unlike the cities. Many of its commercial main streets have been reduced to what the Japanese call "shuttered streets," and few rural areas have found economic alternatives to the huge public works projects that the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party kept doling out in return for votes.
So desperate are some rural communities that they fiercely compete for businesses that would have drawn protests in more prosperous times. Asahi, a town in Shimane, a rural prefecture on the Sea of Japan, was picked from more than 60 applicants last year as the site for a 2,000-inmate prison.
As part of his efforts to decentralize government during his half-decade in power, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi increased the strain on localities by reducing public works spending that yielded money and jobs for local construction companies. One result is that the local Horin Construction Industry Association — whose members derive about 90 percent of their projects from public works — said its business fell by 45 percent during that period. Its membership fell to 57 from 74, with many companies going bust.
Prime Minister Koizumi also cut subsidies and tax redistribution to local governments, instead giving them the power to collect taxes directly. But rural officials argue that with a decreasing population and few businesses, there are few taxes to collect.
In keeping with a nationwide movement to combine financially squeezed municipalities, Monzen merged with nearby Wajima City in February. In 2000, revenues from Tokyo to the two municipalities totaled $114 million, accounting for 50 percent of their overall revenues; in 2005, money from the capital fell to $90 million, or 44 percent of their revenues.
Fumiaki Kaji, the mayor of the merged municipality, said recent changes amounted to a "simple logic of telling the countryside that it should die."
Ogama lies in a valley on a mountain facing the sea, reached by a single-lane road that winds through a deep green forest where foxes and raccoon dogs — forest-dwellers that, according to Japanese myth, trick human beings by shifting their shapes — are spotted regularly. The road ends here.
Bunzo Mizushiri, 81, a historian in Wajima, said Ogama — which means big pot — was the place where monks cleansed themselves before climbing a sacred mountain called Takatsume.
After World War II, about 30 households were here, each with eight to nine people. Today, three couples live in one corner of the village, and two women live alone in another. A small hill rises in the center, atop which stands a Shinto shrine. Its gate was partly felled by an earthquake years ago.
Small streams flow down from the surrounding mountains, keeping the ground here moist, with patches of moss. The expanding forest has begun reclaiming once-cultivated land, hiding the ruins of abandoned houses and blocking the sunlight.
"Our house is still standing, thankfully," said Harue Miyasaka, the village leader's wife and, at 61, Ogama's youngest inhabitant. "But when you look at the houses collapsing one after another, you understand what's ahead for your own house."
"We're at a dead end here," she said, in front of her house, where the single-lane road ended. "Our children haven't come back, so there's no further growth. We'll just keep getting older. Still, if this road kept going past us, and there were other houses deeper in the mountain, I don't think we'd be talking about industrial waste."
Her husband first proposed the idea. After retiring as a seaman two decades ago and setting up a roof-waterproofing business, Mr. Miyasaka said he foresaw Ogama's shrinking future. So, about 15 years ago, he began pursuing several possibilities, including turning the area into a golf course. None of the ideas went anywhere until he approached the Tokyo industrial waste company, called Takeei, a couple of years ago. Takeei was interested.
Mr. Miyasaka summoned the entire village — he became its permanent chief three years ago after Ogama's two other men could no longer take turns as leader because of poor health — and told his neighbors about the offer.
The women, especially those who had come here as brides, quickly accepted the idea, he said. But for the men living on their ancestral land, it was a shock.
The first to agree was Setsu Yachida, 71, an optimistic woman who figured she would move to the prefectural capital to live at her son's home. The other morning, mushrooms had been left to dry outside her weather-beaten two-story house; a cane lay next to the door, indicating that her nearest neighbor, Sui Miya****a, 88, had come down the steep hill for tea.
They grew to rely on each other over the years after losing their husbands, and they trusted the village chief. "He's a good man," Mrs. Miya****a said. "When he brings something from the sea, he'll share with us."
Mrs. Yachida added, "Those mushrooms outside, also."
Nowadays, Mrs. Yachida said, she mostly stays home. A raccoon dog sometimes peers in from the outside or gets stuck under her house, she said. Twice a month, she goes into Monzen town to be treated for arthritis, thanks to a lift she gets from the Sakaguchis, at the other end of the village.
Harue Sakaguchi, 70, said she and her husband Hiroshi, 74, had talked things over with their children, who agreed to the move because the family graves would be transferred.
"We can't be the only ones left here," Mrs. Sakaguchi said, carrying spinach she had picked from her field.
It was the Taniguchis next door who had the hardest time accepting the idea, especially the husband, Kenichi, 76. A bad back and weak legs, had left him housebound in the last two years.
"If I were 10 years younger, I'd go anywhere with the rest of the village," Mr. Taniguchi said, steadying himself against a railing in his house. "But I've gotten frail, and even if they gave me a lot of money, I'd feel miserable that I can't stay here."
Still, after half a year of discussions with his children, Mr. Taniguchi gave the village chief his approval. "I didn't agree to it happily," he said. "But there was nothing that I could do."
Talks with the waste company then picked up speed. The village chief contacted other landowners and won their consent.
Officials from Takeei — who declined interview requests — began visiting Ogama. The company president even came once, as the villagers gathered at the village chief's home.
"He told us the company would build a really good facility that would not bring shame on us," Mr. Miyasaka said.
The company has taken the first step toward carrying out an environmental impact assessment. If all goes smoothly, the prefecture could approve the project within four years, and Ogama would be history.
"If young people came back, these villages could go on," Mr. Taniguchi said. "But that's not happening. They're all dying out."
Late one afternoon, his wife, Namiko, 72, stood in front of their house, her eyes fixed on a grove of Japanese cedars a stone's throw away. Almost two decades ago, she said, she and her husband planted the trees so that they would eventually grow into valuable timber for their children.
"Parents, you know, do things like that," she said. "We planted them 17, 18 years ago, and look how they've grown. If we move, what a pity."
Pekka, better get there and see it while you still can.
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