This village deep in the rugged
mountains of southern Japan once was home to
hundreds of families. Now, only 35 people remain,
outnumbered three-to-one by scarecrows that
Tsukimi Ayano crafted to help fill the days and
replace neighbors who died or moved away.
At 65, Ayano is one of the younger residents of
Nagoro. She moved back from Osaka to look
after her 85-year-old father after decades away.
"They bring back memories," Ayano said of the
life-sized dolls crowded into corners of her
farmhouse home, perched on fences and trees,
huddled side-by-side at a produce stall, the bus
stop, anywhere a living person might stop to take
a rest.
"That old lady used to come and chat and drink
tea. That old man used to love to drink sake and
tell stories. It reminds me of the old times, when
they were still alive and well," she said.
Even more than its fading status as an export
superpower, Japan's dwindling population may be
its biggest challenge. More than 10,000 towns
and villages in Japan are depopulated, the homes
and infrastructure crumbling as the countryside
empties thanks to the falling birthrate and rapid
aging.
In Japan's northeast, the massive earthquake and
tsunami that struck in March 2011, killing more
than 18,000 people, merely hastened along the
decline.
First the jobs go. Then the schools. Eventually,
the electricity meters stop.
Neither Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling Liberal
Democratic Party nor any of its rivals have
figured out how to "revive localities," an urgent
issue that has perplexed Japanese leaders for
decades.
But some communities are trying various
strategies for attracting younger residents,
slowing if not reversing their decline. In
Kamiyama, another farming community closer to
the regional capital of Tokushima, community
organizers have mapped out a strategy for
attracting artists and high-tech companies.
Nagoro is more typical of the thousands of
communities that are turning into ghost towns or
at best, open-air museums, frozen in time — a
trend evident even in downtown Tokyo and in
nearly or completely empty villages in the city's
suburbs.
The one-street town is mostly abandoned, its
shops and homes permanently shuttered.
The closure of the local elementary school two
years ago was the last straw. Ayano unlocks the
door and guides visitors through spotless
classrooms populated with scarecrow students
and teachers.
When she returned to her hometown 13 years
ago, Ayano tried farming. Thinking her radish
seeds may have been eaten by crows, she
decided to make some scarecrows. By now there
are more 100 scattered around Nagoro and other
towns in Shikoku.
Like handcarved Buddhist sculptures, each has its
own whimsical expression. Some sleep, their
eyelids permanently shut. Others cuddle toddler
scarecrows, or man plows and hoes.
Ayano brings one along for company on her 90-
minute drive to buy groceries in the nearest big
town. But most remain behind, to be
photographed and marveled at by tourists who
detour through the winding mountain roads.
"If I hadn't made these scarecrows, people would
just drive right by," said Ayano, who greets a
steady stream of visitors who wander through the
village.
The plight of Japan's countryside partly a
consequence of the country's economic success.
As the nation grew increasingly affluent after
World War II, younger Japanese flooded into the
cities to fill jobs in factories and service
industries, leaving their elders to tend small
farms.
Greater Tokyo, with more than 37 million people
and Osaka-Kobe, with 11.5 million, account for
nearly 40 percent of the country's 127 million
people, with another 10 million scattered in a
handful of provincial capitals.
"There's been this huge sucking sound as the
countryside is emptied," said Joel Cohen, a
professor at Columbia University's Laboratory of
Populations.
Japan's population began to decline in 2010 from
a peak of 128 million. Without a drastic increase
in the birthrate or a loosening of the staunch
Japanese resistance to immigration, it is forecast
to fall to about 108 million by 2050 and to 87
million by 2060.
By then, four in 10 Japanese will be over 65 years
old.
The government has a target of preventing the
population from falling below 100 million, but
efforts to convince Japanese women to have
more babies have yielded meager results. Young
Japanese continue to drift from the countryside
into big cities such as Tokyo, where the birthrate
is a mere 1.13 children, thanks to long working
hours, high costs and killer commutes.
The population of Miyoshi, which is the town
closest to Nagoro, fell from 45,340 in 1985 to
about 27,000 last year. A quarter of its population
is over 75 years old. To entice residents to have
more children, the town began offering free
nursery care for third children, free diapers and
formula to age 2 and free health care through
junior high school.
"The way to stop this is to get people to have
more babies," said Kurokawa, whose own three
children and seven grandchildren still live in the
area. "Apart from that, we need for people to
return here or move here. We need them all."
But it's not an easy sell, despite the fresh air and
abundant space.
"You can't just grab people by the necks like
kittens and drag them here," Kurokawa said.
"They have to want to live here."
To match potential occupants with empty homes,
towns like Miyoshi are setting up "empty house
banks." Across Japan there are 8.2 million such
"akiya," or empty homes, more than a tenth of all
residential buildings.
But getting residents of half-empty towns to
accept newcomers can also be a challenge. In
Kamiyama, to the east, the town still struggles to
convince owners who are often relatives living in
distant cities to open up abandoned homes for
rent or renovation, said Shinya Ominami,
chairman of a civic group that has led efforts to
revive the town.
Kamiyama, a town of about 6,000, set up an
"Artists in Residence" program in 1999. The
installation of fiber optic cable enabled the town
to begin marketing itself as a location for IT
satellite offices with rents as low as 20,000 yen
($200) a month. Eleven companies have come so
far.
In a briefing for potential investors and visiting
officials from other areas, Ominami shows a slide
of the town's shopping street, dotted with houses
that are empty, and then another with some of
the buildings filled with new businesses — a
bistro, a design studio, an IT incubation hub.
"In Kamiyama, 50,000 yen rent gets you a really
luxurious property," Ominami said. "Extremely
high class."
By drawing in younger new residents and
encouraging businesses that cater to them, like
an organic foods pizza parlor and a gelateria, the
community can actually breathe new life into
older, traditional industries like farming, he said.
"People think of decline as something pathetic.
That's too vague. We need to think more clearly
about this," Ominami said. "Once we accept this
is the reality, we can figure out how to cope with
it."

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