On Saturday the editors of
The Japan Times -- a peculiar fraternity on the best of days -- published what can only be considered a transcendental editorial on rural depopulation.
Transcendental, that is, in terms of its stupidity, none of the facts revealed being particularly surprising and none of the remedies suggested being reasonable.
Nevertheless, the editorial (
Link) is instructive in its replication of the fanciful domestic discussion on rural depopulation. Rather than accept the emptying of the countryside as a natural process, the editors find all kinds of external or structural weaknesses, including government action/inaction, to blame. Some of the cause-and-effect relations found are truly peculiar (The 2008 Lehman Shock closed factories in rural Japan?).
The unspoken faith (
The Great Lie told? - Ed.) is that if residents of rural areas face their problems squarely, solutions can be found to rural decline.
Poppycock. What needs to be face squarely is that almost nothing can be done to reverse the emptying out of the countryside.
For not even the Tokyo Metropolitan District can get rural life right.
It is generally known that the gateway and window into Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan District, is the great outlier among Japanese prefectures. All but a handful are depopulating due to increased morbidity and emigration. Tokyo, however, just keeps on growing. After dipping below 11.59 million persons in 1996, Tokyo has found a way to accommodate 1.64 million new residents, its population, according to Tokyo Metropolitan Government statistics, standing at 13,228,912 on December 1. (
Link)
Whereas the population of the TMD is getting older, like everywhere else in Japan, the population of children is at least stable. The number of children in 0~14 years-of-age cohort did collapse from 2,155,242 in 1985 to only 1,427,229 in 2001. Ever since, however, the number of children has been growing, if only slightly, keeping the schools open and day care center builders employed.
Despite the big rise in the population and stability in the numbers of children, the TMD is undergoing rural depopulation. The 1.6 million new TMD residents have not been absorbed primarily by the suburbs. Instead, population growth has occurred in the TMD's core. In 1996, the population of the inner 23 wards was 7,846,487. In December 2012 it was 9,007,407. In raw numbers, 75% of the growth in the TMD population has been accommodated in the already most densely populated third of the District (the purple area in
this map). More people live in the 23 wards than at time in Edo/Tokyo's crowded history.
Despite the significant population increase of the TMD as a whole, a well-funded and responsive local government and highly developed public transportation, highway and high-speed telecommunications networks that would ostensibly would allow anyone access to all the amenities of contemporary life, the population of the TMD's exurbs is shrinking. The extreme western, mountainous county (郡) part of the TMD has seen its population fall from 61,297 in 1996 to 58,232 at the end of last year -- a small decrease, to be sure, but still counter to the general population trend.
Moreover, the least populated areas of the least populated region are losing population the fastest.
The loneliest place in Tokyo is Hinohara Village (檜原村) -- the orange area in the below map:
Hinohara covers 5% of the TMD's total land area. It is, however, home to only 2,526 persons (1,262 men; 1,264 women) -- 0.02% of the TMD's total. While the average density in the TMD is 6,044 persons per square kilometer (Toshima Ward tops the list of municipalities at 22,161 persons per square kilometer) the number of Hinohara residents per square kilometer is fewer than 25.
In 1985, Hinohara's population stood at 3,914:
681 children (0~14 years of age)
2471 working age adults (15~64 years of age)
762 seniors (65 years and older)
In early 2012, Hinohara had 2,597 residents:
172 children (less than 7% of the total)
1,313 working age adults
1,1112 seniors (43% of the total)
Yes, you read the above correctly: the population pyramid in the TMD's not unpretty (the touted Sengen Trail is a disappointment but the hike up Makiyoseyama is one of the Kanto's best day trips) hinterland is more skewed toward the gray than those of Japan's famously dying rural prefectures. And yes, the town lost 71 residents last year -- a 2.7% drop. Since 1985, the town's population has shrunk by more than a third.
It is not as if Hinohara Village were the end of the world. By local bus and trains, Hinohara's town hall is little more than an hour and half out of Shinjuku. By private car the trip might take about the same amount of time.
Yet despite being not just connected to the metropole but
in the metropole, Hinohara, the community, is evaporating. Without immigration, its population will halve over the next 20 years.
Stabilize the population of Akita? Stabilize Saga? Stabilize Hokkaido?
Tell me how to stabilize Hinohara Village first.
The Hossawa waterfall, frozen
Hinohara Village, Tokyo Metropolitan District
January 20, 2013
Image credit: MTC
