Ohi, one of Japan's beautiful mountain villages, is struggling to survive. Like much of Japan's countryside, Ohi's 8,000-strong population is dwindling rapidly.
More than 60% of the village's population is over 65 years old. Its residents are struggling without the working-age people who have flocked to the big city for the last three decades.
"I'm worried. We want to protect the environment here for the next 100 years, but depopulation is very serious in this area. It's important for us to work to defend this city," said Shigeo Hagihara, a 65-year-old local resident, quoted by the Financial Review, Wednesday (25/1/2023).
Hagihara runs a non-profit organization dedicated to drawing young people back to this region in Japan's central Fukui prefecture. Various programs are being run, including promoting the area's dense forests, to offering free accommodation in thatched-roof houses so visitors can experience the beauty of village life.
He hopes to draw people away from cities with the lure of fresh air, cheap housing, the ability to work remotely, and a balance of life that preserves mental health. Even so, Hagihara was still afraid because the city, like thousands of other cities in Japan, was dying.
The population crisis in China
China seems to have started looking in the mirror from Japan regarding this issue. Earlier this year, China experienced its first significant population decline in 60 years.
The demographic crisis looming over the country is expected to have long-term consequences for the global economy, and could derail China's prospects of overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy.
Japan, whose population has declined since 2008, is a picture of China in the future. Japan has struggled with economic and political stagnation since the early 1990s. With almost 30% of Japan's people over the age of 65, the country's public pension system and rural infrastructure bear a particularly heavy burden.
Life in Japan's wealthy cities, such as Tokyo and Osaka, is comfortable by global standards. But behind that, this country is facing a demographic crisis. Rural Japan is struggling to maintain vital infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and rail networks as the number of children and the working-age population dwindles. It is estimated that there are 10 million empty houses in Japan after the mass migration to cities.
Demographers warn that China faces a similar scenario in the coming decades. China's population crisis is predicted to be on a larger and more dramatic scale than Japan's.
Japan's population decline has been gradual and, so far, manageable in a relatively wealthy country compared to developing China.
Lessons from Japan
The United Nations predicts China's population could shrink by up to 109 million by 2050, which is three times more than forecast in 2019.
Experts say Japan's efforts to manage the child crisis provide lessons for China and other countries facing population declines. China also has the opportunity to study which policies have succeeded and which have failed in Japan.
"Recently, the Chinese authorities rushed to launch a series of policies to increase fertility, but they are likely to fail like Japan," said Yi Fuxian, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"What the Chinese government wanted to do, the Japanese government has done," he said.
"Japan's approach proved costly and inefficient to increase fertility from 1.26 points in 2005 to 1.45 in 2015, and fall back to 1.23 in 2022. China, which is 'aging before becoming a rich country', even don't have the strong financial resources to fully follow the Japanese way," he explained.
Compared to China, Japan has the advantage of having triumphed and becoming a rich country before getting old. The high quality of healthcare has also contributed to making Japanese people live longer than other countries in the world.
Returning to Ohi village, Hagihara hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic will change the mindset of young Japanese workers and encourage them to consider working remotely in rural areas.
"I have a little bit of hope for the younger generation that their way of thinking can change because of COVID-19 and they realize they don't need to be in the city to do what they want to do," he hoped.