The Japanese city of Minamimaki is located about 70 miles northwest of the capital, Tokyo. The village has the largest elderly population in Japan, with two-thirds of its residents aged 65 and over
Minamiki, Japan – This village sits along a river that flows through the mountains and is surrounded by cedar and bamboo forests. This once-thriving hamlet is known for its silk, wood, and a starchy root called konjac.
Today, it is the oldest village in Japan, with two-thirds of its residents over the age of 65. Many of the buildings in the settlement are dilapidated or abandoned, with almost no new construction.
According to official data from the local city hall, the population of Nanmu has shrunk from 11,000 in 1955 to about 1,500 today. At this rate of decline, no one will stay for more than a decade.
The village is at the forefront of rural population decline in Japan, a trend that is also being experienced in other countries in Asia and Europe. According to official statistics, the number of people over the age of 100 in Japan is at an all-time high, while the number of newborns is at an all-time low.
But some residents are working to stop the depopulation of Nanmu Island. They are trying to attract enterprising young people to revitalize the village.
Satomi Oigawa (left) and villager Tomiko Kamibe talk on a hillside outside the village center. Attract and mentor enterprising young people.
Satomi Oikawa, 24, is one of them. A year ago, she came to Nanmu after graduating from the University of Tokyo.
"I felt that my relationship with the people of Tokyo was too shallow, so from a very young age, I really wanted to live in the countryside," she explained.
She works in the village government, matching abandoned homes with potential new residents.
She arrives at the empty building with a bag of keys and shows visitors a former konjac starch factory, where tools and machinery are scattered and dusty.
"Everything about this house is part of the history of this village," she said. "I'd love to hope that people who want to move here can learn about the history of the village. ”
Learning about the history of the village is an important part of Oigawa's integration into the life of the village. But history doesn't always go her way.
When Oigawa came out of the starch factory, a neighbor told her that the former owner of the factory had disappeared a few years ago and that the police had found his body in a water tank, and that he had apparently died in an accident.
"I was really surprised," she said.
Discover the value and vitality of Nanki
Oigawa later visited a former silk workshop and introduced it to entrepreneur Mana Kobayashi. Kobayashi is working with a craftsman to install charred cedar floors and paper windows, and plans to turn the place into a place that generates value.
“这就是mottainai，”大井川解释道。
Mottainai is a Japanese philosophical concept that says that we should waste nothing and take every bit of value from what we have, whether it's time, space, things, or people.
Beneath the weather-beaten exterior of the village lies an undercurrent of "genki", which in Japanese means "vitality" or "vitality".
It comes both from enterprising newcomers like Oigawa and from tenacious elderly residents like Hachiro Kokanazawa.
Oigawa drove up the mountain to visit Kokanazawa, who gave her some freshly picked cucumbers and peppers in a bag.
At the age of 90, he is still growing flowers and vegetables.
Hachiro Kanazawa, 90, grows flowers and vegetables on a plot of land outside the village center.
"We are not retiring because of the spirit of the farmers," he said. "This spirit of working to the death has been passed down from generation to generation in us. ”
Kokanazawa said that the material life of Minami Shepherd is better than in his childhood, when his family did not have a bicycle or radio. However, while life in the village has become more convenient, fewer and fewer people live in the village.
Take care of the elderly and attract young people
A survey conducted in 2018 found that older adults in Nanmaki walked faster, had stronger grips, and had a lower chance of developing dementia compared to older people in other parts of Japan.
But if it is to remain on the map, the village will have to attract more young people and increase the birth rate.
Satomi Oikawa (right), housing coordinator of Nanmaki Village, meets with village residents (left) and staff (center) at the village community center for the elderly.
Satomi Oikawa (right), housing coordinator of Nanmaki Village, meets with village residents (left) and staff (center) at the village community center for the elderly. The center provides fitness equipment, computer cognitive tests and live television broadcasts of village representative meetings.
Mayor Hasegawa of Saijo has seen for several years in a row not a single baby be born in the village.
The central government and the Nanmu village government provide financial incentives to attract young residents.
The village is set to open a new elementary and junior high school in April, just to attract new families, but it's unclear what will happen if no one comes.
Still, Hasegawa aims to stabilize the village's population within 15 to 20 years.
By then, the village's population is expected to reach around 800 people, about double the current population. We think that from then on, we can manage to keep it at this level. ”
Peter Matanler, a Japanese expert at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, said that some villages like Nanmoku could flourish and even grow. But he said they would buck the trend.
"Japan is currently losing 600,000 to 700,000 people a year, and that number will increase to more than 1 million by the 2030s," Matanle said. "How can settlements maintain their population, let alone increase it, in this situation?"
Matanle said many young Japanese are excelling at injecting new ideas and vitality into aging villages.
A challenging present and an uncertain future
Five years ago, Yuta Sato came to Minamiki because of the natural beauty and the fact that he couldn't find a good job right out of college. But he said raising children in this village was not easy.
Even in some schools, his children did not see children of the same age.
"There are no children of my daughter's age in this village," he said. "So when she went to school, she didn't have any classmates. ”
The nearest hospital is an hour's drive away, he said.
Sato added that he was disappointed to find that not all Nanmaki residents welcomed newcomers like him.
"Some people say that they should not spend money to attract immigrants, but should spend money on people who are already living in the village," he said.
Sato said he came to Nanmu in the hope of finding a job that he could continue for the next 40 years or so.
But he is not optimistic that by then, Nanki Village will still exist.