Village Writes Its Epitaph: Victim of a Graying Japan
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: April 30, 2006
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.
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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.
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