DECLINING JAPANESE TOWNS ARE GIVING AWAY LAND
Norimutsu Onishi
The New York Times, June 3, 2008
SHIBETSU, Japan — “If you build a home and move here, the land is yours free,” read a billboard on the side of a quiet two-lane highway that disappeared straight into the horizon here, under northern Japan’s big sky.
An orange hand atop the billboard pointed to a large, empty tract of flat land on which three new houses stood, surrounded by nothing.
Yellow stake signs dotted the land. Some displayed the name of a future settler, like a certain Inehara-san from Hyogo prefecture on lot B-9; others, only the details of a piece still up for grabs, including the 4,300 square feet on B-11.
Desperate to stanch a decline in population, this town and another in Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan, are trying to lure newcomers with free land. It was a back-to-the-future policy since Hokkaido was settled by Japanese drawn here by the promise of free land in the late 19th century, a time when Japan was growing and modernizing rapidly.
Since 1998, Hokkaido, like the rest of rural Japan, has been losing its residents to cities and old age. Significantly, just as Hokkaido’s earlier development resulted from Japan’s expansion, the decline in its population presaged the new era of a shrinking Japan, whose overall population started sliding in 2005.
(...) [artículo aquí]
Norimutsu Onishi
The New York Times, June 3, 2008
SHIBETSU, Japan — “If you build a home and move here, the land is yours free,” read a billboard on the side of a quiet two-lane highway that disappeared straight into the horizon here, under northern Japan’s big sky.
An orange hand atop the billboard pointed to a large, empty tract of flat land on which three new houses stood, surrounded by nothing.
Yellow stake signs dotted the land. Some displayed the name of a future settler, like a certain Inehara-san from Hyogo prefecture on lot B-9; others, only the details of a piece still up for grabs, including the 4,300 square feet on B-11.
Desperate to stanch a decline in population, this town and another in Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan, are trying to lure newcomers with free land. It was a back-to-the-future policy since Hokkaido was settled by Japanese drawn here by the promise of free land in the late 19th century, a time when Japan was growing and modernizing rapidly.
Since 1998, Hokkaido, like the rest of rural Japan, has been losing its residents to cities and old age. Significantly, just as Hokkaido’s earlier development resulted from Japan’s expansion, the decline in its population presaged the new era of a shrinking Japan, whose overall population started sliding in 2005.
(...) [artículo aquí]
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