**Nanmoku: **Along the road that carves through the hilly slopes of Nanmoku, about two hours’ drive northwest of Tokyo, clusters of old stone graveyards are gradually being reclaimed by the elements and lush forest that encircles the small village.

It is common to see small family cemeteries dotted throughout the Japanese countryside, close to the homes of surviving relatives.

But in Nanmoku, where two-thirds of the roughly 1500 residents are aged over 65, the graves are a portent of the village’s future as much as a homage to its past.

Katsuhiko Moteki, 70, who has lived in Nanmoku for half a century, has seen the decline of the village’s population and its energy. Credit: Kosuke Okahara

Faced with these diabolical demographics, Nanmoku has been badged in national conversations as Japan’s oldest village and one that is at risk of literally dying out.

“There’s no children here. Only monkeys, bears and deer – and the kids of those animals,” says Katsuhiko Moteki, 70, as he takes a break from hanging the laundry in his backyard.

“There’s no money, no industry, no jobs. It’s tough to live here. Even I want to leave.”

He sees only a bleak future for Nanmoku.

“It will disappear,” he says.

Moteki is only partly joking about the lack of children in the village.

Over the 50 years that he has lived in Nanmoku, the village has shrunk by almost 80 per cent from about 7000 residents in 1975 as people have left for greener pastures and have not been replaced.

Old family graveyards in Nanmoku have become a portent of its future as well as tribute to its past.Credit: Kosuke Okahara

His three children left years ago. The residents who have stayed, like him, are in their senior years. Today, there are children living in the village, but not many.

Nanmoku’s locals have known for a long time that the town is facing an acute demographic crisis.

But it was thrust into the national spotlight in 2014, when former government minister Hiroya Masuda published a population report that listed Nanmoku as one of Japan’s villages most at risk of disappearing.

Since then, the village has embarked on a number of initiatives to try and entice new, younger residents to the town. But with Japan’s population shrinking for the 16th straight year in 2024, a slide that experts expect to continue for many years to come, their best hope is in slowing the decline rather than reversing it altogether.

Nanmoku village, about two hours drive northwest of Tokyo, is considered one of Japan’s oldest towns and at risk of disappearing, because two thirds of residents are aged over 65. Credit: Kosuke Okahara

Japan’s population time-bomb

Nanmoku is a postcard-worthy portrait of Japan’s peaceful countryside. The village is built on a pristine river and is framed by rolling green mountains covered in thick cedar forests, which brings a smattering of tourists to hike nearby trails.

But the forestry and farming industries that once sustained jobs have long gone. As many as 600 of the wooden houses built into the hillside are empty, some of them showing clear signs of abandonment. They are boarded up, some with awnings collapsing and roofs caving in. Outside one premise, a rusted street lamp has snapped and hangs upside down on the footpath.

There are a handful of restaurants and cafes dotted across the village, and a few barber shops. But the streets are quiet and empty, save for a few older residents tending to their gardens when I visit on a Monday in October.

Along the main thoroughfare through town, Shigeyuki Kaneta’s family run bakery is still plying a steady trade. The glass cabinets are brimming with handmade chestnut buns, red-bean stuffed pastries and other sweets and treats that have been drawing in customers from surrounding villages for 140 years.

But when he delivers pastries door to door in Nanmoku, Kaneta, 54, sees the decline up close.

Shigeyuki Kaneta, 54 is a fourth-generation baker whose family store in Nanmoku has supplied locals and tourists with cakes and sweets for 140 years. Credit: Kosuke Okahara

“There are fewer and fewer people. You can see some of the houses are empty and you think ‘oh, they left the town’. You can see these changes day by day,” the fourth-generation baker says.

“We used to have big orders for things like rice cakes for family events, like when a baby is born. Those are decreasing.”

Last year, Japan shed a record 908,000 people. Its population slumped to 120.65 million people, according to government data released in August, as deaths continued to outpace births.

By 2070, the population is projected to hit 87 million, a decline of 30 per cent, when four out of every 10 people will be 65 or older.

The fertility rate dropped to a record-low of 1.15 children per woman in 2024, well below the globally recognised “replacement rate” average of 2.1 needed to sustain a population.

The rising cost of living and of raising children, stagnant wages and changing expectations around women’s roles and careers – as well as the flatfootedness of policymakers to help them do both – have all contributed to women delaying having children, or not having any at all.

Around 600 houses in Nanmoku are empty, some of them in dire state of disrepair. Credit: Kosuke Okahara

It’s a trend replicated across East Asia, with South Korea, Taiwan, China, and further afield to Singapore, all grappling with very low birth rates.

In Japan, the recruitment of foreign workers has been met with politically poisonous debates about immigration and promises by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to tighten controls, leaving Japan’s shrinking workforce to increasingly shoulder the taxation burden of rising aged care and welfare costs.

Regional villages such as Nanmoku are on the frontlines of this population crunch as younger people chase jobs in bigger cities with better infrastructure and more opportunities.

When Masuda updated his 2014 report last year, he identified 744 towns that were facing extinction by 2050 based on projections that the number of young women living there would be halved in the next three decades. Nanmoku retained its position among the most at-risk towns.

Dr Rintaro Mori, a former adviser with the United Nations Population Fund and the mayor of Takarazuka city, near Osaka, says that there is no single policy package blueprint that can rescue Japan’s regional villages, and governments need to be realistic in accepting that some cannot be saved.

“Virtually all municipalities are facing depopulation or population ageing and that means that we actually need to cut some of the infrastructure.

Satomi Oigawa, 26, relocated from Tokyo to Nanmoku three years ago. Credit: Kosuke Okahara for Sydney Morning Herald

“You cannot maintain the roads, the water system, and waste management into every remote village. You need to compromise in order to be financially sustainable. But that is not popular.”

Mori cautions against catastrophising the problem of an ageing society. Instead, policymakers must focus on adapting mindsets and economies around longer life expectancies and what is deemed “old age”, so that older people who want to continue working can do so.

Meanwhile, those villages that manage to address underlying societal issues such as gender inequality – such as by facilitating employment opportunities for women and enabling better work-life balances – might be successful in recruiting young families to move there.

“Many young women don’t want to come back to these villages. Not just because they don’t have jobs or educational structures and healthcare access, but because of the conservative culture that exists in many villages,” he says.

Fight for survival

Nanmoku is not resigning itself to its fate. The “Masuda shock”, as the damning 2014 “disappearing villages” report was dubbed in the Japanese press at the time, spurred village leaders into action, Satomi Oigawa says.

Oigawa, 26, relocated to Nanmoku three years ago from Tokyo and works as migration co-ordinator for a local not-for-profit agency focused on trying to revitalise the village.

Her role is to recruit young people like herself to move to Nanmoku by setting them up in one of its bank of empty homes. The township has invested local funds to renovate the properties and they are rented out cheaply. Couples with young families are given priority and there is the option to trial living in one of the renovated homes for a few months before committing.

“We get around 150 inquires each year,” Oigawa says, “but the actual number of people who move here is around eight.”

A relocation brochure that Oigawa has prepared for potential newcomers urges them to think carefully about whether Nanmoku is “really the right place for you”. Even with these recruitment efforts, 23 more people left than arrived in 2023, according to the latest data held by the village.

Among the town’s newest recruits is 32-year-old Genki Wanibuchi and his wife, Yuki, who moved to Nanmoku under a government program that paid people to relocate to regional areas if they started businesses.

Genki Wanibuchi, 32, and his wife, Yuki, moved to Nanmoku under a government initiative. Credit: Kosuke Okahara

Wanibuchi signed up to run a new cafe set up by the village and was paid a salary of 200,000 yen per month ($2000) for three years. After that, it was up to him to make the business work.

“It’s very difficult for us to make a lot of money, but at the same time our costs are cheaper,” he says.

“We want to keep living here as long as possible.”

The couple, who have since had a baby, live in a house next to the cafe arranged by the village and grow their own vegetables. But the biggest problem, Wanibuchi says, is the lack of other people their age with whom they can form lasting friendships.

As their baby grows, one of the main drawcards is the new school, which itself is an example of the resource-intensive efforts to keep the village on life-support.

Last year, Nanmoku’s primary school and high school merged into one newly built facility after enrolments dipped below what could sustain two schools.

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There are more teachers (26) on the payroll than students (19). Six students are due to graduate next year, and it’s not yet clear how many, if any, new students will join.

But without a school, no families would come here. And those remaining would be forced to leave.

Nanmoku’s fate, and the fate of other villages like it across Japan, might be inevitable. For now, it’s holding on.

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