Showa Mura and Population Decline

I took a day trip to Showa Mura, nestled in a valley amongst the mountains north of Tokyo, to visit a crafts complex at the suggestion of my weaving friend, Shigeko.  But first, because I didn’t really know where I was going, the bus driver helped by finding the only English-speaking person he knew in the village, began instead at a nonprofit doing community development work here.

The English-speaker, Yoshi Ozaki, is the head of a small nonprofit that was started in 2007 at the village's request.  Showa Mura’s citizens asked a Tokyo-based organization, called NICE, to help them sustain and revitalize this primarily rice-farming community.  The village had declined from a peak of about 5,500 sixty years ago to its present population of just over 1,000, and people were worried the town would die.  NICE sent a small team and now there are six people working in an empty government building that looks somewhat like a school.

Showa Mura ricefileds

I had read an article recently about a young mayor who was working on the same issue of a shrinking population in his town. Yoshi said many villages are facing this challenge, though each one’s situation is somewhat different.  In Showa Mura, demographics and economics were the major reasons for its decline.  Due to the low birth rate, there aren't enough children to replace its aging population.  Many of the children have left because they can't make a living at rice farming.  The government pays rice farmers substantial subsidies, but to the large farmers.  Showa Mura, nestled in a mountain valley, only has small farms. Yoshi said that roughly 70 per cent of the young people said they would prefer to stay if they could make a living here.

To make matters worse, Japan's population -- and hence it's need for rice -- is falling. Showa Mura's citizens believe they will be the last to farm their land and that it will be abandoned after they die.  Many other villages will die, too, and with that, Yoshi thinks, a way of life and value system that is core to Japan.

A Showa Mura community

Yoshi has faced many challenges.   First, while he and his colleagues care deeply for their work and the village, they all came from outside Showa Mura (Yoshi last worked in Tokyo). Even though his board members are all from the village, it has taken time to build trust. The village is comprised of ten different communities, each with the same issue but each with different needs.  And there are no easy solutions. At least Yoshi and his staff can build upon Showa Mura’s traditional spirit of community cooperation and caring for each other.  Still, the work is difficult, solutions murky, and progress slow.

As Yoshi and I talked, I remembered an exhibit I had seen of work by Japanese potters in the 1920's and '30's. They were trying to find an alternative to modernizing Japan by Westernization, and looked Eastward for a new way that was more closely aligned with Japan's traditional values.  I've seen that same conflict between east and west in other areas:  as obi weavers, calligraphers and other artisans modify what they make for a more "modern" market, and even in the sharp contrasts that run through Tokyo.  Japan has managed to live in the middle between old and new, East and West for 150 years and keep its values of deep respect for all living things and caring for each other.  It will be interesting to see how Japan grapples with this new challenge of a declining population.