Rural Japan

日本·农村

Old, shrinking and broke

年老、萎缩、衰败

IMABETSU

日本·今别町

The burden of an ageing and declining population is felt most keenly in the countryside

人口老龄化和人口下降带来的问题在农村最为明显

WHEN Hisaaki Nakajima ran for mayor of Imabetsu, on the northernmost tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island, he said he had a vision of a town of 2,000 people. That may have sounded odd, given that Imabetsu had 2,700 inhabitants at the time (in 2017). But it is shrinking fast. Since Mr Nakajima took office, the population has declined by around 150, or some 6%. On a pleasant spring day the streets are almost empty; many buildings are disused. A big pa*****o parlour at the entrance to the town lies in ruin.

中岛久明(Hisaaki Nakajima)竞选本州岛最北端的今别町(Imabetsu)市长时表示，他有一个2000人的城镇的愿景。这听起来可能有些奇怪，因为今别町当时(2017年)有2700名居民。但这座小镇正在快速衰败。自中岛康介上任以来，日本人口减少了约150人，约6%。在一个风和日丽的春日，街上几乎空无一人;许多建筑物被废弃了。小镇入口处的一家弹球游戏厅现已是一间废墟。

词汇

pa*****o parlour/弹球游戏

Villages and towns across Japan have been shrinking for decades because of migration to big cities. Since 2011 the national population has been falling, too. Last year it shrank by 450,000. The two trends are emptying rural areas: whereas Japan as a whole is projected to lose 16% of its population between 2015 and 2045, the population of Aomori prefecture, where Imabetsu is located, will plunge 37%, reckons the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR), a think-tank in Tokyo (see chart).

几十年来，由于人口向大城市迁移，日本各地的村镇规模一直在缩小。自2011年以来，全国人口也在下降。去年减少了45万人。这两种趋势（人口迁移，人口减少）在不断“瓦解”日本农村的规模:作为一个整体而日本预计将失去16%的人口在2015年至2045年之间,青森县的人口即今别町所在,将暴跌37%,这是由全国人口与社会保障研究所(NIPSSR)——坐落于东京的一个智库(见图表) 所测算得出的。

词汇

Plunge/骤降

Reckon/估计；计算

这些数字只是情况的一部分。自中岛康介上任以来，今别町失去了150名人口，其中约三分之二是本地人，他们主要是寻求教育或工作的年轻人。(今别町居民的工作主要是农业和渔业。)27岁的小村友图(Youto Komura)在市政厅工作。在成为市长之前，中岛康介曾在一家缝纫店和花店工作。其他三家分别位于东京、札幌和青森市。

词汇

Predominantly/主要地；显著地

Women leave in greater numbers than men, says Hiroya Masuda, the author of an alarming report on rural depopulation. “There is a glass ceiling for women everywhere, but in rural areas it tends to be made of thick steel,” he says. “In offices in rural areas they tend to be pouring tea, while in Tokyo there is more chance of fulfilling jobs.” Young men who might otherwise stick around are put off by the lack of potential brides.

一份关于农村人口减少的令人担忧的报告的作者增田广雅(Hiroya Masuda)说，女性离开农村的人数多于男性。他表示:“女性在任何地方都有‘玻璃天花板’，但在农村地区，‘天花板’往往是由厚钢板制成的。”“在农村地区的办公室里，人们倾向于倒茶（琐事），而在东京，人们更有可能找到满意的（实现个人抱负）工作。“如果没有结婚，那些可能会留下来的年轻男性就会因为找不到合适的新娘而望而却步。

词汇

Fulfilling/令人满意的；能实现个人抱负的

This movement of young people, and Japan’s long and lengthening life expectancy, has led to an extraordinary preponderance of old people in far-flung places. Some 37% of those living in depopulated areas are over the age of 65, about ten percentage points more than the national rate, according to the government. Imabetsu has the accolade of being the town with the highest proportion of over-65s in Aomori: they are already around half the population.

年轻人的这种流动，加上日本人的预期寿命越来越长，导致了在偏远地区，老年人占了绝大多数。据政府统计，居住在人口稀少地区的人口中，约37%的人年龄在65岁以上，比全国平均水平高出约10个百分点。今别町由于有着青森县65岁以上最高人口比例而闻名， 今别町65岁以上人口已占总人口的一半左右。

词汇

Preponderance/优势；多数；占优势

far-flung/  遥远的；广泛的

Accolade/荣誉；荣誉称号授予仪式

Because baby-boomers are starting to die off, the depopulation of rural areas is set to spike, reckons Shiro Koike of the NIPSSR. In 2014 Mr Masuda predicted that 896 of Japan’s 1,700 municipalities would be extinct by 2040. He has now revised that to 929. In the five years to 2016, by the government’s count, 190 places disappeared from the map (although a handful of those were emptied by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster of 2011).

全国人口与社会保障研究所的小池史郎(Shiro Koike)估计，由于婴儿潮一代开始死亡，农村地区的人口减少势必会激增。2014年，增田预测，到2040年，日本1700个城市中将有896个消失。现在他把这个数字修改为929。根据政府的统计，在截至2016年的五年中，有190个地方从地图上消失了(尽管其中一些地方在2011年的地震、海啸和核灾难中被清空)。

词汇

Municipality/市政当局；自治市或区

Tsunami/海啸

 

The impact of the dwindling population in rural areas is clear to see. Imabetsu has no supermarkets and no restaurants, cafés or snack bars, bar the konbini (convenience store) on the outskirts of the town. In the 1980s, residents say, there were dozens of lunch joints. Now the townsfolk must drive elsewhere or wait for occasional visits from trucks that sell vegetables.

农村地区人口减少的影响是显而易见的。今别町没有超市，也没有餐厅、咖啡馆或小吃店，郊区的康比尼(konbini)便利店也没有。居民们说，上世纪80年代，这里有几十家午餐店。现在，镇上的居民必须开车去其他地方，或者等待卖蔬菜的卡车偶尔来售卖。

词汇

Dwinde/减少，变小

The three schools have only 30 to 40 children each. From October one will stop accepting new pupils. “It is not good for the children,” says Mr Nakajima. “They need company, competition, a healthy atmosphere.” In depopulated areas primary schools have on average 118 pupils each; those in the rest of the country have 320. There are also fewer paediatricians and obstetricians than the national average.

这三所学校各只有30至40名学生。从10月起，学校将停止接收新生。中岛康介表示:“这对孩子们没有好处。”“他们需要陪伴、竞争和健康的氛围。“在人口稀少地区，每所小学平均有118名学生;而在美国其他地区，这一数字为320。这里儿科和产科医生的数量也低于全国平均水平。

词汇

Paediatrician/儿科医生

Obstetrician/产科医师

The national government wants to raise the fertility rate from 1.4 children per woman to 1.8. To that end, it is trying to provide more support for families, such as making nursery free. It has also begun admitting more migrants, but not enough to compensate for the decline in the native population—and anyway, the government insists it will not let them settle permanently. What is more, immigrants, like Japanese themselves, prefer to live in cities.

国家政府希望将生育率从每名妇女生育1.4个孩子提高到1.8个。为此，它正试图为家庭提供更多的支持，比如免费提供托儿所。它也开始接纳更多的移民，但不足以弥补本国人口的减少——而且无论如何，政府坚称不会让他们永久定居。更重要的是，移民，同日本人他们那样，更喜欢住在城市。

 

Shrinking localities tend to focus on trying to get people from elsewhere in Japan to move there. They talk not just of encouraging people to return to the countryside from cities but also of persuading people to move from towns to rural areas. Many offer families free housing and other subsidies to attract younger people. Imabetsu offers free school lunches and free cancer treatment. But the number of people such incentives attract is very small (zero in Imabetsu’s case). They “will never change the demographic dynamics of slow, steady decline”, says Peter Matanle of Sheffield University in Britain.

萎缩的地方政府倾向于集中精力让日本其他地方的人搬到那里。他们不仅谈到鼓励人们从城市回到农村，而且还谈到说服人们从城镇搬到农村。许多学校为家庭提供免费住房和其他补贴，以吸引年轻人。今别町提供免费的学校午餐和免费的癌症治疗。但这种激励措施吸引的人数非常少(今别町为零)。英国谢菲尔德大学(Sheffield University)的彼得•马坦勒(Peter Matanle)表示，它们“永远不会改变人口缓慢而稳定下降的趋势”。

词汇

Demographic/人口结构的；人口统计的

There are some more successful campaigns, of course. Tokushima prefecture has attracted IT companies by setting up a fast internet connection. But as Karen Makishima, an MP for Kanagawa in eastern Japan, points out: “Many towns want to have people move there permanently. But Japan as a whole is losing people so if we shift people, other places lose out.” She thinks the solution is to work on attracting domestic and especially international tourism, which is growing rapidly. To that end, she is trying to encourage people to buy holiday homes in her region, or to make regular visits, in part by creating relationships between visitors and locals. The depopulating islands of the Seto Inland Sea, in south-eastern Japan, are a model for this sort of initiative. Visitors flock there to see new art installations.

当然，还有一些更成功的举措。德岛县通过建立快速互联网连接吸引了IT公司。但正如日本东部神奈川县议员卡伦•马岛(Karen Makishima)所指出的那样:“许多城镇希望人们永久性地迁往那里。但日本作为一个整体正在流失人口，所以如果我们转移人口，其他地方也会流失。她认为，解决办法是努力吸引国内游客，尤其是增长迅速的国际游客。为了达到这个目的，她正试图鼓励人们在她的地区购买度假屋，或进行定期访问，方法之一是在游客和当地人之间建立关系。日本东南部濑户内海(Seto Inland Sea)人口减少的岛屿，就是这类举措的一个典范。游客蜂拥而至观看新的艺术装置。

 

In the absence of such a lifeline, the local government in Imabetsu is struggling to pay for education, health care and other services. Its budget is 2.4bn yen ($223m) a year. Only half of that comes from the national government on a routine basis, although one-off grants and money funnelled via the prefectural government help make up the shortfall. Local tax revenue has been dwindling for years, and now brings in only 200m yen a year. The town has resorted at times to borrowing, Mr Nakajima says, but the cost of servicing the debt only adds to its fiscal problems in the long run.

在缺乏这样一条生命线的情况下，今别町的地方政府正在努力支付教育、医疗和其他服务的费用。其预算为每年24亿日元(2.23亿美元)。其中只有一半来自中央政府，尽管通过地方政府提供的一次性拨款和资金有助于弥补缺口。多年来，日本地方税收一直在下降，现在每年的收入仅为2亿日元。中岛康介表示，该镇有时求助于借贷，但长期而言，偿债成本只会加剧其财政问题。

词汇

Grant/拨款

Funnel/漏斗；漏斗状物；

Prefectural/县的

The central government has tried to help places like Imabetsu, not only by upping the budget for “rural revitalisation”, but also through a scheme called furusato nozei, which allows taxpayers to send a proportion of their taxes to a locality of their choice, instead of the one where they live (towns and villages compete for this cash by offering gifts in return, such as local sake or dried fish). The intention is for emigrants from rural areas to the cities to be able to funnel money to their hometowns.

中央政府曾试图帮助今别町这样的地方,不仅通过提高预算“农村复兴”,但也通过一个新的方案叫做" furusato nozei（日语发音，翻译不能orz）”,纳税人可以自选一个纳税区域，按照自己的选择来缴纳一定的税款,而不是自己居住的区域(城镇和村庄通过提供礼物作为回报争夺现金,如当地的米酒或鱼干)。其目的是让从农村地区到城市的移民能够把钱汇回自己的家乡。

词汇

Sake/  目的；利益；理由；日本米酒

 

Nonetheless, small towns are having to cut back. In some areas local authorities are trying to gather services in one town, from which they offer transport to other towns and villages in a sort of hub-and-spoke model. Others are looking at ride-sharing as a way to relieve the pressure on, or replace, public transport. Private businesses such as konbini and the post office, which by law has to have outposts in remote places, are also being used to offer public services. Technology could help. “It may be fun to get pizza by drone in Tokyo, but more important is getting milk and newspapers to elderly people in rural areas,” says Ms Makishima. She also advocates online medical consultations.

尽管如此，小城镇不得不削减开支。在一些地区，地方当局正试图将服务集中在一个城镇，从那里他们以一种中心辐射型的模式向其他城镇和村庄提供交通服务。另一些人则将拼车视为缓解或替代公共交通压力的一种方式。像康比尼和邮局这样的私营企业也被用来提供公共服务。根据法律规定，邮局必须在偏远地区设立前哨站。科技可以提供支持。Makishima表示:“在东京，无人机送披萨可能很有趣，但更重要的是，这可以用来为农村地区的老年人送牛奶和报纸。”她还提倡在线医疗咨询。

词汇

hub-and-spoke/中星型；中心辐射型；集中星型

Mr Nakajima’s vision for Imabetsu is modest: to promote tourism, preserve existing industries rather than try to conjure up new ones, use remote instruction to keep schools going and create a single hub for people to obtain information and services. Yet even that is a struggle, he says. For example, the town government looked at taxi-sharing, but found it unfeasible since Imabetsu has only one taxi. Next time he runs, it may have to be with a vision of even fewer people.

中岛康介对今别町的愿景是谦逊的:促进旅游业，保护现有产业，而不是试图创造新的产业，利用远程教学来维持学校的运转，创建一个单一的中心，让人们获得信息和服务。但他表示，即便如此，这也是一场攻坚战。例如，镇政府考虑出租汽车共享，但发现这是不可行的，因为今别町只有一辆出租车。下次他竞选时，可能不得不考虑面临更少的人。