Nami Aoki and daughter Yuri take part in a clothing swap in Nagaizumi, Japan. The organizers, a group called Nagomi Cafe, has caught officials' attention for its strategies in supporting parents and children.Photography by James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
When Junko Kanai moved to Nagaizumi 20 years ago, the town in Shizuoka prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, had a reputation for being a good place to raise children. This was only half true, she discovered.
“There was good financial support, including free medical care – something that was a lot less common back then – but not that much of a sense of community,” Ms. Kanai said. “Maybe my expectations were too high.”
She and some friends began organizing parent meetups and events for children. Their group, later called Nagomi Cafe, soon attracted the attention of the local government, and then its enthusiastic support.
Junko Kanai is one of the co-founders of Nagomi Cafe.
As towns across Japan have haemorrhaged people in recent decades, Nagaizumi has dedicated itself to attracting young people and encouraging them to have children. This includes not only monetary handouts, now common in much of the country, but also pioneering policies designed to improve residents’ quality of life and children’s education, many of which have been adopted by other towns and cities fighting population decline.
Nagaizumi, population 43,406, was one of the first towns in the prefecture to install air conditioning in its schools, after former mayor Hideo Endo visited a classroom and found it swelteringly hot. He also had the buildings painted yellow, after a trip to Sweden in the 1990s, where the schools were all that colour, hoping to channel some of that country’s success in boosting birth rates. (“He was quite a simple man, but also a visionary in his way,” said Rie Hibi, his former assistant.)
Since 2010, some 430 public schools have closed every year in Japan because of population decline, but those in Nagaizumi are expanding. The local elementary school has added two buildings in the past decade, as it grew to house over 1,000 students.
“Many people our age – in their 30s or 40s – move here because Nagaizumi has good programs for children,” said local Nami Aoki. “In this prefecture it’s rare to see such support, though things are getting better, and other towns are imitating Nagaizumi.”
Mayor Osamu Ikeda is optimistic about Nagaizumi's efforts to share the work of supporting families.
In an interview, current mayor Osamu Ikeda spoke proudly of “Nagaizumi style” spreading around the region, with other towns trying to learn from their success. Nagaizumi has also attracted the attention of the central government, and even foreign officials from countries struggling with population decline.
Fewer than 800,000 babies were born in Japan last year, the lowest number on record, down from more than 1.5 million births in 1982. The country’s population is shrinking, with a fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman, well below the 2.1 needed for births to outpace deaths.
Japan is also one of the oldest societies on Earth, with 30 per cent of the population over 65, three times the global average. The issue is particularly acute in rural areas where employment is low, leading people to emigrate to big cities.
Nagaizumi, population 43,406, hopes to buck the Japanese trend of smaller cities losing population to larger ones.
In January, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned Japan was “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions” if it did not reverse this trend. He announced the creation of a new Child and Family Agency in April and a doubling of spending on children and child-rearing.
Japan is one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a child, according to research from U.S. financial institution Jefferies. In the latest Japanese National Fertility Survey, more than half of respondents said cost was the primary reason they did not have children, or did not have a second child. Currently, the government provides parents with around 10,000 to 15,000 yen ($103-$154) per month for each child under 15. Local governments often offer additional stipends, as well as discounts or fee waivers on health and child care.
Nagaizumi does all this, giving parents 10,000 yen vouchers on the birth of their child and again on their third and sixth birthdays, as well as clothes and some other necessities. Medical care is also free until children turn 18, far older than in most places.
Nagaizumi's child-rearing and education department is on the ground floor of its main government building.
Mr. Ikeda, the mayor, said Nagaizumi strives to build a society where the task of child rearing is more equally shared across the community. Child care is free for low-income households and subsidized for most others.
Even Nagaizumi’s government complex is orientated around the idea of “showing parents the support is there for them,” Mr. Ikeda said (and encouraging them to have more children). When residents visit the three-storey building in the centre of the town, the first thing they see, right opposite the entrance, is the child-rearing and education department.
“In most towns, that’s the tax office,” Mr. Ikeda said.
But while Nagaizumi has had considerable success, and attracted the attention of both regional and national governments, Mr. Ikeda admitted “some our success is due to our location and environment.” Nagaizumi is a 40-minute bullet train ride from central Tokyo, enabling many residents to commute there, and benefits from a balmy climate and views of Mount Fuji.
The town today is also capitalizing on good decisions made decades ago, such as enticing Japanese industrial giant Toray to build an engineering plant there, which remains the primary employer.
Nagaizumi residents play table tennis at a community centre.
Miho Iwasawa, a research director at the National Institute of Population in Tokyo, said many towns held up as positive examples are not necessarily boosting the total number of children as much as attracting people who already planned to be parents.
“Much of the success of such towns is largely due to migration and the concentration of people to areas where they feel it is easier to raise children,” she said. “They’re essentially taking children from other areas.”
Kazuhisa Arakawa, author of Super-Solo Society: The Shock of the Unmarried Nation, said Japan should be focusing on supporting older and single people, as they become more of a norm, rather than trying to boost the birth rate.
“My honest view is that we cannot do anything,” he said. “But of course the prime minister cannot say that, because then he would not be elected next time.”
The only surefire solution to population decline is immigration. Canada has a birth rate of only 1.4, but grows every year thanks to attracting hundreds of thousands of migrants. Japan, like many East Asian nations, has long been reluctant when it comes to immigration: foreigners make up just 2 per cent of the population, compared with 10-20 per cent in Europe and a quarter of Canadians.
Mr. Arakawa was skeptical of Tokyo taking the radical steps needed to open Japan up to mass immigration however, and pointed out the country’s economy is currently struggling, with wages stagnant and costs rising, not making it the most attractive place to potential workers.
Children listen to an entertainer at a Nagomi Cafe event.
Japan has been grappling with the issue of population decline for decades now, and if Tokyo is looking to towns like Nagaizumi for lessons, many of the country’s neighbours are looking to Japan itself. South Korea is in the midst of an even more severe fertility crisis, and China is looking down the barrel of one made worse by Beijing’s now-abandoned “one child policy.” Even developing countries in Southeast Asia, like Thailand and Malaysia, have birth rates below replacement level.
“What we often advise developing countries is to prepare for the aging period when you are going through your boom, and design your society with that in mind,” Ms. Iwasawa said.
In many ways, this is what Nagaizumi did, building on its economic success in the 1970s and ‘80s to create one of Japan’s wealthiest towns today, where everything is geared toward retaining and growing its population.
“It’s very important to create a town where locals want to live but can also attract and retain new residents,” said Mr. Ikeda. “Our town is really lucky, most other towns are failing.”
James Griffiths visited Japan in March, 2023, on a Foreign Press Center Japan fellowship. FPCJ did not review or approve this content.
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