national

Last students graduate: School closures spread in aging Japan

52 Comments
By Eimi Yamamitsu, Tom Bateman and Issei Kato

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

© Thomson Reuters 2023.

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


52 Comments
Login to comment

It’s strange that Japanese don’t want to live in areas of low investment where public transport is almost non existent and there is a lack of services but that is the result of the LDP ignoring regional investment

3 ( +27 / -24 )

their footsteps echoed in polished halls 

not in those shoes they didn't....

10 ( +16 / -6 )

This problem is not just specific to remote areas. Many schools in the Tokyo region have dozens of classrooms that haven’t been used in decades.

11 ( +16 / -5 )

While the falling birthrate is a problem as well as the shift in population to only a few mega cities, the antiquated idea that all students in Japan must walk to school has come to an end. Many of these schools should have been shuttered and a nice centrally located school built and the students bused there. What kind of educational experience do you get when there is only one or two other students?

10 ( +15 / -5 )

The only two students at Yumoto Junior High School, attend their graduation ceremony, in Ten-ei village, Fukushima Prefecture.

When those teacher bow to students, they really thanks them for letting keep their job and avoiding need to move to another school for time being. They actually went to exclusive school where number ratio of students and teacher really above ideal.

As Japan's birthrate plunges faster than expected, school closures have picked up pace especially in rural

What Japanese leader has done about this? Another pledges and pledges.

-13 ( +6 / -19 )

the antiquated idea that all students in Japan must walk to school has come to an end.

It's never been the case in rural areas. Cycling is accepted in some, and one used a minibus to ferry the kids from one hamlet to another.

15 ( +15 / -0 )

Here is the positive they never endured bullying by either teachers or students. Parents did not endure the hardships of paying for jukus, the children club activities late into the night and or on weekends meaning they actually got a normal childhood of balance of being a student and getting to be a kid what a concept.

12 ( +17 / -5 )

It must have been so sad, with so many old persons around you.

They should be dreaming of having plenty of kids...no after all nothing need to change.

Is the dying of cities the new future ?

-9 ( +2 / -11 )

@Lindsay I think the specific problem

I don't think this has anything to do with aging population it is all about bad city planning. Why does Japan place a small sized school in the middle of a development and then build a few thousand houses around it and then blame it on an aging population. when every body around it grows up .... perhaps building a larger school to accommodate a much larger area will fit in with natural residential growth fluctuations.

Also building houses that are suitable to be renovated and change the mentality that requires people to pull down old houses to build a new home also might help.

13 ( +15 / -2 )

Some rural areas are seeing revitalization due to IT companies relocating to where their employees can enjoy a more balanced life that doesn't involve up to 2 hour commutes. Towns that hold no sway to people will pass into history for good reason, those that survive will do so because they have some lure besides an irrational longing to hold on for the sake of holding on. In an age when IT and mass automation will have made 50% of current jobs obsolete within the next 25 years a decrease in population is prudent, especially on an archipelago roughly the size of California with 80% of it being non-arable land and a current population of 125 million. What needs to change is an economic model that requires an every increasing, non-sustainable population to feed it.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

""Falling births are an Asian regional issue, with the costs of raising children dampening birthrates in neighboring South Korea and China. But Japan's situation is especially critical.""

Thank you, finally someone spoke the TRUTH.

When people find it harder than ever to raise a child they move on and never have any or have 1 or 2 kids at max. societies have made it so hard on young women / couples to have kids and enjoy raising them with all the RULES and REGULATIONS and the amount of $$$ it costs to raise one, it took the fun and excitement out of the whole event.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

These photos are so shocking and to some degree are sad, I remember few years back when there were so many kids running around my kids school yards from Elementary to HS and how JOYFULL it was, looking at these two kids school is just heartbreaking.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

this made me sad. These kids having an incomplete childhood and more schools closing and more teachers forced to look for other jobs. With more people abandoning the countryside, more and more places will become ghost towns. Completely irrelevant but my opinion is if Japan would ease up on its immigration rules, maybe immigrants could repopulate the countryside *if** *that would be okay with the locals.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

As MarkX noted - this has a lot to do with planning and an unwillingness to change.

I went to a rural elementary school - no town just in a field - with all 18 students and all grades taught simultaneously by 1 teacher.

It was a wonderful experience.

We were all bussed in from farms. The longest travel for some kids would have been 1+ hour one way.

To maintain a school with a handful of kids with multiple staff - teaching and auxillary - and a principal makes little sense.

Such resources could well be used and spent making a regional centralized school more viable. Mottainai!

Why is change and adaption so stifled esp in government realms?

And good luck to the graduates. Fulltime private tutoring must have given them a big leg-up for the future.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

One of my gaijin friends moved to the countryside and tried settling there,he tried farming etc but after a while he gave up as there was no market nearby for his produce and transport to the nearest town was not economically viable.

He got frustrated and a local old man who had become his only friend adviced him to leave the village because there was no future for a younger person there.He finally packed and left.

7 ( +11 / -4 )

Sad. That school will now sit vacant and slowly deteriorate. Could make a decent boarding shool, but could it attract enough staff and students? Probably not. Maybe some disaster will strike and the school can be used as temporary housing.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Last students graduate: School closures spread in aging Japan

 

And in the west?

 

Why do mass shooters target K-12 schools? Here's what we know after Nashville shooting

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/03/29/why-mass-shooters-target-schools/11555855002/

 

Which problem is worst?

-11 ( +4 / -15 )

In the end of the 90s I went to two island JHS in Ehime once every 2 months.

One had 8 students the other 3.

It was a fantastic experience but there was nothing, and I mean nothing on these islands for younger people or families to do.

Sadly the future is grim.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

In my rural area, old people are to tired to grow rice. They change the land status. Many have solar panel farms, and most build new houses. Because it is the countryside, land and new houses are cheap. There are train lines to a couple of major cities. 40-70 minutes. As a result, my area is exploding with young families that can’t afford city expenses. Brand new schools are being created. Transport systems and new businesses are flourishing. It is great for the future, but it is at the expense of nature and Japanese traditional agriculture. These new schools and kindergartens are very modern, and many little kiddies walk in lines with their little yellow hats and oversized school bags to school every morning.

my point is, that if there is a supportive transport system, more young people may be tempted to live in the beautiful Japanese countryside.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

One thing that gets me is that even in the larger cities where student enrollment is getting lower, the schools are unwilling to make lemonade out of lemons.

The number of students at my son's and daughter's elementary school has dropped quite a bit. Used to be they had 4 classes per grade - approx 140 students, about 35 students per class. Now they have around 113 or so per grade. But, instead of having 4 smaller classes of fewer than 30 students each, they just close one class and still have 3 classes with 35 students. Why? What a great opportunity to improve the quality of the learning environment (every single study done on class sizes shows smaller classes = better) and lessen the burden on teachers. But, not. Several classrooms sit empty while the other are over crowded and the teachers are still over worked. Talk about wasting a chance...

17 ( +18 / -1 )

 instead of having 4 smaller classes of fewer than 30 students each, they just close one class and still have 3 classes with 35 students. Why?

So that noone gets a better education than someone else.

0 ( +4 / -4 )

Brand new schools are being created. 

We had a new one being built in our area too. Lots of residential development going on here, so there is a demand for more schools. Im sure this is the case in many outskirts towns with good links to major cities.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Never close a school. Use it at least for other education purposes, courses and lessons for adults and seniors, skill-up sessions for workers or other professional staff, teaching AI and quantum computing to everyone, offer many different foreign languages to study and so on and on. Closing a school is the stupidest option one can come up with, that’s for sure!

4 ( +6 / -2 )

In my rural area, old people are to tired to grow rice. They change the land status. Many have solar panel farms, and most build new houses. 

My area too. Lots of young families and new houses being built on previous farm land. I live near Kagohara Station. Its actually only an hour away from Ikebukuro on the train.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

"the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant less than 100 km away, with Ten-ei suffering some radioactive contamination that has since been cleaned up."

Fact check this statement please. Where did this come from?

Yumoto is on the western side of the Shinkansen track and over the mountain that protected the western side of Fukushima from any radiation.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

all of congrats goes to LDP, "good job"

-6 ( +3 / -9 )

There are so many reasons as to why Japans birthrate is supposedly declining but speaking from personal experience, I blame the schools themselves. Y20,000 - Y40,000 for a backpack... Parents being forced to buy particular school uniforms down to the socks. Mothers feeling pressured to attend all of their children's' sporting events and pay for their own transportation and accommodation even if they're held in another city and are also asked to participate in organizing and recording such events (especially basketball). Using a great chunk of your hard earned savings to pay for JUKU cram schools so that they get good enough grades to graduate to the next school and then you use more of your savings to send your little ones to college paying their entire tuition...Let's not forget you also have to feed, clothe and bathe the little monsters until they turn 30 and move out of the house. Man, it is expensive AF to raise kids here.

8 ( +11 / -3 )

But Japan's situation is especially critical.

Really? It's only" critical" to the tax income that the government is counting on in the future to pay back the money they are making and spending today!

Why should there be individual schools in these remote areas? They were small to begin with. Even here in Okinawa, that has a growing population, has schools that have closed in the northern sections of the island.

But there are still some children living there, and the municipalities have built joint ES and JHS schools for the districts and provide transportation for the students as well.

If there is a will, there is a way!

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Awful picture, like something out of Children of Men.

-2 ( +5 / -7 )

Pretty soon there'll be nobody left in rural Japan and we can sadly say good bye to many skilled craftsmen and their traditions as well. The effects of a declining population isn't limited to economic decline only. It can also affect many facets of life and culture. The question then arises of what to do with abandoned rural areas in the future. It's challenging but it should serve as notice for creative and revolutionary solutions.

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

that is the result of the LDP ignoring regional investment

You can blame the LDP for many things but this is untrue. Japanese politics is full of porkbarrel to the provinces, the famed "bridges to nowhere". Half the expressways, a couple of shinkansens, literally hundreds of schools, thousands of loss making bus routes, ferries etc., miles of snowploughed roads in towns with no people.... all paid for by the national taxpayer.

Anyone paying taxes in the city will have kids sitting 35 or 40 in a class. At the same time, kids in the countryside may have under ten. For first and second grade, that's one teacher and probably one teaching assistant to 10 kids. To get that level of attention in the city, you're looking at three million yen plus a year exclusive (probably international) private school.

Japan's population in 1900 was 41 million. Most of these schools closing down now will have been set up post war and not have years and years of traditions behind them, which should limit our sympathy at their demise.

I say this as someone who lives in deep inaka and whose children go to schools with falling numbers. Our youngest is about 15 kids. She actually wants to try going to a different school, because its hard for personalities to click when there are so few potential friends. The idea of small schools being like extended happy families where everyone gets on is a complete myth.

8 ( +9 / -1 )

Why did the teacher/dean bowing to the two graduate students? Last customer service ?

-6 ( +3 / -9 )

A sad day for Japan...

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

She actually wants to try going to a different school, because its hard for personalities to click when there are so few potential friends. The idea of small schools being like extended happy families where everyone gets on is a complete myth.

Such a good point. I came from a small school myself in rural Canada. Many of my friends were in a lower grade. Luckily it wasn't considered taboo like it is in Japan if you hang out with people in a lower or higher grade. But you're right, and its especially true in schools that are k-12 or 1-9 where kids have a long history together. Cliques form and they are virtually impossible to break up.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

From reading the article, the school ought to have been closed or consolidated with another school twenty years ago - BEFORE it got to the point where there were only two students in an entire class. Either a case of poor planning on the part of the prefectural school board, or they were obligated to keep the school open on account of some arcane rule.

The Yumoto district is 20km or so away from the rest of Ten'ei where most of the 5000 people live. According to the Ten'ei website (I had to download an Excel file), the Yumoto population is 560 people. Until last month it had a separate elementary and JHS. This is a phenomenal waste of money.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

If you look at the photos, they were using a large school bus for two kids. This may be a bus that is used for other purposes like elderly transport or tourism, I certainly hope so, but it'll be the taxpayer who's paying, not the locals. The kids should be in a taxi or ordinary car. Its also ridiculous for them to be using an entire school building and not a room at the elementary school or town hall.

fwiw, my kid's JHS does not have a bus. It's 8km each way for us and cycling is banned in winter.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Japanese children are not expensive. The government of Japan should pay parents more for them to produce more children to fill Japan's schools. Money or Yen or $ are very likely to solve the problem of fast- emptying classes in schools.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

It is a shame Yumoto has closed down, but numbers had been low at the school for quite some time. It is a beautiful part of Japan and an area I return to many times every year. If I could I would live there.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Housing is now so cheap in the country, and support systems are in place to get newcomers acclimatized. If you're a young Japanese and have a few brain cells to rub together, you really ought to be considering making a move to a rural area.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

Remote learning failed in the pandemic as it was bodged together on a budget, at speed, in difficult circumstances.

It is possible to deliver a viable timetable of lessons with remote support and some interaction, and the Japanese government could support its production. They would have to pay through the nose for it, as educational resources providers protect their profit lines like Gollum does his ring.

Once produced, it would just need some annual tweaking. It could be rolled out nationally (even internationally), using teachers based anywhere to support students online. We really should be offering something like that to people in repressive dictatorships (such as girls in Afghanistan), on the sly.

It's not perfect, but it would do the job.

The obvious solution for depopulation is immigration, but the JGov will never do that, so they will just have to continue to decline.

Delivering services to remote areas isn't new. They have been doing it in Canada and Australia since telegraphy and transport options made it viable. But you need a plan, enough cash and competent people. Just throwing a few Yen at the problem before elections isn't a solution.

Ultimately, most Japanese people will live in central areas, with workers commuting to rural areas for agriculture or infrastructure maintenance, as necessary. Then these areas will have more bears than people.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It makes sense that these remote areas are dying though. Japan is pretty convient for most things, the various things that you can get in Tokyo you can get in middle of nowhere as well for the most part. But the refusal to incentivise businesses to go to the country side as well as said businesses abject refusal to modernize practices like remote work full time (almost all ended it weeks after this catchy buzz-word style of working was trendy for Japan) or get rid of the absolutely pointless practice of sending workers to completely different parts of the country away from their families for years af a time where refusal will dead end your career...

It's literally creating its own problem.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

There are also "beware of bears" signs.

The population decline means a break for the bears. They'll be making a comeback!

0 ( +2 / -2 )

maybe immigrants could repopulate the countryside *if** *that would be okay with the locals.

That's a big if. Many in the countryside would rather see their villages fade away to dust than let foreigners in. Not every village is this way, but many of those who need repopulating the most are.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

"Housing is now so cheap in the country, and support systems are in place to get newcomers acclimatized. If you're a young Japanese and have a few brain cells to rub together, you really ought to be considering making a move to a rural area."

If the young Japanese cannot find employment "in the country" then what is the advantage of cheap housing?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites