Well-wishers visited his parents Miho and Hirohito for more than a week — nearly all of them senior citizens, including some who could barely walk.
That has left rural areas and industries like agriculture, forestry, and farming facing a critical labor shortage that will likely get worse in the coming years as the workforce ages. By 2022, the number of people working in agriculture and forestry had declined to 1.9 million from 2.25 million 10 years earlier.The problem for Japan is: people in the cities aren't having babies either.
All this has left the leaders of the world's third-largest economy facing the unenviable task of trying to fund pensions and health care for a ballooning elderly population even as the workforce shrinks. Okada is one of the rare working mothers in Japan who has a highly successful career after childbirth. Many of Japan's highly educated women are relegated to part-time or retail roles -- if they reenter the workforce at all. In 2021, 39% of women workers were in part-time employment, compared to 15% of men, according to the OECD.
Among the villagers who took turns holding the young Kentaro was Kaoru Harumashi, a lifelong resident of Kawakami village in his 70s. The master woodworker has formed a close bond with the boy, teaching him how to carve the local cedar from surrounding forests. "The more I get to know people, I mean elderly people, the more I feel sadness that I have to say goodbye to them. Life is actually going on with or without the village," she said."At the same time, it is very sad to see the surrounding, local people dwindling away."If that sounds depressing, perhaps it's because in recent years, Japan's battle to boost the birthrate has given few reasons for optimism.
Their decision to move was triggered by a Japanese national tragedy twelve years ago. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake shook the ground violently for several minutes across much of the country, triggering tsunami waves taller than a 10-story building that devastated huge swaths of the east coast and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
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