World
Bankrupt Mining Town Downsizes to Avoid Becoming a Ghost
Yubari’s efforts called “extremely important” model for Japan.
Apartment houses originally built for coal miners stand in Yubari, Hokkaido, Japan.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A sleepy, former coal-mining town in northern Japan is taking unprecedented measures to combat its biggest challenge: a devastating shrinking of its population. Its success could decide the future for hundreds of other local governments waging the same battle for survival.
Since its peak in the post-war economic boom of the 1960s, the population of Yubari, a little more than an hour’s drive east of Sapporo on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, has declined by more than 90 percent to just 9,000 as older residents died and young people moved away to bigger cities. Ten years ago, it became Japan’s first municipality to declare bankruptcy.