How Japan Is Turning into A Ghost Town

Japan’s population is shrinking. Deaths are rising while birth rates are sinking. This has led to a new problem – around 11 million vacant houses. How severe is the situation?

Living in Japan for about a year and seeing some of it I've met business owners who are packing up their small shops from the fringes and moving to the bigger cities. Some is probably due to strict covid measures and lost income, but some can be attributed to policies that cause incentives for Tokyo and Osaka to grow and suck up most of the people.

There are incentives to move to less populated areas, but seems even in this case the culture here is for newer suburbs/towns to be built next to older ones. The working culture isn't suited to working from home and the current cycle is to raise kids more in urban areas with convenience of location.

It was raising kids in fresh air though some decades back and this will likely swing back in the future when people get collectively sick of the urban sprawl again for raising small kids. Anyway, it appears complicated and Japan wouldn't be well served to just welcome another culture on mass, as they would also drift towards the cities for economic opportunities. Even half of a lot of people is still a lot of people.

Seems coming from Australia that places could live to a high standard with a tenth of the population here.