This is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY. I'm Darian Woods, and I'm here with Anthony Kuhn, NPR's international correspondent in Seoul, South Korea. Welcome to the show, Anthony.
这里是THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY。我是Darian Woods,今天我和NPR驻韩国首尔的国际通讯员Anthony Kuhn一起主持节目。欢迎来到我们的节目,Anthony。
Hi, good to be here. Darian, I'm going to give you a glimpse into our possible future today, one that Japan and other countries in East Asia, like China and South Korea, are already facing.
大家好,很高兴来到这里。Darian,我将向大家介绍我们今天可能的未来,日本和中国、韩国等东亚国家已经面临的未来。
Their populations are ageing and shrinking, and that makes it hard to grow their economies.
他们的人口正在老龄化和萎缩,使得经济增长变得困难。
And we've covered aging workforces before on THE INDICATOR, but your reporting trip to the most aged village in the world's most aged country really brought these issues into focus.
我们之前在THE INDICATOR上讨论过劳动力老龄化问题,但您对世界上老龄化程度最高的国家中最老龄化村庄的报道之旅真正使这些问题成为焦点。
Yes, I visited the village of Nanmoku. It's a little hamlet built on both sides of a river, which you're hearing, and a two-lane road that run through the lush, green mountains of Gunma Prefecture, about 80 miles northwest of Tokyo.
是的,我走访了南牧村。这是一个小村庄,建在一条河的两岸,还有一条双车道公路,穿过群马县郁郁葱葱的绿色山脉,在东京西北约80英里处。
I would love to have joined you, but instead, I sat here and learned a bunch of facts, including that aging and depopulation are seen in Japan as this national crisis that's already affecting many aspects of life in Japan.
我本想加入你们的讨论,但我却坐在这里了解到了很多事实,比如老龄化和人口减少在日本被视为一场全国性危机,已经影响到日本生活的方方面面。
It's threatening continued economic stagnation, labor shortages and difficulty in caring for the growing number of elderly.
它威胁着持续的经济停滞、劳动力短缺和照顾日益增多的老年人的困难。
Yes, so today on the show, we're going to zero in on rural depopulation in Japan, and the tiny village of Nanmoku is one of Japan's most closely watched cases in its decadeslong struggle to deal with this issue.
是的,今天在节目中,我们将集中讨论日本农村人口减少的问题,而小村南牧村是日本数十年来应对这一问题最受关注的案例之一。
So in Nanmoku two-thirds of the village's residents are over age 65. Many of its buildings look old and weather-beaten, and there's not much new construction.
在南牧村,三分之二的村民年龄超过65岁。许多建筑看起来陈旧且饱经风霜,新建筑不多。
Now, back in 1955, it was home to 11,000 people. Today, there are less than 1,500. So, Darian, you don't need to be a math whiz to see where things are headed.
1955年,这里居住着11000人。如今,人口不足1500人。Darian,你不需要是数学天才就能看出事情的发展方向。
And at that rate of decline, the village could vanish from the map before long, and so could many others.
按照这样的衰落速度,这个村庄可能很快就会从地图上消失,其他许多村庄也是如此。
By one recent calculation, Japan could lose about 40% of its municipalities over the next century as the countryside depopulates. That's more than 740 cities and towns.
根据最近的一项计算,随着农村人口的减少,日本可能会在下个世纪失去大约40%的市镇,即740多个城镇。
Yes, but the Nanmoku village government is not planning to go down without a fight. Saijo Hasegawa is the village mayor, and he told me that he aims to stabilize the population in the next 15 to 20 years.
是的,但南牧村政府并不打算不战而败。Saijo Hasegawa是村长,他告诉我,他的目标是在未来15到20年内稳定人口。
By then, the village's population is expected to be around 800, about half its current size. We believe we'll be able to keep it at that level from then on.
到那时,该村的人口预计将达到800人左右,约为目前人口的一半。我们相信从那以后我们能够将人口保持在这个水平。
A baby boom is just not in the cards for this village, so he plans to use central and local government funds as financial incentives to lure young people to the village.
这个村庄根本不会出现婴儿潮,所以他计划利用中央和地方政府的资金作为经济激励,吸引年轻人来到这个村庄。
Japan's government is already offering families about $6,800 per child to relocate from Greater Tokyo to areas outside of major cities, including Nanmoku.
日本政府已经为每个从东京首都圈搬迁到南牧等大城市以外地区的家庭提供约6800美元的补助。
There's also an additional amount for people who move to these areas and either start a business there or work for a local small or medium-sized company.
如果人们搬到这些地区创业或在当地中小型企业工作,还可以获得额外补助。
And there actually have been some takers. I spoke to several young Japanese who've made the move to Nanmoku and brought with them a lot of energy and entrepreneurial spirit.
实际上,确实有一些人愿意接受。我采访过几位搬到南牧的日本年轻人,他们带来了很多活力和创业精神。
One was Satomi Oigawa. She's a 25-year-old who moved to Nanmoku from Tokyo two years ago after graduating from college, and she told me that she felt life in Tokyo just didn't really suit her.
其中一位是Satomi Oigawa。她今年25岁,两年前大学毕业后从东京搬到南牧,她告诉我,她觉得东京的生活并不适合她。
I felt like my relations with people in Tokyo were too shallow and broad, so from a young age, I really wanted to live in the countryside.
我觉得我和东京人的关系太肤浅太宽泛了,从小我就非常想住在乡下。
To me, Satomi really seemed to be enjoying integrating into the village society and meeting people, and her job helps her to do that.
在我看来,Satomi似乎真的很享受融入乡村社会和结识新朋友,她的工作帮助她做到这一点。
Like many parts of rural Japan, Nanmoku has a lot of abandoned houses, and her job, working for the village government, is to match these houses with potential new residents.
和日本许多农村地区一样,南牧村有很多废弃的房屋,而她在村政府的工作就是将这些房屋与潜在的新居民进行匹配。
So I followed Satomi around the village as she did her job, and she went up onto a mountainside to visit a farmer named Hachiro Koganezawa.
我跟着Satomi在村子里工作,她爬上山坡去拜访一位名叫Hachiro Koganezawa的农民。
And he was tending to his vegetables and flowers, and he said he's thinking of retiring, but he hasn't done it yet. This man looks like he's in his mid-70s. In fact, he's 91 years old.
他正在照料蔬菜和鲜花,他说他想退休,但还没有退休。这个男人看上去70多岁。事实上,他已经91岁了。
That is something to aspire to, you know, looking a quarter-century younger than his real age. What's his secret? Yes, that's what I was thinking. And here's what Hachiro told me.
这是值得追求的,看起来比实际年龄年轻四分之一世纪。他的秘诀是什么?是的,这就是我所想的。以下是Hachiro告诉我的。
Because of the farmer's spirit, we don't retire. That spirit that we work until we die has been planted in us for generations.
因为农民的精神,我们不会退休。我们工作到死的精神已经植根于我们几代人心中。
OK, that sounds like the special sauce. And is it safe to say a lot of the folks you spoke to share this farmer's attitude?
这听起来像是秘诀。你能肯定地说,你采访过的很多人都和这位农民有同样的心态吗?
Oh, absolutely. There was a 2018 survey which suggests that Nanmoku's elderly residents are stronger physically and cognitively than their counterparts elsewhere in Japan.
当然。2018年的一项调查显示,南牧的老年居民在身体和认知上比日本其他地方的老年人更强。
And besides keeping working and eating healthy, they try to stay socially active and visit their neighbors often.
除了继续工作和健康饮食外,他们还努力积极社交,经常拜访邻居。
Of course, there are quite a few elderly Nanmoku residents in nursing homes, but the ones you see on the street really look quite vigorous.
当然,南牧有不少老年居民住在养老院,但你在街上看到的那些人看起来真的很有活力。
And as for these transplants, they need to stay five years to get the government subsidies, or they'll have to give the money back. And some stay, but others end up leaving because their business ideas don't pan out or they find village life wasn't what they had hoped for.
至于这些移民,他们需要待上五年才能获得政府补贴,否则就必须退还补贴金。有些人留下来了,但其他人最终还是离开了,因为他们的经营理念没有成功,或者他们发现乡村生活并不像他们所希望的那样。
Yes, that's right. I spoke to a 29-year-old resident named Yuta Sato, who moved to Nanmoku some six years ago, and he told me that not everyone in the village actually welcomes newcomers like himself.
是的,没错。我采访了一位29岁的居民,名叫Yuta Sato,他六年前搬到了南牧村,他告诉我,村里并不是所有人都欢迎像他这样的新来者。
Some people say that instead of throwing money around to attract immigrants, they should spend it on the people already living in the village.
有些人说,他们不应该把钱花在吸引移民上,而应该把钱花在已经住在村里的人身上。
He's got a daughter, but the village has no other kids her age, so he's worried that she'll have no classmates in school. And the nearest hospital is an hour's drive away.
他有一个女儿,但村里没有其他和她同龄的孩子,所以他担心她在学校里没有同学。最近的医院离这里有一个小时的车程。
He originally thought he would grow old and retire here. Now he's not even sure the village will survive that long.
他原本以为自己会在这里养老退休。现在他甚至不确定这个村子能撑那么久。
This program is just part of the Japanese government's larger efforts to deal with rural depopulation. The government has spent billions of dollars over the last 30 years, and this effort to entice young families to vanishing villages is just one local example.
该计划只是日本政府应对农村人口减少的一部分举措。政府在过去30年中花费了数十亿美元,而这项吸引年轻家庭前往正在消失的村庄的计划只是当地的一个例子。
Yeah, polls show that most Japanese have been pretty pessimistic about the government's efforts to turn around the country's population decline.
民调显示,大多数日本人对政府扭转该国人口下降的努力持相当悲观的态度。
Turning things around would require drastic reforms and, specifically, a lot of money that many people would not be willing to cough up. I spoke to a sociologist named Masahiro Yamada at Chuo University in Tokyo about this.
扭转局面需要进行彻底的改革,具体来说,需要很多人不愿意拿出的大量资金。我与东京中央大学的社会学家Masahiro Yamada就此事进行了交谈。
I'm worried that Japanese people would prefer to accept a declining birth rate and everyone gradually, equally getting poorer, rather than accepting a big change which causes some people to lose out.
我担心日本人宁愿接受出生率下降和每个人逐渐平等地变穷,也不愿接受导致一些人失去利益的重大变化。
The most likely people to lose out are senior citizens. They currently get most of the welfare benefits, and they represent the nation's largest voting bloc. Government programs to stem population decline might take funding away from them.
最有可能失去利益的人是老年人。他们目前获得了大部分福利,他们代表了该国最大的投票集团。政府遏制人口下降的计划可能会从他们那里夺走资金。
But accepting that gradual population decline doesn't leave much of a future for remote settlements like Nanmoku.
但接受人口逐渐减少的现实,南牧这样的偏远定居点就没有什么未来了。
Japan's population dropped by more than 800,000 people last year. Its population of 125 million is predicted to halve by the century's end.
去年,日本人口减少了80多万。预计到本世纪末,其1.25亿人口将减少一半。
And Japan's not allowing large-scale immigration, so it's not clear where people would come from to repopulate rural areas.
而且日本不允许大规模移民,因此尚不清楚人们会从哪里来重新定居农村地区。
Right. And some Japanese question this seemingly futile effort to slow population decline.
没错。一些日本人质疑这种看似徒劳的减缓人口下降的努力。
They argue that, instead, Japan should take depopulation as an opportunity to address the world's environmental crisis.
他们认为,日本应该把人口减少作为解决世界环境危机的机会。
I spoke to Peter Matanle, a Japan expert at the University of Sheffield in England, and he shares this view.
我采访了英国谢菲尔德大学的日本问题专家彼得·马坦勒,他同意这一观点。
I would urge the Japanese government, and as many Japanese people as possible, to consider the idea that it might be a good thing for Japan to deliberately abandon a lot of these places and to initiate a radical revolution in terms of land-use patterns in Japan, in rural areas.
我敦促日本政府和尽可能多的日本人考虑一下,日本故意放弃许多这样的地方,并在日本农村地区的土地使用模式方面发起一场彻底的革命,这可能是一件好事。
So there's not a lot of discussion of this yet, but what he's suggesting is allowing nature to reclaim these aging, shrinking settlements like Nanmoku and using them to store carbon in forests and let bears, deer and wild boars roam free.
目前对此的讨论还不多,但他的建议是让大自然重新利用这些老化、萎缩的定居点,如南牧村,并利用它们在森林中储存碳,让熊、鹿和野猪自由漫步。
That's wild. Yeah. Well, technically, that's rewilding. Got it. But yeah, that would be a pretty radical shift.
这太野性了。是的。从技术上讲,这就是再野化。明白了。但是这将是一个相当激进的转变。