User:HelloAnnyong/Translated/Genkai shuraku

Genkai shūraku (限界集落) is a Japanese term used to describe villages that have experienced depopulation to the point where more than half of the people living there are over the age of 65, and where preserving community life (such as ceremonial occasions within a family) is endangered.

Summary
The term refers to the rapid rise in depopulation and an aging population in mountain villages and outlying islands. Villages facing this sort of situation have seen the functions of a community - local government autonomy, maintaining of roads, and ceremonial occasions - rapidly declining, and are facing losing these altogether. Therefore the term genkai (限界) is used to describe these places. The full term genkai shūraku is used to describe places that already do not have a generation of children entering school or minors in general, or where old persons living solitary lives are the only ones left.

Chronology of proposal
Akira Ōno, a professor of emeritus at Nagano University first proposed the concept in 1991 while teaching humanities at Kochi University. Originally, Ōno's research was about the decline and rebuilding of forestry. In particular, he focused on how the importing of lumber caused a decline in forestry, and also caused a decrease in population and the aging of the population. Also, the lack of tending of cedar and cypress planted forests and its ruination, and its decline in of itself. While doing an investigation of the villages, in order to point out the state of things, he felt that the word 'depopulation' was somehow insufficient. He therefore created the two words genkai jichitai (限界自治体) and genkai shūraku.

He used the first term genkai jichitai to refer to local governments where more than half the population was over the age of 65. The second term, genkai shūraku is a subdivision of this. Another term, jungenkai shūraku (準限界集落) describes the circumstances where the ration of people over 55 passes over 50%. Still, once a village passes genkai shūraku, it is termed shōmetsu shūraku (消滅集落).

According to Ōno, in 2000, Ōtoyo, Kōchi was the only genkai jichitai, but in 2015 there would be 51 such villages, and 2030 there would be 144. However, these numbers do not take into account a number of villages that merged together.

In 2005, Nanmoku, Gunma, Kaneyama, Fukushima, and Shōwa, Fukushima were also classified as genkai jichitai. In 2006 Yūbari, Hokkaidō became a local body that needed help from the federal government for its debts, and its percentage of elderly over the age of 65 was over 41%. Before the village received financial reform, the possibility of outright vanishing was a pressing issue.

Urban genkai shuraku
In recent years, a new form of genkai shuraku (i.e. aside from the depopulation issues) has arisen. In commuter towns and former new residential areas, large-scale public multi-unit apartments have been concentrating on having the elderly and single people move in, and decades ago when nuclear families moved into these buildings all at once, the families' children have now become independent and have left the parents' generation there. Though these areas are not limited per se, these areas have seen a sharp rise in the percentage of elderly people living there. In these areas, living life has become difficult, and the cooperative systems have generally broken down, so it is not unlike the situation in rural villages, remote villages and islands.

Criticism
There is criticism against using the term genkai shuraku.

In recent years the MIC, MLIT and MAFF have not used the term, but rather phrases such as kisotekijouken no kibishii shuraku (基礎的条件の厳しい集落) and iji ga konnan-na shuraku (維持が困難な集落). Still, in some self-governing bodies there has been restraint to use the term, such as in Okayama and Yamauchi prefectures, and other terms are used instead.

Factual investigation of genkai shuraku
In 1998 the National Land Agency conducted a survey that said there were at least 2,000 villages that would eventually disappear. More recently, two more surveys have been conducted.

MAFF (2005)
In 2005 MAFF commissioned a committee on rural development to do a survey on the true state of genkai shuraku (March 2006). According to the results, there were an estimated 1403 villages that were found to be in danger. These results were based on census results in agricultural villages.

2006 MLIT Investigation
In April 2006, MLIT commissioned a survey on the state of depopulating areas. (The internim survey was released in January 2007 and the final report in August 2008.) The report stated that, of the 62,273 villages that were visited, 775 of them were depopulating.

These were the main points:
 * There were 7878 villages (12.7%) were more than half the population was over 65.
 * 2917 (4.7%) villages were having difficulty with maintaining function.
 * 423 villages had the possibility of vanishing within 10 years (with another 2220 potentially vanishing sooner or later.)
 * This total number was 284 higher than the total from the survey done in 1999.

Still, it is necessary to keep in mind that in this survey, the term "shuraku" meant "permanent agricultural villages with a minimum number of homes, with people who have a definite area with basic livelihood, and were part of the administrative ward".