KOBE--The Sakae Jutaku complex in Nishi Ward, one of the biggest Kobe municipal housing developments, was created as a “new town” during prosperous times in this western port city.

But now, many of the mailboxes in the complex are rusted and sealed with adhesive tape to keep out advertising fliers.

“There are so many unoccupied apartments around here,” said Eiko Maruta, a 79-year-old resident.

Like in many other areas of Japan, the population is dwindling in Hyogo Prefecture and its capital, Kobe.

City officials in May said Kobe’s population could fall below 1.5 million by the end of this year.

Most of the municipalities in Hyogo Prefecture have shrunk in the past decade, including in the Hanshin district in the southeast, a bedroom suburb for Osaka.

Some communities are already showing signs that they will disappear in the years ahead, one depopulation expert said.

Sakae Jutaku was built in the latter half of the 1970s and consists of 590 apartments housed in 25 buildings.

But only 309 apartments, or about half of the total, were occupied as of March this year.

Officials of a residents’ association said only four of the 24 apartments in one of the buildings were inhabited.

“Most of the apartments here were occupied as recently as two decades ago,” said Fujio Suzuki, the 67-year-old head of the association. “The bulk of residents here are elderly now, and many of them have died alone without anybody knowing.”

MAYOR: DEPOPULATION FASTER THAN EXPECTED

Kobe government officials said 24 more apartments in the complex went empty in the 15 months from December 2021. Many of the occupants died or relocated to elderly care facilities.

Authorities stopped accepting new residents two years ago so that the buildings could be repaired. Some were torn down.

Kobe’s population peaked at 1,545,000 in 2011. But the shrinking city was overtaken by Fukuoka in 2015 and by Kawasaki in 2019.

In 2021, Kobe’s population dropped by 9,208, second only to Kyoto’s decline among all municipalities in Japan, internal affairs ministry figures showed.

Kobe had 1,503,245 residents as of June 1 this year, ranking seventh among the 20 ordinance-designated major cities of Japan.

“Our city is losing population faster than we ever expected,” Kobe Mayor Kizo Hisamoto said during a news conference in May.

DECLINE OF ‘NEW TOWNS’

During the high economic growth of the 1960s and in subsequent years, the Kobe government developed large-scale “new towns” in suburban areas, including in Kita and Nishi wards.

Mountains were torn down to prepare housing sites, the dirt removed was used to reclaim land from the sea, and the city gained the nickname “Corporate Kobe.”

Many children who grew up in these new towns moved as adults to downtown Kobe and elsewhere for convenience and other reasons.

City officials said the population of Kobe’s new towns plunged by 29,000 over five years from 515,000 in 2015. However, the number of residents outside the new towns rose by 17,000 during the same period.

Hisamoto said another major factor behind the depopulation is the financial struggle among young people.

“Their wages are not rising, but their social insurance fees are growing, which means they are earning less in take-home pay,” the mayor said. “Few of them get married and decide to have children because of financial reasons. That is a very big problem.”

Health ministry figures show that Kobe’s birthrate per population of 1,000 was only 5.9 last year, its lowest level since records were first available in 1903 and 0.4 point below the national average.

The figure, down 2.1 points from 10 years earlier, placed Kobe fifth from the bottom among ordinance-designated major cities.

DIFFERENT DECLINES

Hyogo Prefecture had 5.38 million residents as of May 1 this year, down 187,000, or 3.4 percent, from a decade earlier.

But the rate of decrease was not particularly steep for a prefecture.

Hyogo’s population based on national censuses dropped 1.3 percent over the five years through 2020. That still put Hyogo in 11th place in terms of growth among all 47 prefectures.

Still, the populations fell in 44 of 49 municipalities and Kobe wards in Hyogo Prefecture over the past decade.

Many areas of the prefecture are facing serious depopulation. The decline rate has exceeded 15 percent in two cities and seven towns in the Harima district in the southwest and the Tajima district in the north.

The town of Kami is the decrease rate leader, followed by Sayo and Shin-Onsen.

Depopulation grows sharper with increasing distance from Kobe and the Hanshin district.

In contrast, Kobe’s Chuo Ward saw a 13.5-percent rise in population over the decade.

The population also grew in Kobe’s Hyogo and Nada wards and in the cities of Akashi and Amagasaki.

Akashi worked out original parenthood assistance measures when Fusaho Izumi was mayor.

City officials said 1,300 more people moved into Akashi than those who moved out last year.

An estimated 870 of Akashi’s net gain came from Kobe, and the figure has risen over the past three years, the officials added.

Asked to comment on the trend, Kobe Mayor Hisamoto said, “Akashi has land plots suited to development, where life is convenient and housing rents are low.”

He added that he believes the different parenthood assistance measures in Kobe and Akashi have “almost nothing to do” with the trend.

Former Akashi Mayor Izumi gave his views about the Kobe-to-Akashi trend on social media on May 24.

“Akashi’s measures make it easier to raise children and are more considerate to citizens than Kobe’s,” he argued.

EXPERT: SETTLEMENTS ‘DISAPPEARING’

“Shops and public transportation services will withdraw from communities under further depopulation, and residents will no longer be able to maintain their lives,” said Keisuke Nakashima, an associate professor at the Kobe City University of Foreign Studies who is well-versed in depopulation issues.

Nakashima said public administrative bodies will also find it difficult to maintain infrastructure, such as water supply and sewerage, for a dwindling number of residents, and the last remaining inhabitants could be forced to relocate.

He also noted that schools are being integrated, and more local governments around Japan are working together under frameworks of “wide-area administration.”

“That means settlements are practically disappearing. When schools are gone, communities appear less attractive to families with small children, and these places are shunned even more,” he said.

Nakashima said that to address depopulation, local governments must get businesses and residents involved and work from a long-term perspective covering several decades.

“Japan’s local governments, unfortunately, are not good at taking such measures,” he said.