Regional Revitalization: What Should be Done to Maintain Functions of Local Govts?

Editorial

16:34 JST, July 12, 2025

Local governments are facing many challenges, such as depopulation and preparation for large-scale disasters. However, it cannot be said that a light is being shined on these issues amid the House of Councillors election campaign.

The ruling and opposition parties should compete on measures that look squarely at the reality of regional areas.

Japan’s population is declining by about 600,000 every year. Last year, a private panel of experts made headlines when it said that 744 municipalities could disappear in the future due to a decrease in the number of younger women. The outflow of people to urban areas is a serious problem for regional areas.

In an effort to stem the outflow of young people, local governments are racking their brains for measures to combat such issues as the low birth rate, but only a limited number of them have had a significant impact with their efforts.

In the first place, local governments will only get exhausted if they compete with each other for a small portion of the population. It is time for local governments to consider what they should be like in the future on the premise of a declining population.

However, the proposals made by the ruling and opposition parties never seem to have a firm vision for the future of local governments.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party is proposing the promotion of living in two regions by traveling between urban and regional areas. However, the party has not presented any concrete measures to achieve this goal.

Both the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Democratic Party for the People are calling for the transfer of authority and financial resources to local governments with the aim of an equal relationship with the central government.

The central and local governments have so far been promoting decentralization with the theme that what can be done by local governments should be done by local governments. However, with the shrinking population, local governments can no longer afford to take on a variety of tasks.

Doesn’t the idea of promoting a decentralized system, proposed by the CDPJ and other parties, stick too much to conventional thinking?

As a result of many municipalities merging in the Heisei era (1989-2019), their number in Japan has been almost halved from more than 3,200. While administrative efficiency has been improved, the population decreased further in areas located far from the central parts of administrative areas.

If the population continues to decline, smaller municipalities will not be able to provide medical and nursing care. It could also become difficult to maintain administrative services such as garbage collection.

In reality, in the field of nursing care insurance, there is a shortage of professional staff. There are many cases in which multiple municipalities have formed joint associations to cover their areas in conducting examinations to determine whether people require nursing care.

In Hokkaido and elsewhere, it is reportedly becoming increasingly difficult to secure technical staff for surveying and restoring houses and roads when they are damaged by earthquakes.

To maintain administrative functions with fewer staff, it is essential to promote digitalization. In the mid- to long-term, another option is to accelerate discussions on creating associations for public services to cover several municipality areas and further merging municipalities, while eliminating the adverse effects involving mergers.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, July 12, 2025)