[URBAN NOTE] "One Tiny Ski Town Is Defying Japan’s Scary Population Slump"
Bloomberg's Chris Cooper and Katsuyo Kuwako report on how a Hokkaido ski town, Niseko, has avoided depopulation thanks largely to an embrace of the wider world. The performance relative to the rest of Hokkaido, or to small Japanese communities generally, is notable.
Japan’s shrinking population has weighed on the world’s third-biggest economy, alarmed government forecasters and turned some rural communities into veritable ghost towns.
Not so in Niseko, a ski resort community on the nation’s mountainous, northern island of Hokkaido that’s prospering in the face of all the demographic gloom.
The local government has embraced immigration in a way the national government hasn’t. The area’s booming economy has spurred investment in luxury hotels, restaurants, and shops--and attracted local and expat workers who’ve become full-time residents. Niseko’s population grew 2.9 percent last year to 4,952 compared with 2010 levels, the highest mark in four decades. Nationwide, the population slid 0.7 percent over the same period.
“There haven’t been any other towns that have been this successful before,” said Tatsuya Wakao, a consultant at Fujitsu Research Institute. "They did a good job in recognizing the need for foreign tourism."
True, not every rural community is blessed with the ski slopes and hot springs that Niseko enjoys. Should the town’s much larger neighbor Sapporo win its bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2026, Niseko would host the Alpine events for the games and enjoy an economic windfall.
That said, other Japanese ski resorts and tourism centers have fallen on hard times and Niseko offers broader lessons to all struggling rural towns about the power of savvy and sustained marketing as a rising middle class in Asia broadens the region’s tourism opportunities.
Japan’s shrinking population has weighed on the world’s third-biggest economy, alarmed government forecasters and turned some rural communities into veritable ghost towns.
Not so in Niseko, a ski resort community on the nation’s mountainous, northern island of Hokkaido that’s prospering in the face of all the demographic gloom.
The local government has embraced immigration in a way the national government hasn’t. The area’s booming economy has spurred investment in luxury hotels, restaurants, and shops--and attracted local and expat workers who’ve become full-time residents. Niseko’s population grew 2.9 percent last year to 4,952 compared with 2010 levels, the highest mark in four decades. Nationwide, the population slid 0.7 percent over the same period.
“There haven’t been any other towns that have been this successful before,” said Tatsuya Wakao, a consultant at Fujitsu Research Institute. "They did a good job in recognizing the need for foreign tourism."
True, not every rural community is blessed with the ski slopes and hot springs that Niseko enjoys. Should the town’s much larger neighbor Sapporo win its bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2026, Niseko would host the Alpine events for the games and enjoy an economic windfall.
That said, other Japanese ski resorts and tourism centers have fallen on hard times and Niseko offers broader lessons to all struggling rural towns about the power of savvy and sustained marketing as a rising middle class in Asia broadens the region’s tourism opportunities.