A local woman (front) teaches a tourist how to fish for horse mackerel at a port on Ojika Island in Nagasaki Prefecture.A local woman (front) teaches a tourist how to fish for horse mackerel at a port on Ojika Island in Nagasaki Prefecture. Credit: KYODO

Initiatives to cope with their dwindling communities include ideas focused on tourism, education and encouraging outsiders to relocate to them.

Ojika Island in Nagasaki Prefecture, an islet with a population of 2,500, now attracts around 20,000 tourists a year with a program offering visitors a chance to experience the traditional life of an islander.

The town of Osakikamijima is also trying to lure a branch campus of the College of the Atlantic in Maine. It has already exchanged a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. school on future cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

“Our goal is to have education from elementary through university levels being completed on the island,” Osakikamijima Mayor Yukinori Takata said.

The island’s population has declined to around 7,800 from its peak of 25,000, with those aged 65 or older accounting for 47 percent.

Read more…