2010 年 82 巻 2 号 p. 126-136
The purpose of this paper is to report the present conditions of the mountain villages in Japan and to offer viewpoints for regional policy. The traditional mountain village societies in Japan are rapidly aging because of the fact that the industries that have historically supported these villages—namely agriculture and forestry—are no longer relevant. The government increased taxes for supporting mountain villages in order to fund the constructions of roads and infrastructure projects for the region since 1970. However, revenue from the increased taxes was negatively offset by the continuing proportional decrease in population of the region, rendering the funds generally ineffective. My proposal to halt the economic recession of the mountain villages is to promote the forestry and agriculture industries directly to urban areas. This includes strategies and programs set up to enable the mountain villages to sell and distribute their products directly to urban regions.
