The passing of O-bon (the festival of the dead), seems an appropriate time to reflect on the declining population in Japan. While the population continues to decline, depopulation is also occurring in farming communities and on Japan's small islands. As an islander myself, I am confronted with the question: Are islanders becoming an endangered species?
When I came to Shiraishi Island 10 years ago, the population was 900. The day I moved here, the number briefly jumped to 901, but this only lasted a few days until someone died. And this pattern of people dying has continued uninterrupted. Is it due to global warming? Loss of habitat? Maybe.
With the island habitat threatened more and more by global warming, which is bringing bigger and more frequent typhoons, the islanders have adapted amazingly well: Sea walls have been erected, and we've developed an innate sense of jumping out of bed at high tide to check the water level during a typhoon. So while we have been successful in preserving the species, we remain under threat.
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