MONBETSU, Japan – Mr Hidekazu Yokoyama has spent three decades building a thriving logistics business on Japan’s snowy northern island of Hokkaido, an area that provides much of the country’s milk.It was a radical solution for a problem that has become increasingly common in Japan, the world’s greyest society. As the country’s birthrate has plummeted and its population has grown older, the average age of business owners has risen to around 62.
Mr Yokoyama’s struggle symbolises one of the most potentially devastating economic impacts of Japan’s ageing society. It is inevitable that many small- and medium-size companies will go out of business as the population shrinks, but policy-makers fear that the country could be hit by a surge in closures as ageing owners retire en masse.
While the market has found buyers for the businesses most ripe for the picking, it can seem nearly impossible for many small but economically vital companies to find someone to take over. The company’s task in Mr Yokoyama’s case wasn’t easy. For most Japanese, the town where his business is situated, Monbetsu, which has around 20,000 people and is shrinking, might as well be the North Pole.The only industries are fishing and farming, and they largely go into hibernation as the days grow short and snow piles up to roof eaves. In deep winter, some tourists come to eat salmon roe and scallops and see the ice floes that lock in the city’s modest port.
With no obvious successors, the farms have folded one after another. Decades-high inflation brought on by the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed dozens of holdouts into early retirement. Mr Yokoyama began contemplating retirement about six years ago. But it wasn’t clear what would happen to the business.
“I told them that if you want to take it over, I’d leave it to you, but if you don’t want to do it, I’m giving it all to the next guy,” he said.