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FOCUS: Record heavy snow hits elderly people across Japan+
(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, Jan. 10_(Kyodo) _ Record heavy snow in Japan is disrupting traffic and causing deaths across the country, prompting Tokyo to try to take quick action.
The snow is causing not only financial problems but also challenges for Japan's aging society in areas with small populations. With population decreases in these areas, networks of neighbors are disappearing and some elderly people have been forced to die lonely.
The Minakami branch of the Minakami town government in Gunma Prefecture, where the snow is more than 2 meters deep, is kept busy responding to complaints from citizens chiefly about the slow mobilization of snowplows.
Every day, the municipal government mobilizes all 11 snowplows from around 4 p.m. to remove snow before commuting hours. In a normal winter, a snowplow spends 200 hours on the job, but this year, each has already spent close to 150 hours.
"We cannot do the job within the initial budget," a branch official said.
Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is receiving financial requests from local governments in trouble with heavy snow. The ministry usually extends an ordinary local grant tax totaling about 120 billion yen and a special grant tax amounting to some 25 billion yen each year for snow removal.
The ministry is now figuring out the amount of such taxes to be granted in March, but a ministry official said, "The amount will certainly swell considerably."
A shortage of money is not the sole problem. On Dec. 24, an official at the town of Iinan in Shimane Prefecture visited the home of an 81-year-old woman living alone and found she was not there.
He tried to locate her with the help of nearby residents. She was found dead an hour later in an irrigation ditch in front of her home. It is believed she was pushed into the ditch by snow from the roof.
Thirty-five percent of the town's population is aged 65 or more, and town officials regularly visit those living alone. "We could have saved her if we had visited her earlier," said an official.
The Gojoume town in Akita Prefecture, where a record snowfall of 137 centimeters was recorded last Thursday, has created a "countermeasure headquarters."
Based on reports from local welfare officials, government officials visited elderly people's homes the following day. The next day, all the officials were mobilized to remove snow from the roofs of the homes of those living alone.
The town of Ashoro, Hokkaido, has begun a project to create a "compact town" that involves demolishing 76 old houses scattering around the town and building 52 new houses in the town center by fiscal 2009.
By concentrating residents in one place, "we will try to improve administrative services," said a town official.
"It is necessary to collect residents in places where administrative eyes can reach," said Naoki Atsumi, chief researcher at the Fujitsu Research Institute. "Otherwise, administration will be in trouble about how to help the elderly each time a disaster occurs."
Toshio Yamagata, a professor at the University of Tokyo, said warmer sea water near Japan has caused a heavy snow, and "this situation will continue hereafter."
"A cold air mass over western Japan continued for a month, bringing heavy snow," said Koji Yamazaki, a Hokkaido University professor. "There will likely be a very cold air mass again in one or two months."
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