This Japanese Town Has Only One Resident (and a Cat)

I met them both.

About 300 miles west of Tokyo, in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture, along the Sea of Japan’s coastline, lies a postcard-perfect village.

Ozuchi flaunts rolling hills, ancient forests, rice paddies, red-roofed houses, and mountains that flow with spring water. But the most significant thing about this tiny village is that there are hardly any people.

Through efforts to preserve structures and reinvigorate the land, Noboru Nimaida, 71, has become a hometown hero and fearless preservation advocate. Born and raised in this village that once had 300 residents, he—like many young adults—moved to greener pastures for work and social life. For him, it was Kyoto and Osaka. “I enjoyed life in the big city,” he said through a translator, “as long as I had money.”

But on a visit home to see a friend, Nimaida was shocked to learn many of Ozuchi’s residents had relocated—yet the village’s 44 homes, dating back to the late 1930s, remained intact. In 1938, local children caused a fire that burned almost the entire village down, which is why the homes are not as old as those in the surrounding region.

Every May, the Quell Fire Festival, hosted in Ozuchi, pays homage to the fire. Ozuchi is the innermost village in Kaga’s eastern region. Kanazawa, the capital city, has a population of 463,254.

In some cases, Ozuchi’s homeowners now live in another part of Japan, lured by access to culture, employment, and the buzz of a big city. In other instances, the homes are managed by the original owners’ children or grandchildren, who do not reside in them. Many of the original inhabitants, says Nimaida, were sent to Hokkaido–Japan’s northernmost island–to cultivate land there.

This village is not the only spot in Japan with a declining population—much of that is due to a surge in the number of elderly people (it’s estimated that 29.9% of Japan is over the age of 65 and expects to rise to 38% by 2070, and one in 10 Japanese are 80 years or older) and a lower-than-usual birth rate.

Nimaida shares a home—the only one in the village that’s occupied—with his seven-year-old cat, Casa, while his wife lives in a nearby village. In his home is a Japanese-style fireplace to keep the rooms warm.

The town has not been impervious to changing times, nor has it shied from publicity. In Ozuchi, the coldest temperatures of the year are in January, at around 23 degrees Fahrenheit. While the winter’s snowfall used to be over six feet, it’s now less than two feet. The village’s best viewpoint is from its observatory, which appeared in a Japanese horror film called Ushikubi Mura (or Ox-Head Village), directed by Japanese filmmaker Takashi Shimizu and released in 2022, starring Japanese model Koki (Mitsuki Kimura). On a tour, visitors can also walk through the village’s cemetery. Still, time takes its toll on the infrastructure.

One obstacle to restoring the homes is protecting their walls with cedar-bark coverings. Cedar bark is harvested in May and June, and in recent years, this natural material has become more expensive to buy. Another challenge is that spring water stemming from the mountains amounts to only enough for Nimaida. Investments in infrastructure would be needed to allow for more water access and availability.

Besides restoring the homes, Noboru’s other focus is preserving the land. This includes planting vegetable gardens (along with introducing cabbage) and harvesting from rice paddies.

One way he’s making this happen is through voluntourism, where visitors can help by leading tours, rehabbing homes, and gardening. Since 2013, he has partnered with NGO NICE (Never-Ending International workCamps Exchange) to organize these workcamps. Based on the season, the work could include rice cultivation, snow removal, chopping wood, and fieldwork. Volunteers are provided with a place to stay in the village, which is also reachable via a 2.5-hour bullet-train ride from Tokyo to Kaga, followed by a 30-minute car ride.

Financial contributions come from paid tours, which were introduced five years ago.

Unlike the one-euro homes for sale in Italy attracting fixer-upper-minded expats in hopes of reviving sleepy towns by doubling or tripling the population, Nimaida has no plans to do that here. “I want to leave these houses as they are now,” he said through a translator. “I don’t want this village to be like a tourist place.”

Instead, he’d like the homes, when finished with restoration, to resemble what they looked like during the 1940s and 1950s. After that came a population decline. By 1965, there were only 70 people in Ozuchi. So instead of modernizing and revitalizing, as other abandoned towns around the world seek to do, he’d like to maintain the village’s architectural splendor so that it can continue to welcome visitors.

Above all, by preserving the town, Nimaida hopes this ensures it will be around for another 100 years. In 2011, the village was designated as an Important Preservation Area for Groups of Traditional Buildings, a sign that there is definite support for Nimaida’s dream.