Nagoro is typical of the thousands of communities turning into ghost towns or at best, open-air museums, frozen in time - a trend evident even in downtown Tokyo and in nearly or completely empty villages in the city's suburbs.

Nagoro是成千上萬個變為鬼城或露天博物館的典型社區之一。這種老齡化趨勢甚至在東京（Tokyo）市中心和城郊幾乎或完全成空的村莊中尤為明顯。

The one-street town is mostly abandoned, its shops and homes permanently shuttered.

只有一條街道的小鎮幾乎被遺棄，商店和房屋被永久關閉了。

With no youngsters left to raise, the local elementary school closed two years ago. Now Ms Tsukimi sometimes guides visitors through the spotless classrooms populated with scarecrow students and teachers.

由于沒有年輕人，當地小學兩年前就關閉了。現在，月見綾野有時會帶領游客參觀放滿稻草人學生和老師的干凈教室。

As Japan grew increasingly affluent after the Second World War, younger Japanese abandoned the countryside, flooding into the cities for jobs in factories and service industries, leaving their elders to tend small farms.

日本在二戰（the Second World War）后愈加富裕，日本的年輕人因此離開家鄉，涌進城市的工廠和服務行業尋找生計，將他們的老人留在家中務農。

Greater Tokyo, with more than 37million people, and Osaka-Kobe, with 11.5million, account for nearly 40 per cent of the country's 127million people, with another 10million scattered in a handful of provincial capitals.

首都東京擁有超過3700萬人口，大阪和神戶人口有1150萬，幾乎占全國1.27億人口的40%。其它1000萬人分布在少量的省會城市。

'There's been this huge sucking sound as the countryside is emptied,' said Joel Cohen, a professor at Columbia University's Laboratory of Populations.

哥倫比亞大學人口實驗室（Columbia University's Laboratory of Populations）教授喬·科恩（Joel Cohen）表示：“城市人口的膨脹使得農村變空。”

Meanwhile, a falling birthrate means there are too few people to repopulate rural areas as the rapidly ageing population left tending the fields die off.

與此同時，下降的出生率意味著，隨著迅速老齡化的農村剩余人口相繼死亡，重新注入農村地區的人口過少。