MINAMITANE, Japan — About 1,000 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, where the East China Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, an island offers a test bed for how Japan might combat the rural decline and depopulation stalking it — if it can create tech jobs that retain young people and attract immigrants.
Tanegashima, closer to Shanghai and Seoul than Tokyo, has fewer than 30,000 people and is best known as the home of Japan’s answer to Cape Canaveral, the rocket launch center of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The next launch is scheduled for June 30.
