In the heart of the Japanese mountains, the villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama are home to treasures of traditional Japanese architecture: thatched cottages with sloping roofs, designed to ...

The plum blossoms and toads are out a month early in the warmest Japanese winter for years. Nevertheless, Japan’s farmers, like farmers anywhere, worry about the weather—and everything else. Last week ...

The once-thriving Japanese hamlet of Nanmoku was known for its silk and timber industries. Today, it is the country's most aged village, with... How Japan is trying to solve the problem of shrinking ...

This village sits along a river running through the mountains, surrounded by forests of cedar and bamboo. The once-thriving hamlet was known for its silk, timber and a starchy root called konjac.

In the tiny village of Tsuchikure, the average age of the residents is 77. Akiko Fujita reports on why this and thousands of rural Japanese communities like it are literally dying out.

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Families in the U.S. and around the world are having fewer children as people make profoundly different decisions about their lives. NPR's series Population Shift: How Smaller Families Are Changing ...