Figure 2-2-38

Shimagawa District in Yusuhara-machi is inhabited by 583, with an aging population ratio of 49.9% (as of March 31, 2014). Since the only filling station in the district closed in January 2013, concerns loomed over difficulties maintaining a supply of heating oil in winter and securing living necessities. The Community Action Center Shimagawa Promotion Committee was then organized in a bid to diffuse these concerns. After a debate, the committee decided to incorporate a joint-stock company with resident investment. Upon incorporation, the company opened a filling station and launched a local products sales business, offering services of vital importance to the residents' living, such as fitting the residents' cars with snow tires in winter, as well as filling them up. A store located in the premises of the center sells agricultural produce grown by the local farmers, farm implements and tobacco to fill residents' needs. There is a privately run store in the neighborhood but is to close in the future. Plans are underway to let the Community Action Center take over the shop function of the store after it closes.

## Miyama-cho, Nantan City, Kyoto Prefecture (Hiraya District)

The Miyama-cho is located at about the center of Kyoto Prefecture. Its Hiraya District is inhabited by 837 with an aging population ratio of 45% (as of March 31, 2015). Positioned at crossroads between a national highway and a prefectural highway, Hiraya had progressed as a center of the town housing a variety of facilities, public and private, including a JA (Japan Agricultural Cooperatives) store, a Health and Welfare Center and a medical clinic. With a larger-scale merger of branches of JA in 2000, the closure of the JA store was decided. The decision threatened that elderly people might experience inconvenience shopping foodstuffs and daily necessities. Talks among local residents were advanced in the initiative of a regional development association. As a result, the taking-over of the business of the JA store with joint capital investment from the locals in Hiraya was approved. In 2002, a shop managed by the locals themselves came into being as “Furatto Miyama.” Because the store is located on a national highway that carries heavy traffic flowing from other regions, it comes

Michi-no-Eki “Fureai Hiroba” (Exchange Plaza) (Hiraya District, Miyama-cho, Nantan City, Kyoto Prefecture)

Source) MLIT

complete with a shop that sells local products directly to tourists. In 2005, Furatto Miyama was registered as a Michi-no-Eki to form a regional hub, along with existing neighboring facilities, such as General Agricultural Promotion Center, Elderly People Community Center and parking spaces.

The site is packed with a complete set of service facilities needed by the locals to live their day-to-day lives, from selling daily necessities at Furatto Miyama, a $ Michi-no-Eki $ , to providing weekday medical care services at Miyama Medical Clinic, which is a publicly built and privately run facility adjoining the $ Michi-no-Eki $ , and preventive inoculation, medical examinations and mini-day care services at Health and Welfare Center.

The Michi-No-Eki also serves as a compact hub supporting local resident’s livelihood with a community bus stop adjoining and with a demand-responsive bus (taxi) in service to ensure accessibility from villages in the hinterland.

Further, since dairy farming has traditionally been promoted in the Miyama area, a regionally branded product labeled “Miyama Milk” is available. A dairy product processing facility makes integral part of the $ Michi-no-Eki $ . As dairy products are sold at a shop in the $ Michi-no-Eki $ , it serves as a tool of migration to a sixth industry leveraging specialty products.

## (Conclusions)

A bill for the Act on Making Partial Amendments to the Act on the Local Revitalization Act that has been submitted for deliberation at the 189 session of the Diet extends special measures to those projects that are based on a regional revitalization plans that provides for voluntary, autonomous regional efforts, namely, it allows those projects that aim at forming forms of regional revitalization within a regional daily living area, such as a village, or at maintaining and using farmland to be included in the regional revitalization plan. Further, the law authorizes the transportation of small loads of cargoes by onerous passenger transporters aboard their private vehicles as a business to be promoted as integral part of these projects only to such extent that cargoes are collected and delivered within the village living area.

The law is expected to accelerate the formation of a “compact hub,” or a cluster of livelihood and welfare services concentrated within a given area and that is connected to surrounding villages on a transport network or the like.