There’s a strange trend in our prefecture these days: building new elementary schools so that they’re “barrier free,” a word which I’m pretty sure originated in Japan that means free from physical challenges to disabled people such as stairs. The schools are made so that they’re much more accessible to those with difficulty getting around, and they’re built on one level rather than on two floors, as has been the norm in the past. The reason for this new approach to school construction is uniquely Japanese and related to its low birth rate: in twenty or thirty years when the schools are no longer needed for children, they can be easily converted into homes to provide care for the elderly. This gave me a bit of a chill when I heard it for the first time — as a big fan of the book and film Children of Men, which tells the story of humanity that has become unable to create new children, it hit rather close to home. Still, rather than build another dam or cover a mountainside in concrete on the off chance that there might be a rockslide someday, building schools so that they can serve multiple purposes in the future seems like a good idea. Remember, according to current projections the population of Japan in the year 3000 is going to be….just 27 people.
