Japan’s people are aging as its snow worsens. That’s a lethal combination

Snow covers Ginzan Onsen, a hot spring resort in Obanazawa, Yamagata Prefecture, northeastern Japan, on Dec. 23. (Kyodo News / Sipa USA via CNN Newsource)

Tokyo — For Yoko Toshima, winter hits harder these days.

“Perhaps it is because I am getting older, but the way the snow falls seems more extreme than before,” she said.

During the warmer months, the 76-year-old’s small hometown in northern Japan seems an ideal place to live, offering lush parks and historical shrines. Daisen’s renowned summertime fireworks displays draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.

But when winter blows in, all that shifts.

“Living alone is fine during the summer, but winter is very challenging because of the snow,” Toshima said.

There were times these past few months, under freezing temperatures, when snow piled up “like a mountain” at Toshima’s doorstep, she said. No matter how hard she tried to clear it, it kept coming back.

“There are days when I cannot do anything for one or two days, and I end up being snowed in,” she said. “I have felt anxious about my own safety. Recently, I have begun to feel that you never know what might happen.”

While her ordeal was arduous, it could’ve been much worse.

At least 68 people died this winter – all but 10 of them over 65 – when record-breaking snow hit the country’s north, including Toshima’s home prefecture of Akita. According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, most died while removing snow.

In neighbouring Aomori, at the tip of Japan’s main island Honshu, snow piled up to 1.7 meters (5.5 feet) high in February, the most in 40 years, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency.

Japan’s aging population is a long-running issue, impeding economic growth and putting immense pressure on the public coffers.

But more immediately, the demographic changes leave many isolated elderly people to face life-threatening blizzards on their own. And, as Toshima suspected, the storms are getting worse, supercharged by climate change.

Satoko Minatoya, 66, who lives alone in Aomori, said that during the winter she tried to access a service offered by the military to help senior citizens clear the snow. But the soldiers appeared to be overwhelmed, too.

The helpline “must have been constantly busy since it rang without anyone answering, and in the end, I gave up,” she said.

“I have no close relatives nearby, so there is no one I can rely on. I try to do as much as I can by myself.”

For decades, elderly citizens have tended to stay in regional Japan, while their children move to major cities for better work opportunities. The snow-prone northern prefectures have a median age of about 50, five years older than that of the capital Tokyo, according to the 2020 census.

It’s not just at home that the snow poses a threat.

Minatoya got into difficulty on the road when her car got covered in snow. Even after an hour trying to remove all the snow, there was a pile on top that she couldn’t reach.

“While driving, that remaining snow slid down onto my windshield blocking my view, nearly causing a car accident,” she recalled.

“As I have gotten older, I’ve lost the physical strength and mental energy to deal with situations like this.”

While snow is hardly new to northern Japan – a region as close to Russia’s Vladivostok as it is to Tokyo – climate change and warming ocean currents off the coast are bringing increasingly unpredictable weather, an expert told CNN.

“It’s like bomb snow,” said climate professor Yoshihiro Tachibana from Mie University in southern Japan, likening this year’s snowfalls to an explosion.

He said icebergs broken away from the Arctic due to warming temperatures have been moving toward Japan’s northern coast, bringing cold mist.

Meanwhile, on the west coast, Japan also gets cold periodic jet streams from Siberia, as wind directions change.

The cold weather alone doesn’t guarantee piles of snow, though. Completing the circle is Japan’s warming ocean – partly caused by the country’s increasingly hot summer – which brings excessive vapour to the area, causing heavy snowfalls.

“More terrible snowfalls (will) occur in the future,” Tachibana warned.

The heavier, denser snow brought about by the abundant moisture in the air make catastrophic roof collapses more likely, Tachibana said.

“This kind of disaster may occur much more frequently,” he added.

This is a major worry for 91-year-old Hiroshi Sasaki, who lives alone in Yokote City, also in Akita prefecture.

It troubled the widower so much that he had called his eldest daughter, who works in Tokyo, a couple of times to discuss it over the past few months. Eventually, they hired a company to remove the snow.

But even as authorities offer to subsidize part of the cost, the fees are still too expensive for some who live on a pension.

Sasaki used to go grocery shopping often. But he has to reduce his grocery runs to once a month, after a worrying fall last winter.

“I slipped,” he told CNN, saying that the fall gave him a concussion.

His daughter has been coming home once a month to accompany him shopping, buying a month’s worth of supplies each time.

The nonagenarian has tried to stay optimistic, joking about the fall sometimes. “They all said I must be indestructible,” he said.

More than one-third of people aged 65 and above live alone in these northern prefectures, researcher Rikiya Matsukura, from Nihon University’s College of Economics, said.

“In highly aged regions, the same level of extreme weather – whether heavy snowfall or intense summer heat – can shift from being an inconvenience to a threat to the very viability of living there,” he said.

Technological breakthroughs – such as automated snow removal or online health care – could improve lives, he added.

During a cabinet meeting last month, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi acknowledged the increasingly brutal snow that wreaks havoc on these aging, remote communities. “We will take proactive, forward-looking measures so that all citizens increasingly burdened by the heavy snowfall can return to their normal daily lives as quickly as possible,” she said.

These days, Toshima’s shoulders and legs have become so weak that she just clears enough snow to walk out of her home. Sometimes, her visiting grandchild helps.

But others aren’t as lucky. “Many of my neighbours are older and live alone, and since there is no one to help them move the snow, daily life is very difficult for them,” she said.

All the challenges prompt one question: to move or not to move?

“This may require difficult but necessary decisions about which regions can realistically be sustained in the long term,” said Nihon University’s Matsukura. “In this sense, the challenge is not only how to support people in place, but also whether continued settlement itself is sustainable.”

But many elderly people in these regions have been taking the same bus, visiting the same bakery and picnicking at the same spot for decades, and have strong ties with their community. Readjusting to a new life would be extremely difficult, many said.

But Minatoya, in Aomori, factors in other concerns. “If I were to call an ambulance in an emergency, it would take time for it to arrive during the winter. The costs of snow removal and heating bills are also high,” she said.

“I am thinking that within a few years I may have no choice but to relocate to an area without snow,” said the Aomori resident of 59 years.

But Toshima, who has been living in Daisen for a similar stretch, is more inclined to stay put, citing her inseverable tie to the neighbourhood.

“I was born and raised here, and I believe that every place has its own sets of disasters,” she said, believing that there is always sunshine after heavy snow.

“It will pass,” she said.