By Yuta Iida,
As Japan continues to experience a population drain in rural areas, many post offices have begun hosting unmanned retail spaces inside their facilities to support seniors who cannot travel long distances to shop.
Some 3,000 of the about 24,000 post offices nationwide have embraced the service, stocking vegetables, daily necessities and other items.
In the town of Misato, Miyazaki Prefecture, southwestern Japan, elderly people gather at the Nyushita Post Office before noon. "I can buy vegetables here and I enjoy talking with the postmaster and friends of mine," said Kimi Oda, an 89-year-old woman who lives nearby. She had bought two bags of tomatoes produced by a local farmer.
Post offices must apply to Japan Post Co. to get display racks, while local shops supply products, arrange displays and later collect the payments. The sellers pay a monthly fee of 4,400 yen ($33.00) to lease the space.
The Misato post office run by postmaster Kohei Nakada, 46, put up shelves in November in cooperation with a local agricultural products store. A total of 25 items, including sweets and detergents, are available.
People aged 65 and older accounted for 52.5 percent of the population in Misato as of October, making it the fastest-aging municipality in the prefecture.
Supermarkets and home appliance shops there have been closing down one after another. For many elderly people who have already turned in their driver's licenses, shopping by themselves is out of the question as the nearest store is around 5 kilometers away.
Nakada decided to open a shop inside his post office to make sure "meal times are not a struggle for seniors," he said. "I can also take note if they have any health problems."
According to Japan Post, the service started at post offices nationwide in February 2018.
Takehiko Segawa, in charge of advertising in the merchandise sales department at Japan Post, said the strength of post offices is that they cannot be easily closed, unlike general stores.
Hosting retail spaces makes them even more valuable to people in communities, especially seniors, he said.
In Okinawa Prefecture, a post office has a popular "souvenir" corner handling goods from 20 suppliers. Segawa said that Japan Post plans to increase the number of post offices with unmanned in-house retail spaces to between 6,000 and 8,000.
Post offices are also expected to complement government administrative services, a role that is expected to grow as municipalities in depopulated areas see a drop in tax revenues, making it difficult to continue existing services without cutting costs.
In Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, for instance, the Yasuoka village government closed its sole branch in July 2019. It has since delegated the issuance of residence certificate copies and other certificates and the acceptance of document submissions to the nearby Nukuda Post Office.
But many other services cannot be legally delegated, such as the issuance of the Individual Number Card, commonly known as the My Number Card. Residents must still visit remote village offices to receive the services in such cases.
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