January 1, 2025 (Holiday)
New Year's Greetings from Mayor Yasuhiro Sasaki of Hokuryu Town
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Happy New Year! I hope you are all in good health and well-being as we welcome the New Year of Reiwa 7.
Looking back at last year, we welcomed 246,000 tourists from Japan and abroad to our 38th Sunflower Festival. While we are still not close to the number of visitors we had before COVID-19, we feel that the fields of sunflowers in bloom caused large "flowers" to bloom in the hearts of everyone who visited our small town. We owe it all to the cooperation of everyone involved that we were able to promote Sunflower Village so much.
This year too, we will continue to promote industry, encourage relocation and settlement, and build a town that will connect to the future so that the flowers of Hokuryu Town will bloom.
It was a good autumn harvest for agriculture, a key industry. We hope that agriculture will be firmly revived with rice prices that take production costs into account, and that it will play a part in the sustainable development of local communities by developing into a promising industry in the future.
Last year, we established the Town Planning Council for the Future Town Development Project. We will work on policies based on the opinions of our residents to paint a vision for Hokuryu Town that can be predicted for the next 10, 20 years, and beyond. We are exploring what is important to Hokuryu, what its strengths are, and what its challenges are. From there, we will consider what needs to be done, create a "plan," and develop long-term and short-term strategies. We will also gather the numbers that will serve as the basis for what we can do now, and we will develop creative policies by sorting out what we can tolerate and what is necessary.
At the time of the Great Heisei Merger in 2010, there were 2,602 towns and villages, but now there are only 926. It may be that our precious hometowns have changed shape. I believe that Hokuryu Town's efforts will be to support the hometowns that are in everyone's hearts, to help people live stable lives, and to do things that larger municipalities cannot do.
We will continue to work towards "creating a small but shining town," "creating a hometown of the heart," and "creating a town that connects to the future."
"The best thing about this town is the kindness of its people," is something that is often said by people who are not originally from Hokuryu but have decided to live here.
The administrative challenges are piling up. Public transportation issues, updating aging facilities, policies for the elderly, support for child-rearing, community-based school development, agricultural promotion, measures against harmful birds and animals, revitalizing commerce and the sunflower village, improving the appeal of Hokuryu Hot Springs, and more. However, if we can overcome these challenges, they will turn into opportunities. Standing in the wind, accepting and overcoming headwinds with confidence, the wind will eventually stop and the sun will shine.
The policies of "Hokuryu" will influence national policies.
The townspeople will attract people who are connected to the town. We will work together with you to think about what makes Hokuryu unique.
I would like to conclude my New Year's greetings by praying that the new year will be a bright and happy one for everyone.
<Excerpt from "Hokuryu Public Relations" January 2025 issue, No. 713>
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