(Bloomberg) — After three decades of stagnation in Japan, one of the most visible signs of renewal can be found in a stretch of old cabbage fields on its southernmost main island. Apartment blocks, hotels and auto dealerships are springing up near a new semiconductor plant set amid farmland in the prefecture of Kumamoto, which has easy access across the seas to China, Taiwan and South Korea. The plant, operated by global chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
, launched this year and one more is planned nearby. Wages and land prices in the area are up sharply, as demand feeds into a burgeoning ecosystem of suppliers and related businesses. With jobs opening up, the population is mushrooming.
Within an hour’s drive of the plant, however, the town of Misato shows more familiar scenes of economic distress. Once busy shopping streets are now lined with shuttered store fronts. The population is roughly one-third of its 24,300 peak in 1947.
Instead, the number of roaming deer and wild boar is growing, prompting locals to protect their crops with netting. Campaign posters for the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party line the main road as it threads its way through rice paddies. One of them declares: “Bringing you the feeling of economic revitalization.
” “I don’t feel it because we farmers are barely making ends meet,” said Kazuya Takenaga, 67, as he tended his fields of asparagus and rice. The rising costs of fertilizers, energy and utilities have eaten into .
