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The story
Starting in October, the city of Kitami in Hokkaido raised the price of its designated 45-liter trash bags to 135 yen each. The city, known for onions and yakiniku (grilled meat), had a population of over 120,000 after merging with three towns in 2006, but has since shrunk to around 106,000. Kitami is pushing ahead with cuts to public facilities and the closure of nursery schools, aiming to achieve a fiscal effect of 3 billion yen by next fiscal year. On 5ch, comments ranged from criticism of high public-employee salaries to skepticism about whether municipal mergers and consolidation actually work, and even debate over whether to accept more foreign residents.
In Kitami, Hokkaido, which is facing a fiscal crisis, 45-liter trash bags now cost 135 yen each as of this month. At the same time, the city is ramping up new revenue-generating efforts in a push toward fiscal health.
A funding shortfall of over 3 billion yen every year
Kitami is known as a town of onions and yakiniku. When it was formed by merging with three towns in 2006, its population topped 120,000 — but it has since declined to around 106,000.
Source: news.tv-asahi.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
National tax revenue for FY2025 hits ¥84.2 trillion, a record for the 6th straight year — corporate tax revenue grows on improved business earnings
July 2, 2026, 12:33 PM (updated July 2, 2026, 5:32 PM) [Subscriber-only article]
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA262UA0W6A620C2000000/
It was revealed on the 2nd that the national government's general account tax revenue for FY2025 topped ¥80 trillion for the first time,
coming in at around ¥84.2 trillion.
They're jacking up public employees' salaries with tax money way too much
Replying to myself
I hit send before fixing it
weird sentence, my bad orz (orz = a kaomoji for kneeling in despair/embarrassment)
Like, 'if we make people pay, they'll stop throwing stuff out' kind of logic
Where I live, illegal dumping spiked after they started charging for bags
But fiscally healthy municipalities don't want to take on dead weight, so they refuse
Japan's this small and yet there are way too many municipalities to begin with
Kitami's municipal merger was just a failure
Consolidation doesn't change the number of public employees, so it barely helps
Feels like it's fine for a municipality to end up unable to even repair its roads
I feel like applying the whole 'running a deficit' mindset to local governments is wrong in the first place
I heard their taxes are among the highest in the country
and their public employees work for basically minimum wage — is that still the case?
I heard public employee salaries have actually gone up a lot, funded by taxes
Maybe try reviving the town with curling? Just a thought
They went to the trouble of building a curling rink, but there's barely any seating for spectators
This is probably another case of a 'box' building funded by merger subsidies that just drove up maintenance costs
It's not really a place anyone but the long-settled elderly can live in
Young people all head south to the cities, so it's a municipality headed for extinction
It's got a national university, even if it's bottom-tier, so there are plenty of young people around
Though there might be other things they should be cutting instead
The mayor finally started making cuts after saying about two years ago, 'At this rate, Kitami will go bankrupt'
Before that it was reckless spending — they reportedly had as many libraries as Sapporo, a city with more than 10 times the population
The reason there's no money is that public employees' tax-funded salaries are way too high
Kitami should just become the Vienna of Japan
Even accounting for inflation and a strong euro, that's crazy
EU bureaucrats always take things to extremes
Turns out you can just buy them normally on Rakuten and places like that
Unlike Tokyo, in Hokkaido this is probably fine as is
Factor in the twice-yearly bonuses and it's probably more like 300 million
>just Kitami's 25 city council members alone cost over 100 million yen a year in compensation
100 million a year for 25 people is actually pretty cheap for city council members, no?
They're also cutting other public facilities among other things
The city has been reducing public facilities and closing nursery schools within the city since last fiscal year.
Through these efforts, it aims to generate a fiscal effect of roughly 3 billion yen by next fiscal year.
They should just cut public employees' salaries…
Rural areas with fiscal troubles are already slashing public employee salaries left and right
Kitami has frozen public employee salaries for three years
The plan is to suspend the pay raises recommended by the National Personnel Authority for three years, freeing up 500 million yen
Then the Chinese military and the US military will start doing joint drills there
Or a final disposal site for nuclear waste (ry (ry = trailing off, a common 5ch abbreviation meaning 'and so on, you know the rest')
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Kitami merged with the three towns of Tanno, Tokoro, and Rubeshibe in 2006, pushing its population above 120,000 — but commenters in the thread point out that after the merger, the number of public facilities grew to a level out of proportion with the city’s size, leaving it with as many libraries as Sapporo, a city with more than ten times its population. Yubari City, which was designated a fiscal reconstruction entity in 2007, is often cited for context as a precedent among municipalities grappling with population decline and worsening finances. Readers may easily get the wrong impression here: charging for designated trash bags is already standard practice in many municipalities across Japan, not some unusual measure unique to Kitami. The thread was split over whether freezing public employee salaries and municipal mergers actually work, and the discussion also branched into the separate question of whether to accept more foreign residents.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Kitami City, Hokkaido] Designated trash bags now 135 yen each — fiscal crisis from population decline — funding shortfall of over 3 billion yen every year — various ideas to boost revenue“.
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