A School Closure, a Petition and a Referendum That Cannot Bind
The mountain town of Kanayama in Mie Prefecture has 6,800 residents; 38% are 65 or older. The school-age population fell from 900 in 2000 to 410 in 2020. The town runs two elementary schools. The mountain-side school has 96 pupils across six grades. The Board of Education has voted to close it and bus the children 45 minutes each way to the valley school, saying the merger saves ¥180 million a year, while new buses and drivers cost ¥60 million a year. The town assembly approved the closure by 9 votes to 7.
A residents' group collected 1,240 valid signatures from an electorate of 5,400 and formally asked the mayor to submit a 'resident referendum ordinance' to the assembly, so that the closure can be put to a vote. The mayor replies: 'The assembly has already decided. A local referendum could only ever be advisory, and school matters belong to the Board of Education.' The assembly must respond to the request at its next session.
1. Is the mayor legally correct? Explain what the signature campaign can and cannot achieve, and who holds authority over the school.
Read the worked answer
First, the arithmetic. The direct-request threshold is 1/50 of the electorate: 5,400 ÷ 50 = 108. The group has 1,240, far above it.
What the request can achieve. Under the Local Autonomy Law (地方自治法 art. 74), a representative may request the enactment or abolition of a town ordinance. The mayor must submit the proposed ordinance to the assembly within 20 days with a written opinion, but does not have to agree with it. The assembly then decides. So the mayor cannot simply ignore the petition; he can only oppose it.
Where he is right: Japan has no general, legally binding local referendum. A town can create a referendum only by its own ordinance, and such votes are advisory. (Binding votes exist only in special cases set by national law, such as the 2000s merger referendums.)
Where he is misleading: school establishment is the Board of Education's authority, but the number of schools and the budget sit in the ordinance and the budget, which the assembly controls. Closing a school normally needs assembly agreement on spending. So the mayor is right about the referendum's effect and wrong to imply residents and the assembly have no role.
2. Evaluate the financial argument: ¥180 million saved against ¥60 million of new transport cost.
Read the worked answer
The headline number. Net saving is 180 − 60 = ¥120 million a year, which is 120,000,000 ÷ 96 ≈ ¥1.25 million per pupil per year. Against a town of 6,800 people, that is a large sum and cannot be waved away.
Where the number is soft:
- The bus figure probably covers one vehicle. At peak, two may be needed, plus a driver in a labour shortage, so ¥60 million may be low.
- 45 minutes each way is 90 minutes a day for a six-year-old; some parents will drive instead, and some families may move, cutting the pupil count further.
- The closed building still costs maintenance, and the valley school will need extra classrooms and staff, so its costs rise.
- The school also serves as the district's evacuation shelter and community hall; replacing those functions costs money that appears in no line.
Judgement: the saving is real but overstated, and it is a saving to the town budget, not to the town. Comparing ¥1.25 million per pupil with the marginal cost of keeping the school open is fairer than comparing it with the whole school budget.
3. The assembly has three options: (a) close the school now; (b) keep both schools with combined classes; (c) hold an advisory referendum first. Which would you recommend, and on what criterion?
Read the worked answer
Recommend (c) followed by a delayed (a).
Criterion: a decision that is expensive to reverse and that changes children's daily lives for six years should be taken with the widest legitimate input available - but by the body that must carry the consequences.
Why not (a) alone: the 9–7 vote is narrow, and a decision taken by one vote on disputed figures will not hold for the six years the pupils are in school. Conflict itself has a cost.
Why not (b): combined classes (複式学級) may cost more in staff and still leave a very small peer group; it may be the right answer in five years' time, but not as a way of avoiding the argument.
Why (c) works, with a limit: an advisory referendum tests whether the town really accepts the trade-off once the transport cost and travel times are published. Its weakness is that the majority who do not use the school can outvote the minority who do - which is exactly why it should stay advisory and the assembly should keep responsibility for the final decision, stating its reasons publicly.
Practical sequence: publish the corrected cost data, hold the advisory vote, then decide with a two-year transition so no child changes school mid-way.