Japan has tried just about everything to boost the fertility rate, or number of children per woman, which hit a record low of 1.29 in 2003, compared with 2.01 in the United States. Nishiki is offering cash awards to families that have more than one child, even sponsoring mixers to bring young couples together. But so far, officials concede, most attempts have failed.

Kami Hinokinai Elementary School, where the number of students peaked at 266 in 1960, awaits closure. Today, there are 33 students left, 11 of whom will graduate this year. Only five new students will enter the school this year. Those numbers prompted the decision to shut Kami Hinokinai in 2007 and bus the remaining children to a school about 40 minutes away.

With no other children their age, the two girls and boy in the second grade have learned to make do. Tatsuya Wakamatsu, 8, a quiet boy in a black sweatshirt, says he persuades the girls to play baseball with him at recess and after school. In return, he grudgingly agrees to jump rope with them. "There aren't so many kids for us to play with in the neighborhood and sometimes the older kids tease us, so the three of us always play together," he said.

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Adults take part in sporting events to help the students form soccer and baseball teams. Last year, first-grader Takuya Suzuki, 7, had to play two roles in the school play. "I was a mouse and a grandfather," he said, laughing.

When a baby is born in Nishiki, it is huge news. Last August, Yuna Wakamatsu arrived in a part of the community where no child had been born for 10 years. Traditionally, only women would come calling, offering gifts of food and money. But the men also turned out this time, showering Yuna with so many gifts that they now fill most of one room in the Wakamatsus' wood-frame home. "They all wanted to see the face of a baby again," said her beaming grandmother, Tazuko Wakamatsu, 59, who takes care of the infant because both parents work.

In Nishiki, the last pediatrician switched careers in the 1990s, becoming a geriatric specialist. The nearest doctor for Yuna Wakamatsu is almost an hour away in bad weather. "But I suppose there is nothing that can be done about it," said her grandmother. "It's just how it is."

Special correspondent Sachiko Sakamaki contributed to this report.

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