Abstract
The reasons for studying the case of Japan are as follows. First, the increases in the aged population is similar to the case of Korea, and consumers are aging as the population ages. Second, the structure of industry in Japan is very similar to Korea, which describes the fact that the share of the manufacturing industry decreases but the service industry (e.g., medicine, finance, and insurance) increases. Third, Japan is considered as the best predictive model for forecasting the future of closed schools in Korea because the GNI gross income per capita is relatively close to the one of Korea among the several neighboring countries. The purpose of this study is to analyze the current extent of utilizing closed schools in Japan and, based on the analysis, to provide basic data on the use of closed schools in Korea in the future. The types of closed schools can be classified into education facilities, social welfare facilities, cultural facilities, public sports facilities, income growing facilities, and others. Based on the classification, the analyses of the characteristics of each type for the facilities are presented. and When the utilization status of closed schools in Japan is analyzed, 363 schools were utilized (51.4%) in 2003, means the lowest utilization rate of the target year, after that 4198 schools (70.6%) were utilized in 2015. The utilization ratio is steady increased.