YACHIMATA, Japan: Kiyoshi Hashimoto's machinery factory outside Tokyo should be buzzing with industry. Instead, it's so quiet you can hear him practicing the recorder.
The 82-year-old entrepreneur founded his company nearly 40 years ago, but well past retirement age he has neither a successor nor a buyer for a business that retains loyal clients.
It is a problem that Japan's government warns could affect up to a third of all small businesses in the country by 2025, as the country's population shrinks and ages.
"All of this would go to waste if I were to close now," said Hashimoto, whose factory in Yachimata, east of Tokyo, is filled with workbenches, drill tables and parts cabinets.
He once employed dozens of people, but now gets by with just two part-time workers after scaling back operations.
The problem is so vast that Japan faces an "era of mass closures," said Shigenobu Abe of bankruptcy research firm Teikoku Databank.
A 2019 government report estimated that about 1.27 million small business owners would be 70 or older by 2025 and have no successors.
The trend could kill up to 6.5 million jobs and reduce the size of the Japanese economy by 22 trillion yen ($166 billion), the study warned.
By 2029, the situation will worsen still, as baby boomers hit 81, the average life expectancy for Japanese men, who account for most of the presidents of these firms, according to Teikoku Databank.
"We know for sure that many workers will lose their livelihoods because of this," Abe told AFP.
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