ICINONO – Riding a tricycle with gleeful abandon, Kuranosuke Kato is the only child in his small, depopulated Japanese village overrun by life-size dolls.

The two-year-old was the first child in two decades for Ichinono, one of more than 20,000 communities in Japan where most residents are 65 and older, according to data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The revitalization of rural areas is one of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s key campaign commitments as they fight to retain their majority in the October 27 general election.

Mr. Ishiba called Japan’s low birth rate a “quiet emergency”one that is evident in places like Ichinono, a bucolic hamlet home to fewer than 60 people.

“If the village remains as it is now, the only thing that awaits us is extinction,” said Ichiro Sawayama, 74, head of its governing body.

Many developed nations face the same demographic time bomb, but Japan, which allows relatively low levels of immigration, already has the world’s second-oldest population, after Monaco.

Silence permeates the air in Ichinono, where residents have handcrafted stuffed mannequins to create the appearance of a bustling society.

Some dolls ride in swings, while others push a cart of firewood, smiling eerily at visitors.

“We are probably outnumbered by the dolls,” Mrs Hisayo Yamazaki, an 88-year-old widow, told AFP.

Rice harvesting and sake brewing used to keep Ichinono afloat. Most families in the village had children, Ms. Yamazaki recalled.

But “we were afraid they would become unmarried if they were stuck in a remote place like this,” so they were encouraged to attend colleges in the city.

“They went out and never came back, looking for jobs elsewhere. Now we are paying the price,” she said.