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The Hakusan Foothills region is being composed by Kawauchi village, Yoshinodani village, Torigoe village, and Okuchi village, in Hakusan City of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan (the city was born by merging of municipalities on February 1, 2005; see Figure 1). Hakusan is one of the Japanese three major great mountains, which has been worshiped for a long time with the sacred mountain. It is a region also in Japan where scarce flora and fauna live a lot. The water resource in the Hakusan Foothills region is also abundant. The water that flows from Hakusan has enriched four big plains of Kaga, Echizen, Seo, and Tonami. Hakusan undercurrent water is used for specialty in the region, and is also the source of the hot spring of Hakusan village.
However, negative implications such as declining birthrate and a growing proportion of elderly people and depopulation, the problem of the society's infrastructure, increase of vacant houses and empty facilities, and increase in the abandoned cultivated land are factors to decline the Hakusan Foothills region. Especially, the population decrease has become a big problem in the Hakusan Foothills region. The population was 8,000 people or more in 1995, which decreased linearly up to about 7,000 people in 2009. A decrease of 1,000 people or more in ten years exerts a very serious influence for this region because there was originally not a lot of population.
There are 61 districts in this region, among them the so-called marginal villages (the population of more than 65 years old is more than 50%) account for 16%, and the semi-marginal villages (the population of more than 55 years old is more than 50%) account for 33%. The increase in the abandoned cultivated land is also a big problem for the Hakusan Foothills region. The cultivated land under management area of Hakusan City decreased from 5,447ha in 1985 to 3,445ha in 2005. The greater part of the abandoned cultivated land has been generated in this region.