While the short answer leans towards a no, the short answer also isn't the full answer.

And so I sought out an economics professor from Kyoto to find out what's going on.

Why did the government announced that Kyoto was on the path to bankruptcy for that matter?

What would a bankrupt kyoto even look like And what are the chances of it actually happening Back in the summer of 2021?

The guilt a government announced to its citizens that the city was at risk of bankruptcy.

But this announcement was really just step one of a much bigger plan by the city government.

A plan in an attempt to recover from the mistakes and poor city planning that started almost exactly 40 years prior during the bubble and it caught, many including the citizens of Kyoto by surprise my son with the way the world has been for the past two plus years, it would be easy to say that it's all the fault of Covid Kyoto did completely empty out at one point.

But the financial impact of the virus and subsequent lack of tourism didn't so much cause the problem, but rather exasperated and make it impossible to ignore longer than it had been.

If anything, the tourism and at times over tourism was propping kyoto up.

The actual root of the problem starts considerably deeper.

But these subways now serve as more of a pressing backdrop for all the problems that have followed the problems that led to the government announcing the potential bankruptcy Gilda has always been a spot that tourists flock to both domestic and international.

But in many ways this tourism itself and Delta's response to it has actually done more harm than good the city has seen and even encouraged big buyers from within Japan and overseas, buying up land in bulk for hotels and in turn driving up real estate prices.

And so slowly and consistently residents and small business owners have been moving out of Kyoto to places where they can afford to live or run their businesses subsequently taking their income, their taxes and often families with them.

And if this train isn't hard enough over a long period of time, what they leave behind aggravates the issue even further because as this happens, kill to gradually inches towards the majority of the population fitting into two main categories, either students or the elderly and aging, each contributing inadvertently in its own way to paving the path towards potential bankruptcy, isn't it?

But the truth of the matter is that even with all of this, Kyoto isn't actually on the verge of bankruptcy, Not even close somebody.

But this still leaves the question of what would it actually mean for kyoto to go bankrupt?

What would that look like?

I have the chance to see Kyoto completely empty at the start of the pandemic, spend a few days they're interviewing the locals and capturing the silence.

But with a strong concentration of cultural treasures and such a long history.

It's truly difficult to imagine the idea of the city going bankrupt or what shape that would even take.

So, of course, I had to ask talk about They could actually smoke.

It's also very soon directed towards in this car you also need.

Mhm.