Today, the neighborhood remains depopulated, with just a handful of residents back in their houses.

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It has a desert of its own, and many depopulated villages, some without piped water at all.

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It came in the LDP's traditional strongholds: the depopulated rural districts with a disproportionate share of the seats.

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The train continued on behind us, and the station depopulated as if neutron-bombed.

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The oil economy had cratered, and the farms were steadily becoming depopulated.

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Visitors to the hallways of the company's purple and yellow California palaces are greeted with confused employees and empty cubicles depopulated by an endless series of reorganization efforts.

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Like so many villages across China, grandparents and grandchildren can be found playing together, but there is often less sign of the labouring generation in between, who have left to earn money in the cities and towns, leaving many earth buildings depopulated.

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Koichi Nakano of Sophia University in Tokyo points out that Japan's distorted electoral map exaggerates the size of the defeat: the DPJ lost heavily against LDP candidates in depopulated rural areas that are considered to be the opposition's heartland, but which produce a disproportionate number of seats.

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