TOKYO--A small Japanese town with a dwindling population and a falling birthrate plans to auction off four primary schools on the Internet, a local official said Thursday.

Niikappu, on the northern island of Hokkaido, plans to start the auction next month on the Japanese-language auction site of Yahoo! Japan, said Hidenori Tsutsumi, who is in charge of the sell-off.

The farming and fishing town -- where the population has about halved to just over 5,000 from around 11,000 in 1960 -- last year closed seven of its nine primary schools.

Three were turned into a corporate office, a nursing home and a horse-racing centre but the town was unable to find buyers for the others.

"It became necessary to consolidate the schools due to the falling birthrate," a municipal statement said.

With no immediate buyers for the other four, the town said it "decided to list the schools on Japan's largest auction site".

Three of the four schools up for sale boast spacious teachers' residences and swimming pools. The asking prices range from 21.8 million to 67.4 million yen (220,500 to 682,000 dollars), the town said.

There have been more than a dozen inquiries this week, especially from companies, and one is expected to visit the sites, said Tsutsumi.

Japan has been struggling with a falling birthrate, which is especially acute in rural areas, where the elderly have seen the younger population move to the cities.

In the center of Niikappu, the percentage of children under 12 has fallen from 12.4 percent a decade ago to 10.8 percent now, said another official, who stressed that the ratio of children even lower in the town's outskirts.