TOKYO, JAPAN - A small Japanese town with 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 Yahoo! Japan online auction site, said Hidenori Tsutsumi, who is in charge of the auction.

The farming and fishing town of 11,000 people last year closed seven of its nine 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 US dollars), the town said.

No local population statistics were immediately available. But Japan has been struggling with a falling birthrate, which is especially acute in rural areas where the older population has been left to till the lands while the younger population has moved to the cities.