The latest numbers on Japanese population make for a dismal reading — the number of people who died in 2022 (1.56 million) was roughly twice as big as the number of newborn children (771,000). Based on residency registrations, the country’s Internal Ministry estimates a total population loss of some 800,000 last year. This is the largest total drop in population since comparable statistics were first collated in 1968.
Japan now has 122.4 million nationals, down from a peak of over 128 million some 15 years ago.
But the issue of Japan’s shrinking population goes much further into the past. Since the 1990s, successive Japanese governments have been aware that the population would start to decline and tried to offer solutions. And yet, the speed of the contraction has caught even the experts by surprise. In 2017, for example, the Tokyo-based National Institute of Population and Social Security Research forecast that the annual number of births would not fall below the 800,000 threshold until 2030.
With the news on Japan’s population decline growing ever more grim, the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced a series of efforts to encourage more people to have children.
Japan ‘on the brink’
In January, Kishida warned that the nation is “on the brink” of a crisis and that his government would spend around 20 trillion yen (around €128 billion, $140 billion) on measures to support young couples who wish to have more children. This corresponds to around 4% of Japan’s GDP, and is nearly double the amount that the government had earmarked for the same goal in fiscal 2021.
The prime minister also set up a panel to devise ways to spend the extra funds. He also hosted an event in Tokyo in late July to mark the launch of a nationwide campaign to support children and families. The government has agreed on increasing child allowances and putting in additional effort to eradicate child poverty and abuse. New fathers will also be encouraged to take paternity leave and additional funding will go into pre-school facilities so that working parents are able to return to work. Parents will also get greater tax breaks.
Kishida said he aims to win the support of society for children and parents.
“We hope that a social circle friendly to child-rearing will spread nationwide,” he said at the launch event.
Critics, however, are not entirely convinced by the latest proposals. They warn that the previous government had also tried to use spending to encourage a baby boom, but Japanese society has failed to respond.
The population is rapidly aging, and the number of people over 65 is already at close to 30% in Japan. Japan’s neighbors China and South Korea are facing similar troubles, and the number of senior citizens is expected to continue climbing in the next three decades.
Will funding be effective?
“The government is focusing very much on the economic aspect and while the budget they are allocating to the problem is very large and it sounds positive, we will have to see whether it can truly be effective,” said Masataka Nakagawa, senior researcher with the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
Nakagawa agreed that the latest population statistics were worrying, but warned there are other factors that need to be considered, such as the falling number of marriages. People in Japan are typically getting married later in life and opting to have fewer children, primarily a result of financial pressures, he said.
Chisato Kitanaka, an associate professor of sociology at Hiroshima University, said governments have failed to devise effective policies to solve the population problem, despite knowing that a decline was inevitable.
“There have long been a lot of hurdles for young people who want to have children to overcome,” she told DW. Those include financial and educational concerns, she said, but arguably the biggest problem is social attitudes.
“In Japan, having a child means that a couple has to get married,” she said. “Only 2% of children are born out of wedlock in Japan, but other countries take a far more ‘flexible’ approach to the concept of a family.”
“This is what is considered socially acceptable here and that makes raising a child as a single mother difficult because she has to work and earn money, while at the same time she is singled out by society,” she added.
More foreigners in Japan
Kitanaka believes the government should dramatically increase welfare payments to families to help them raise their children and reduce the substantial costs of education, particularly at the tertiary level.
While looking into the population statistics, Japanese officials also found that nearly 3 million foreign residents were living in Japan, up by more than 289,000, or over 10%, from the previous year. The increase puts the number of foreigners in the Asian country at record high.
And yet, many Japanese are unwilling to seriously contemplate large-scale immigration as a way to solve Japan’s population problem and provide a stable supply of workers.
“It is difficult,” Kitanaka admitted. “There are clearly more foreign residents of Japan now but we as a society are not really thinking about it as a long-term issue. And there are many in Japan who are still not ready to accept foreigners. We need to discuss the sort of Japan that we want to live in for the future.”
Maybe if they’d fix their work culture this wouldn’t be as big of an issue.
It really is wild to me that the government isn’t working to put restrictions on working hours. It seems that focusing on the benefits of having children, not focusing on building more marriages seems to be a miss from the government.
You mean like the the “Work Style Reform” laws they passed a few years ago aimed at exactly that?
The old guard refuses to change anything. Nothing will change in that country until the leaders either change or pass on. Culture and Tradition is so important in the business setting that it’s overbearing and fundamentally inhibitive to social progress. The government can’t do anything about unless the businesses change…and they won’t.
I’m from Tokyo, so I’m saying this as someone with a direct stake in the matter, but is this really a problem? The Earth is on fire right now, the oceans are literally boiling, it is face-melting hot here. The consequences of the period of unsustainable growth are finally coming to pass. There was a report yesterday saying we’d passed the yearly mark for what the planet can provide, and we’d need 1.7 Earths now to meet everyone’s needs. So maybe naturally reducing the population isn’t such a bad thing.
Governments by and large occupy a mindspace that is “individuals must be subjugated for the needs community”, but not “we must subjugate ourselves for the needs of the planet.”
It’s only a problem in the near term as those of us in middle age are going to face increasing taxes and cuts of social programs to support the older folks. I plan on retiring here (Japan). I agree we’re way over-populated here for the resources we have and think it should decline, but it’s going to be rough.
I think more remote work or companies moving out of Tokyo could help things as it would make getting into daycare and such easier for families with kids, but I don’t see that happening.
How is it only a problem in the near future? The birth rate has been declining for a generation and is quite likely to continue doing so. It’s already going to get worse for decades, but what if it can’t be stopped?
It’s really an economic problem more than anything. If money were no object it would certainly make sense to simply reduce the size of villages and cities as population and therefore demand shrinks
You can even see this happening in places like Detroit where they’ve bulldozed blocks of abandoned houses from the hayday as the city population shrunk significantly and may not return to those previous levels for quite some time
The general population decline that Japan is experiencing is something every developed nation will likely experience sometime this century as poorer nations develop and modernize. The United States would be declining at a similar rate if not for how many people immigrate to the US. Canada even more so due to their extremely lenient immigration laws compared to the US.
If money were no object communities could take advantage of this shrinking to replace empty deteriorating single family homes with parks, affordable housing, green space, or community space. Blocks of empty suburbs could be far more easily converted into more sustainable land uses if most of the people who once lived there are gone
I taught English in Japan (JET) for one year, and at the end I said what a lot of people say: I’d love to visit, but I’m never going to work here again.
The work culture in Japan is fucked. The fact that the amount of time you spend at work, not your actual output, determines how “productive” you are is so fucking stupid. I worked my contract hours and I was seen as lazy. Despite the fact that everything I was asked to do was always done and done well, the fact that I didn’t come in 2 hours early and nap at my desk meant I was lazy. Add onto that the fact that I only got a (generous for Japan) 15 days of nenkyuu (paid days off), which you can’t actually use because what happens if you get sick. Sick leave exists, but does it? Does it really? The one time I tried to use it, I was told “it’d be better for everyone if you didn’t”, and then had to use my nenkyuu anyway.
And that was me working a pretty privileged position! If I was coming from Vietnam to work in a retirement home, I’m sure the working conditions would be far worse with the threat of deportation looming over my head. Immigration is a band aid at best. As soon as immigrants have the opportunity to move somewhere better, they will of course take that.
In contrast, I now live in the Netherlands, which shockingly has some of the least generous child benefits in the EU. And yet, we get about 100€/month from the government in support, plus about 50% the cost of childcare paid for. My wife gets 4 months of maternity leave at full pay (I only get 5 days which is super fucked), with up to 3 years at 60% pay with a guarantee of her job being there when she gets back. We each have 25+ days off a year, which are actually used for days off, if the kid gets sick, we can use sick leave to care for it, and sick leave is unlimited. Also, healthcare for children is 100% paid by the government. And with all of that, we’re barely in a position to be able to consider having children.
Father parental leave has increased a lot this year though. It’s now 5 weeks instead of 5 days.
You’re talking about the Netherlands? It’s 5 days fully paid.
I can take several months if I want it, but I have to take a 30% pay cut, which we can’t afford. Paternity leave in the Netherlands sucks.
Still, it used to be 2 days paid and that’s it. So, it still sucks, but has gotten much better.
For Japan, you could encourage growth in the economy again, and encourage population growth by simply requiring companies to give ample vacation time, and require people to use said vacation time.
It’s fucking ridiculous how much time Japanese people are forced to work. They basically spend the entire day at the office, sometimes the entire night with staff because companies force staff into not mandatory but totally mandatory afterwork drinking parties, and by the time people get back to their tiny homes and apartments, they might get a Sunday off to sleep off the exhaustion, then it’s back into the office.
Many Japanese youth never even see their father, meanwhile they themselves are relentlessly robbed of their time by schools, after school clubs, cram schools, English Schools, test prep, and stupid amounts of homework they’re expected to finish on top of that. Many of my students are on summer holiday, but are just as busy as school time thanks to all the homework they’re saddled with and the clubs and jukus certainly don’t let up for summer.
Nobody respects other people’s free time here, thus people don’t have the energy to do anything outside of their daily cycle, let alone fuck. Why buy a game console, TV, or a nice car when you never have time to enjoy it. Why go to Okinawa, or Fukuoka or Hokkaido when you’re only going to have 3 days tops to enjoy it, and if you do somehow get a week to blow, why not take the dream trip to Hawaii, and spend your money out of the country.
Japanese population and economic troubles ultimately cycle back to the end of free time that the miracle period encouraged, and the bubble economy drove into overdrive. They have tried everything but taken this issue seriously, and the only thing they’ve come close to resembling addressing this is creating more national holidays, which are always way off from any vacation period, and many companies try to get out of giving time off, ands those that can’t expect workers to make all the time up the day after.
They are literally working themselves to death here.
I’m from Tokyo and have been working 20+ years, the idea that all Japanese work themselves to death is meme nowadays. Yes, it was like that before, and there are still a few companies like that now, but it’s not representative of the whole anymore. We do get vacations. There are 16 public holidays a year, 10 vacation days required by law with an extra day for each year of service at the company, and the government will fine companies that don’t force their employees to use at least half of them every year.
“Overtime” is also a bit of a joke. The average salaryman does probably 2 hours real work every day. The rest is just trying to look busy while dicking around on facebook. And attitudes about that are slowly changing too. I rarely see anyone younger than 35 hang around the office late to look busy anymore, they know there’s no point because it’s not going to get you a raise or a promotion anyways.
I’m also in Tokyo and happy to say that I’ve seen the culture of overtime work changing even over the last 5 years. Young people don’t want to do it. Companies that don’t allow it are more loved by the people https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-12/itochu-overtime-ban-offers-solutions-for-japan-birthrate-decline
And there’s also the rise of remote/hybrid/flex work that many people don’t want to go back from
Japan is changing and I’m very optimistic about its future!
Is it now acceptable to leave the office on time and not join the after work nomikai?
16 holidays and 10 vacation days a year and spending all your time at the office dicking about on Facebook is not even close to the same as “a reasonable amount of personal time”. Fuck the Japanese work culture, and reform for real. Read what AgentGoldfish said below for better context.
Mate, please, he taught English here for 1 year. I’ve been in engineering, marketing, and finance roles for over 20. So I’ve got a pretty good feel for what it’s like here and don’t need any additional “context”. Do I think we should get more time off? Yes. But go take a look at what Americans get and how much OT they work and then tell me Japanese work culture is so bad. I’ll give you a hint, they get fuck all and average more OT hours than us (9 hours weekly compared to 6 in Japan). And have you ever heard of 996? That’s literal slavery in China. Could Japan do better? Sure, but it’s not the 80s anymore for christ sake, it’s different here now.
What good could possibly come from unlimited population growth?
From 1973 to 2023 the world population doubled. If that trend continues, doubling every 50 years, by the year 2123 there will be 32 Billion people on Earth.
We can’t even house and feed the 8 billion we have now, not to mention the ecological damage that would be inevitable due to expansion and urbanization.
Even if we just double the current population to 16 billion people 100 years from now it won’t be sustainable. We need to find a new system that isn’t reliant on the next generation being bigger than the previous generation because we’re less than a century from it collapsing anyway. We have finite space on this planet and infinite growth will fill that up very quickly.
The main problem in Japan is the birth rate basically doesn’t even replenish the outgoing population. Japan also have one of the longest life expectancy. Tell me how can you take care of 10 seniors in a retirement home if there’s only 1 working age person to take care of them?
Robots!
Half the people are hand-wringing about robots taking all the jobs. The other half are hand-wringing about population decline leaving too few working-age people to do all the jobs.
Seems like these 2 problems cancel each other out.😎
The easiest way is to make sure it’s not a 10:1 ratio to begin with. And, You don’t need 1 nurse per person, if you give a nurse 2 patients for the day for a 2:1 ratio it’s better care than most people get right now.
We can house and feed everyone, but we don’t because it is not profitable to do so. Destroying the planet by selling and using fossil fuels makes a lot more money.
Well, a lot of people would rather live somewhere other than where they live. Most people might not want to live in the middle of nowhere, but if the house were available, there would be some people who want it.
I won’t, but maybe a homeless person will take every opportunity they can to get out of the cold streets, you know?
