Overview
- A University of Tokyo team analyzed about 1.5 million anonymized 2023 records from the Torima smartphone app covering 20–64-year-olds in 951 municipalities to measure daily steps.
- The study found a national average of 6,163 steps per day with the highest municipal average in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward at 7,750 steps and the lowest in Kobayashi City, Miyazaki, at 4,026 steps, a gap of roughly 3,700 steps.
- Higher average steps clustered in dense, transit-served cities and correlated with a multi-component ‘walkability’ index based on facility variety, road connectivity, and population density, while some regional and rural areas showed lower averages and greater variation.
- Even in the most walkable municipalities, employed residents walked more than non-employed residents, with average differences of about 1,514 steps for men and 826 steps for women.
- The peer-reviewed paper was published June 19–20 and the research team released a DOI-linked interactive municipality map to help local governments plan street design and social policies that combine built-environment changes with measures addressing residents’ socioeconomic barriers, noting Japan’s average steps have trended downward since around 2011.