Overview
- The government said Wednesday that the number of Japanese nationals stood at 119,736,483 on Jan. 1, a fall of about 917,000 from a year earlier and the largest annual drop since comparable records began in 1968.
- Last year saw roughly 670,467 births and about 1,593,475 deaths among Japanese nationals, producing a natural population decline on the order of 923,008 people.
- Foreign residents rose to a record 4,031,159, an increase of about 354,000 with roughly 86.17 percent of that group of working age, helping to blunt but not replace shrinking native labor supply.
- Population change is increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas with Tokyo the only prefecture to record a rise in Japanese nationals while most other prefectures continued to shrink.
- Authorities have expanded family supports, eased rules to admit more foreign workers and tested measures such as subsidies for dating apps and Tokyo’s AI matchmaking service as officials call the years through 2030 a critical window to limit economic and social fallout including higher social‑security costs and tighter local labor markets.