TOKYO, April 30, 2023—For the 12th consecutive year, Japan’s population shrank in 2022, with the velocity of decrease registering the steepest declining 0.42 percent to 124.9 million, and by 2070, the population would contract as many as 30 percent to 87 million, according to recent Japanese government data. Is it a crisis as the media report or a positive for the country?
The data came in the midst of the failure to yield results with a years-long government program to increase child birth, which has dropped to less than 800,000 from more than 2 million during the peak period of the 1970s, the most recently with subsidies by collecting special levies to senior citizens. After peaking at 128 million in 2008, Japan’s total population, including foreign nationals, has been falling and in 2022, registered the steepest ever year-on-year drop of 731,000. Subtracting foreign nationals, Japan’s population shrank 0.62 percent to 121.9 million, reflecting limited effects of the child birth increase program.
The total population, including foreign nationals, would slump to 87 million in 2070, the government projected, of which seniors over 65 years old would account for 38.7 percent from 28.6 percent in 2020, while child births would decrease to approximately 500,000.
The Japanese government and pundits decry the population decrease and shrinking child births as a serious democratic crisis that sap the country’s vigor and atrophy its position in the global theater. It may be so but the population growth since Japan ended its 270 year locked society policy and opened its doors to the world in 1953 had been unusual to say the least – from barely over 30 million to 128 million.
Many Japanese government policies during those intervening years to date amounted to ones for feeding its hungry population: agricultural acreage expansion by deforestation and military campaigns to China, Korean Peninsular, Southeast Asian countries to secure oil, minerals and other resources. A smaller population would mean Japan may be able to become self-reliant for resources as during its feudal period (though the country was hit by periodic famine). If realized, Japan can be a perfect model for SDGs.
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Insight Into the Future