Society Japan’s depopulation crisis: 2035 tipping point for urban population

Within a decade, Japan is expected to experience a decline in urban populations as ageing societies threaten city sustainability and drive demands for immigration reform:

Japan's long-standing concerns about a shrinking population, particularly in rural areas dominated by elderly residents, are set to escalate. One analyst warns that even the country's major urban centres will soon experience population decline. In Future Atlas: What Happens in Japan with a Declining Population, Masashi Kawai predicts that by 2035, nearly all of Japan's major cities—except Tokyo—will reach a tipping point for population loss. Some smaller cities are expected to see declines even earlier. Kawai's analysis highlights that by 2020, nine major cities, including Kitakyushu, Kobe, Kyoto, and Osaka, had already recorded population decreases compared to 2015. By 2025, Sendai, Yokohama, and Kumamoto will follow, with Nagoya, Sapporo, Hiroshima, and Okayama experiencing similar trends by 2035.

While some larger cities will avoid contraction by absorbing people from surrounding areas, that source of additional population will be depleted within the next decade, according to Kawai. Population loss will not be the only challenge for these urban areas by 2035, but also the need to cater to a growing elderly population. In a decade, 34.8 per cent of Kobe's residents will be elderly, with Sapporo, Shizuoka and Kitakyushu close behind at 34.6 per cent. Among the 20 designated cities examined by Kawai, all will have an elderly population exceeding 25 per cent.

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Slightly off-topic, but European countries are also facing this problem and will soon require greater immigration to sustain their populations. There's a fascinating map here that shows predicted European populations in 2100 with and without migration. Countries that develop rational policies to encourage sustainable numbers of migrants to settle and integrate are going to do better than those with hysterical leaders who claim that they're a threat and will eat your pets.