Society Japan's population drops below 125m

[thomas]

News we will have to get used to: Japan's population, including foreign residents, shrank by 556,000 from 2021 to 124,947,000 as of 1 Oct. 2022, the 12th straight year of decline.

Tokyo saw its population increase for the first time in two years. But it was the only prefecture that gained people over the year. Okinawa Prefecture's population contracted for the first time since 1950, when such surveys became available. Overall, the nation's population fell by 0.44 percent. Only the drop in 2021 was sharper. The change in natural population, which covers births and deaths but excludes immigration, was minus 731,000, the largest drop on record. The data also showed that Japan gained a net 191,000 residents in "social population," which compares the number of foreign nationals who entered Japan and the number who left the country. The figure was second largest after the plus 208,000 recorded in 2019.

Population in Japan drops for 12th straight year to 124,947,000 | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis

Japan's population falls under 125m in 12th year of decline

Record drop underscores fears over declining birthrate, graying population

asia.nikkei.com

 

[Lothor]

Yomiuri Shimbun, who these days are kind enough to include the gaijin in Japan's population statistics, did a prefecture by prefecture breakdown of the changes in population. Some of the northern prefectures have astounding declines, the highest being -1.59% for Akika prefecture. Just think about that: assuming that Akita roughly mirrors Japan's birthrate (800,000 births in a population of 125 million), it implies that about 1 in 45 of people in Akita prefecture died or moved away in the last year. If you think about that happening each year for the next 20 years, you can imagine the size of the effect.

 

[Ukigumo]

This is very interesting…