The demographic winter in the land of the
rising sun has ceased to be a simple warning and has become a terrifying
reality. According to the most recent data from the Basic Resident Register
released by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs, the population of Japanese
citizens fell to 119,736,483 people as of January 1, marking the first time in
forty-two years since 1984 that the number of local inhabitants has fallen
below 120 million.
This drop is not a sudden surprise, but the
seventeenth consecutive year of demographic contraction, representing an annual
loss of 916,744 people (0.76% less), which becomes the largest drop recorded in
a single year since these measurements began in 1968. The natural gap between
births and deaths reached its most critical point in recent history,
accumulating a net loss of 923,008 inhabitants. During 2025, the number of
births reached an all-time low of just 670,467 babies against an overwhelming
total of 1,593,475 deaths, without a single prefecture managing to register a
positive balance of births.
Of the country's forty-seven prefectures, only
Tokyo achieved a modest increase in local population with an additional 12,540
residents, accumulating more than 11% of the national total. In contrast,
regions such as Hokkaido suffered massive losses of more than 58,000 people,
accompanied by drastic percentage drops in prefectures such as Akita, Aomori
and Kochi. Likewise, the average size of Japanese households fell to exactly
two people per household, reflecting the progressive social isolation of the
aging population.
On the other side of the coin, the presence of
the international workforce is the only reason why the total collapse of the
economy has not accelerated dramatically. The number of foreign residents
soared by 9.62%, adding 353,696 new inhabitants to surpass the barrier of four
million for the first time in history, reaching a total of 4,031,159 people.
This group already represents 3.26% of the country's total population and
showed increases in each of the prefectures, driven by a record number of more
than 720,000 people who entered the country from abroad during 2025.
Combining the native population with foreign
residents, the total population in Japan stood at 123,767,642 people. Only
three prefectures managed to maintain global growth by adding foreigners:
Tokyo, Osaka and Chiba. With a working-age population (from 15 to 64 years old)
that barely hovers around 59.97% of the national total, the foreign labor force
in this age range amounted to almost 3.5 million people, becoming the
undisputed support that sustains the economy, services and infrastructure of a
nation that is facing its most severe demographic crisis.
Seeing that the local population continues to
age and that young people have less and less incentive to start families or
have children
