Photo/Illutration A woman takes a child to a kindergarten. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Japan’s population, including foreign residents, shrank by 556,000 from 2021 to 124,947,000 as of Oct. 1, 2022, the 12th straight year of decline, internal affairs ministry data showed on April 12.

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.

Among age groups, 14,503,000, or 11.6 percent of the total, were younger than 15. The number in the “productive age group” between 15 and 64 was 74,208,000, or 59.4 percent of the total.

Both ratios were record lows.

Japan had 36,236,000 people aged 65 or older, representing 29 percent of the total, and 19,364,000 people aged 75 or older, accounting for 15.5 percent.

Both percentages were record highs.

Related News