Fourteen years after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, communities in the Tohoku region grappling with declining populations are focusing on young people and women to aid recovery.
According to the internal affairs ministry, the number of people age 20 to 39 in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima — the prefectures hardest hit by the March 2011 disaster — fell by about 20% to 30% between 2010 and 2024. A report released last year by a panel of mostly private-sector experts projected that the number of women in their 20s and 30s across 13 Pacific coastal municipalities in these prefectures will plummet by more than 60% between 2020 and 2050.
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