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January 21, 2025
 

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DEPOPULATION

Staff from Aomori Bank and Michinoku Bank, along with family members, participate in the Aomori Nebuta Festival in August 2023, with a large float sponsored by Procrea Holdings behind them.
BUSINESS / Companies / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Jan 20, 2025
Rival regional Aomori banks merge to survive amid population decline
Aomori Bank and Michinoku Bank, which had long been rivals, merged this month to form Aomori Michinoku Bank.
Epidurals during childbirth have long been uncommon in Japan, though they have been growing more popular in recent years.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jan 14, 2025
Tokyo plans to subsidize epidurals, but are hospitals ready?
If all goes to plan, Tokyo will be the first to offer prefecture-level financial support for epidurals.
To counter the impact of aging rural demographics, the agriculture ministry is introducing a new initiative to dispatch corporate personnel to rural areas to increase the number of people engaged with farming communities.
JAPAN / Society
Jan 13, 2025
Japan farm ministry aims to dispatch corporate workers to rural areas
The initiative aims to promote rural revitalization through corporate-sponsored training programs and employee side jobs connecting businesses with farming villages.
A Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism official explains a new system for detecting vacant houses, on Dec. 23.
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2025
Government developing AI-based system to detect vacant houses
The aim of the system is to spot such properties at an early stage and make them available for sale or rent, or demolish them before they collapse.
A subsidy for epidural childbirths was one of Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike's campaign promises when she ran for her position last year.
JAPAN / Society
Jan 7, 2025
Tokyo looks to ease the pain — both physical and financial — of childbirth
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is looking to begin offering a subsidy for epidural childbirths in fiscal 2025.
Children at a traditional festival in the city of Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Thursday. A forecast made by Tohoku University professor Hiroshi Yoshida estimates that Japan will be left with just one child on Jan. 5, 2720, based on current birthrate trends.
JAPAN / Society
Jan 6, 2025
2720 — the year when Japan is left with just one child
An expert on the graying of society has warned that the nation will be left with just one child age 14 and below in 695 years if its birthrate continues to decline.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (second from the left) making a statement at a meeting at the Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday
JAPAN / Politics
Dec 24, 2024
Japan eyes regional revitalization and economic growth
A basic concept for the promotion of regional revitalization was drawn up to promote economic growth and address the issue of overcrowding in Tokyo.
Small businesses in Ino, a town in Kochi Prefecture known for its paper industry, show how a labor shortage is a growing threat to smaller companies that provide seven out of every 10 jobs in Japan.
BUSINESS / Economy
Dec 24, 2024
Small businesses with low wages struggle to tackle labor shortages
A worker shortage is threatening firms that are otherwise robust, including those that have invested in automation and creative hiring.
Yoshitaka Ito, minister for regional revitalization (right), and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba set up a signboard for an office in charge of regional revitalization on Nov. 8 in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Nov 29, 2024
Japan will help revitalize willing municipalities, minister says
The government is working to create a 10-year basic plan for rural revitalization, said Yoshitaka Ito, minister for regional revitalization.
(From left) JR East President Yoichi Kise, Kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke, and Shochiku President Toshihiro Takahashi at a joint news conference at the Kabukiza theater in Tokyo on Monday
JAPAN
Nov 19, 2024
JR East and Shochiku to collaborate on regional revitalization
Under the 10-year agreement, the two companies will bring to life programs rooted in regional traditional culture
Blogger and marketer Alina Rzhanova, 33, adjusts clothes of her 8-month-old son, Igor, during an interview in their apartment in the city of Yaroslavl, Russia, on Oct. 3.
WORLD / Society
Nov 13, 2024
Russia bans 'child-free propaganda' to try to boost birth rate
Official data released in September in Russia put the birth rate at its lowest in a quarter of a century while mortality rates are up as Moscow's war in Ukraine rages on.
A village school bus drives along an empty street in the village of Tenei, Fukushima Prefecture, in March 2023. In rural areas, more single-member households will emerge from an aging population and the eventual death of spouses in two-person households, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
JAPAN / Society
Nov 12, 2024
1 in 5 people in Japan age 65 and older will be living alone in 2050
The trend resulting from rapid depopulation will affect both metropolitan and rural areas, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research says.
Kazuhiro Soda’s “The Cats of Gokogu Shrine” follows not only the felines that live on the grounds of the title shrine in Ushimado, Okayama Prefecture, but also the local community members, many of whom are of retirement age.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 25, 2024
‘The Cats of Gokogu Shrine’: Documentary paints intimate portrait of a community in decline
While stray cats that inhabit the grounds of a local shrine take center stage, the film also celebrates the aging humans doing their best to preserve their neighborhood.
A man kneels down at a designated area for commemorating fallen Ukrainian fighters in Kyiv. Ukraine's population has declined by 10 million since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United Nations said Tuesday.
WORLD / Society
Oct 22, 2024
Ukraine's population has fallen by 10 million since Russia's invasion, U.N. says
The United Nations said the invasion in February 2022 had turned an already difficult demographic situation into something more severe.
A woman walks past campaign posters for the Lower House election in Tokyo on Tuesday.
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 19, 2024
Ruling and opposition parties vow redoubled regional revitalization efforts
Both sides are offering ideas for stopping population outflow from regional communities in their campaigning for the Oct. 27 general election.
A child plays with sand near a couple taking part in a pre-wedding photoshoot on a beach in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, in April.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Oct 18, 2024
China launches survey to understand 'fear of having children'
Beijing is trying to encourage young couples to have children after China posted a second consecutive year of population decline in 2023.
With projections indicating a population drop in Japan from around 125 million to 63 million by 2100, traditional solutions like immigration and labor reforms are unlikely to be effective in time.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 15, 2024
Japan should master, not resist, its demographic destiny
Japan needs a strategic reorientation toward accepting and mastering its demographic changes rather than resisting them.
Japan has been trying to boost its fertility rate for 30 years and now the rest of the rich world is, too.
WORLD / Society
Oct 14, 2024
Can the government get people to have more babies?
The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to the lowest level since the government started collecting statistics in 1899.
“The Cats of Gokogu Shrine” centers on a local shrine in Ushimado’s Honmachi district, which has become home to a colony of street cats.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2024
Kazuhiro Soda embraces the wisdom of street cats
The filmmaker turns his camera closer to home in his new documentary, “The Cats of Gokogu Shrine,” and brings a community into focus.
Chinese buyer of Okinawa island to make visit in summer
Yanaha Island in Okinawa Prefecture as seen from a ferry.
Cedar pollen is already in the air in Tokyo
Climate change and urbanization are believed to have contributed to the earliest ever observation of cedar pollen in Tokyo, on Jan. 8, an expert says.
More bird flu cases found in Japan; 1.44 million birds to be culled
Officials with the agriculture ministry hold a news conference in Nagoya on Friday following an outbreak of avian influenza in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture, earlier this month.
Fuji TV loses more advertisers amid inquiry into host’s behavior
Fuji TV is losing more advertisers following allegations about inappropriate behavior by a celebrity host and questions about its handling of the case.
What went wrong at Fuji TV's news conference on allegations against Nakai?
Fuji TV President Koichi Minato speaks at a news conference on Friday in Tokyo.
As Trump returns, will Japan be able to weather the storm?
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo in May 2019.
Amid rising world hunger, a Japan-inspired group in Kenya is making a big impact
Wawira Njiru, the founder of Food4Education, serves food during the opening of a new kitchen in Mombasa County, Kenya, in 2022. The organization started in 2012 by feeding 25 children out of a single kitchen. Now it feeds nearly half a million every day.
From Tokyo to Manhattan, Takuma Watanabe stirs up a stiff drink
It's taken Takuma Watanabe little time to establish himself as one of New York's hottest bartenders.
For tourists in search of seasonal sights, Yamagata makes its case
For some time away from Tokyo's suffocating urban sameness, Yamagata Prefecture is home to a soothing array of natural abundance.
A slow dive into ‘a moment and an eternity’ with Ryuichi Sakamoto
From the mid-2000s onward, Ryuichi Sakamoto created a number of installation works, often in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, of multimedia art collective Dumb Type.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.
Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go
By Kazuaki Nagata and Richard Meyer

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