Why Japan's birth rate is falling and what the country's doing to try and reverse the population decline

CBS News

27-04-2025

The world's population may have recently exceeded eight billion, but it's a deceptive number. Not only is growth unevenly distributed, but in so many countries, population is in decline. In some cases, steep, deep decline. Maybe most graphically (and demographically) there's Japan: a country that, since hitting a high of 128 million citizens in 2008, has lost population for 15 years running and is on pace to shrink by half by this century's end, despite government measures to halt the decline. This has huge impacts on the economy, the health care system, education, housing, national defense, immigration, the culture at large. Governments can control interest rates and inflation rates; stimulating birth rates is far harder. We report from the land of the rising sun—now also the land of declining sons (and daughters)...
Ichinono, Japan, sits regally, wedged between mountains, an hour and a half west of Kyoto. Its listed population: just shy of 50, but if it seems like more, it's for good reason. The village comes embroidered with 40 lifelike puppets. In the middle of town. On a playground. Pedaling off toward the woods.
Puppets in Ichinono
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Shinichi Murayama: (In Japanese/English translation) It's lonely here… Back in my day, the village was full of kids.
Shinichi Murayama is the town puppet master, overseeing the making and then scattering of dolls throughout Ichinono, populating a depopulating village.
Jon Wertheim: You say it's lonely here. Are the puppets a way to make things a little less lonely?
Shinichi Murayama: (In Japanese/English translation) Puppets are no substitute for people, of course. But making them cheers us up.
This is as good a snapshot as any of Japan's demographic crisis. There are hundreds of communities here, fading like Ichinono.
Jon Wertheim: Do you think there might come a day when the-- the puppet population exceeds the human population?
Shinichi Murayama: (In Japanese/English translation) So, if things keep going the way they are right now, of course our population will decrease, maybe it'll go down to 40, or maybe 30. But at the same time my ability to continue making puppets is finite. So, yes. I am deeply worried about the future of our village.
Modern Japan sounds like a sci-fi premise: the incredible shrinking country. Go-go Tokyo is the world's largest city, and Japan has one of the world's longest national life expectancies—85 years—but it's also losing population at a staggering rate. Last year, more than two people died for every new baby born, a net loss of almost a million. Today, Japanese buy more adult diapers than buy baby diapers.
Jon Wertheim: Is there a more urgent issue in Japan right now than this demographic crisis?
Taro Kono: There are climate change, government deficit. But, if there's no people living in Japan...
Jon Wertheim: It's all – it's all relevant, climate change, and government deficits, and the military, if you don't have people living here.
Taro Kono: That's right.
Taro Kono
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A longtime high-ranking minister in Japan's parliament, Taro Kono was nearly elected prime minister in 2021, and says he intends to seek the highest office again.
Jon Wertheim: What does Japan look like if it continues to shrink like this?
Taro Kono: There are less and less number of a young generation. And, the all the burdens are on the young generation. And they won't be able to sustain. So society is going to be breaking up. Economy is just going to stagnate. Even for Self-Defense Force, last year. we recruited only half of what we need.
Jon Wertheim: The Japanese military?
Taro Kono: Uh-huh. You feel it.
Declining population is hardly unique to Japan. Name a country outside Africa and odds are good it's losing people, or about to. In the U.S, the fertility rate is at an all-time low. Donald Trump has declared the collapse of fertility a crucial threat to the West. Kono wishes his country had been better prepared.
Taro Kono: Every sector, even in the government, there's a labor shortage. And we really need to invest in technology to replace the human being. But, we are still slow to do that. The alternative is to open up the country to foreign immigrants. But there's some psychological barrier to open up the country.
Jon Wertheim: What do you mean by that?
Taro Kono: Well, I mean, the Japanese have been very homogeneous. Many Japanese don't know how to deal with non-Japanese living in the society.
Jon Wertheim: Japan is also the world's fourth largest economy. Can it continue to be a power like that if the population keeps declining?
Taro Kono: Nope.
In part, Japan's declining demographics owes to a spike in the success of women in the workforce. And in Japan, a famously punishing work culture—coupled with a men-first social culture—makes it all the more difficult to balance career and family. Still more so amid a persistently stagnant economy.
Jon Wertheim and Roland Kelts
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Roland Kelts: Up through the 1980s, the bubble years, Japan had omiai. They had arranged marriage. You know, the corporate guys would marry the office ladies. And this was all set up. It's gone, now. And the office ladies make more money than the corporate guys. So now, you have this shift in economics that has not been reflected in social norms.
Roland Kelts is a Japanese American writer. He's married, but he's well aware that he's the exception. In 2023, fewer than 500,000 Japanese couples married, the lowest number since 1917.
Jon Wertheim: I'm not sure other societies in the world have an implosion of marriage.
Roland Kelts: Well, Japan's, I think, ahead of the game. Japan's where we're all headed.
Jon Wertheim: You think this is-- this is a harbinger.
Roland Kelts: I do. I think it's a canary in a coal mine.
It doesn't help Japan's marriage rates—and therefore birth rates—that a growing number of businesses now cater to the rise of parties-of-one…
We met Kelts at a ramen joint designed specifically for dining in solitude.
There's single karaoke. We visited a bar open only to those arriving stag.
There are 'solo weddings,' replete with professional photoshoots.
But that's not all. Lately, alternative romance is highly in vogue. Just as robots today are helping ease some of the national labor shortages, inanimate objects are also making their way into the bedroom. We met Akihiko Kondo, who told us he sleeps alongside the anime character Miku, whom he married in a formal ceremony in 2018.
Akihiko Kondo says he married the anime character Miku in a formal ceremony in 2018.
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He's one of thousands of Japanese who, unashamedly, say they are in a monogamous romantic relationship with a fictional character. Staggeringly (or maybe not), almost half of the country's millennial singles (ages, 18-34) self-report as virgins (compared to barely 20% in the U.S.) and, of course, less human copulation, means less human population.
Roland Kelts: AI relationships, they're going to get better, and better, and better. And they're going to supersede, in some ways real physical relationships.
To foster human relationships, the Tokyo government has taken action. Yuriko Koike is the city's governor.
Gov. Yuriko Koike: We are promoting for matchmaking by artificial intelligence.
Jon Wertheim: Tokyo government is playing Omiai, playing– playing matchmaker.
Gov. Yuriko Koike: That's right.
Yes, the Japanese capital city has launched its own dating app.
Jon Wertheim: Is it working?
Gov. Yuriko Koike: Yes, it's-- it's working. And, number of application is more than we expected, three or four times.
Tokyo is also set to introduce a four-day workweek for government employees, designed to help working mothers and, hopefully, boost birth rates.
Gov. Yuriko Koike: When the bubble economy was bursting there was a commercial advertisement, "Work 24 hours." But, the longer we work, the–the less children we have. So demography is the one of the biggest national issues that we have to tackle.
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike speaks with Jon Wertheim.
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Jon Wertheim: The Japanese government has rolled out a number of programs to—to address this declining birth rate. Are any of them working?
Hanako Okada: (In Japanese/English translation) The total fertility rate for 2024 was reported to hit an all-time low. The continuing slide in the birth rate clearly indicates our current policy isn't working at all.
Until last year, Hanako Okada now 44, was a lawyer in Tokyo, and primary caregiver for her two children. Overworked and under-fulfilled, she ran for parliament on a platform of trying to alter the culture for women, even breaking down in tears on the campaign trail, describing her stress.
Hanako Okada: (In Japanese/English translation) I remembered how tough it was to raise my child and I burst into tears. It was overwhelming. And viewers probably thought, I'm a politician who gets what ordinary people have to deal with.
It was effective. She won unexpectedly, and Hana-san as she's called, is now something of a political change agent. She says confronting the population problem requires not dating apps and shortened workweeks but a sweeping mindset change. In particular: a rethinking of living in urban areas—as 92% of Japanese currently do.
She practiced what she preaches, moving back to her rural hometown of Aomori, a northern prefecture known for its apple orchards — but one that is rapidly aging, rapidly losing people.
Built for 600 students, this Aomori middle school is now only one-third filled. They still learn the traditional shamisen, but there are too few kids to field a soccer team. And a competitive snowball fight means recruiting a visiting ringer…
Jon Wertheim: Why'd you return?
Hanako Okada: (In Japanese/English translation) Aomori is my hometown. The precipitous drop in population, and vitality, of this city is deeply troubling not just personally but from a national perspective. If our regions collapse, it imperils our country's strength. I thought, we can't allow this situation to go on.
Jon Wertheim: You've seen the math, I'm sure. Do you believe Japan can overcome this population crisis?
Hanako Okada: (In Japanese/English translation) We need to stop the over-concentration of people in Tokyo. In the rural areas, we need interesting jobs with decent pay that allow young people to support themselves.
Hanako Okada
60 Minutes
Her thinking: once there are more jobs in rural areas, the younger people will come. Once they come—and experience the space, the slower rhythms, the quality of life—they'll be motivated to start families.
Hanako Okada: (In Japanese/English translation) The values of our younger generation are gradually shifting. Tokyo is no longer the be-all end-all.
One such Japanese family that agrees: the Katos. They recently exchanged city life for this spacious house in Ichinono, land of puppets. Their son Kuranosuke was the first baby born in the village in more than 20 years.
Toshiki Kato: (In Japanese/English translation) We've got a mountain and a river to explore. We make our own toys and grow our own vegetables. For a kid, there's plenty of ways to have fun here.
Jon Wertheim: You're happy here?
Toshiki Kato: (In Japanese/English translation) Yes, I truly enjoy this lifestyle.
The Katos hope others will follow, that Kuranosuke will have friends and classmates among all the town's dolls.
Toshiki Kato: (In Japanese/English translation) It takes us back to our roots. I want Japanese people to become more aware of this lifestyle, which is closer to our traditional way of living.
It might be a traditional Japanese lifestyle. But amid a population decline, it will be in a smaller, lonelier and fundamentally different Japan.
Produced by Jacqueline Williams. Associate producer, Elizabeth Germino. Broadcast associate, Mimi Lamarre. Edited by Mike Levine.