Japan’s population fell by a record 244,000 last year, according to Japanese Ministry of Health estimates released yesterday, highlighting concerns over an ever-dwindling workforce supporting a growing number of pensioners.
An estimated 1,031,000 babies were born in Japan last year, down about 6,000 from a year earlier, the ministry said.
On the other hand, about 1,275,000 people died — up about 19,000 from the previous year, the highest annual rise since World War II.
As a result, the natural population decline came to a record 244,000, the ministry said, beating the previous highest fall of 212,000 in 2012.
Japan’s population totaled 126,393,679 as of March 31, down 0.21 percent from a year earlier, according to a Japanese government figure.
It has continually declined since 2007 by natural attrition — deaths minus births.
Japan is rapidly graying, with more than 20 percent of the population aged 65 or over — one of the highest proportions of elderly people in the world.
The country has very little immigration and any suggestion that it open its borders to young workers who could help plug the population gap provokes strong opposition reactions among the public.
The proportion of people aged 65 or over will reach nearly 40 percent of the population in 2060, according to a 2012 government report.
Deaths were first reported to outnumber births in Japan in 2005, the first decline since 1899 when it began collecting the data, Japanese health ministry figures showed.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the