I just recently spent some time in Japan (Kyoto), and I frequently travel to Tokyo. It always interests me to see these Japanese birthrate articles because anecdotally you might never know it while walking around the cities - you'll see so many young parents with babies strapped to their chests / in strollers / on bicycles.
I mean if you're in Tokyo you won't really notice - the effect of Japan's demographic shift has been that everyone moves to the largest cities and the countryside gets emptied out, which is why afaik Tokyo's population is still increasing even as Japan as a whole has shrunk in the last few years.
To notice the effects you have to go out into smaller prefectures and notice things like elementary schools closing and towns merging because they no longer have enough people to support public services for both individually.
I have lived for the past twenty-five years in Japan’s second-largest city, Yokohama, in an area convenient for shopping and mass transit. While the neighborhood immediately around my home hasn’t changed much during that time and is still a mix of single-family houses and two- and three-story apartment buildings, along the main streets and waterfront there has been steady construction of high-rise condominiums. The local public elementary school, which my two daughters attended and which my grandson will enter in 2026, is facing a critical shortage of classroom space as families with children move into the area [1]. Parts of Tokyo are facing a similar crisis [2].
I haven’t traveled much outside the major cities since before the pandemic, but the steady depopulation in many areas is said to be equally apparent.
> Ministry officials said deaths outnumbered births in the area by a wider margin than in previous years, fewer people entered the country from abroad amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and more people moved from the capital to other prefectures.
Its depicted in Wolf Children animated movie, where newly widowed mum sees a "we pay you to live in this village house" as best for her limited savings and she teams up with 5 fellow mums to commute her kids to school to a town with one.
we recently traveled to Kaga and that's where I saw what appeared to be the "aging population" in full effect. it was a pretty big city around the Kagaonsen station, and it did look like it _used_ to be bustling and full of life at _some_ point. now, you can drive around and you'll barely see anyone around. if you do see someone, it's likely someone at least 50.
though the caveat is that maybe we visited at the wrong time (it was a weekday). maybe the youth only show up on the weekends.
> anecdotally you might never know it while walking around the cities
The decline is entirely in rural areas. Entire villages emptying out. Defunct buildings, no municipal coverage or money to demolish them. No workers at all. Bathroom not working?
Yeah, take a dump in the forest.
Want to see a doctor? Drive 50 miles if you are lucky.
And it's not really a matter of low birthrate at these places. In fact, Tokyo has consistently had the lowest birthrate of all Japanese prefectures over the last few decades. The problem is that young people are migrating to large metropolitan areas in search for better opportunities.
It's also worth noting that despite the image, Japan's birth rate is HIGH for its region and among developed countries it is the almost the highest. Japan's fertility is higher than China's, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The only arguably developed state in Asia which has a higher fertility rate is Brunei and I don't really know if it counts - it's very conservative and the economy is mostly based on oil and gas.
Japan's problem is that it has industrialized earlier than its Asian neighbors and the effects of low birth rates are already very evident (in the countryside). It also got the attention in western media as the poster child for low birth rate, but it shouldn't be — that honor should probably go to South Korea (fertility rate of 0.72 in 2023).
