Japan’s native population fell by a record amount in 2016, but a jump in the number of foreign residents limited the overall annual decline.
According to the Internal Affairs Ministry, the number of Japanese fell 308,084 to 125.6m, reflecting decades of low birth rates and population ageing.
That was offset by a 7 per cent increase in the foreign resident population to 2.3m — a rise of 148,959 people — as increasing labour shortages led to inflows of students and guest workers.
The figures reflect a fundamental question for Japan in the years ahead: whether it will allow immigration to sustain its overall population or accept a decline to preserve ethnic homogeneity.
For the first time since the survey began in 1979, the number of annual births fell below 1m, with 981,202 babies born in 2016. Deaths reached a high of 1.3m.
The pace of population decline is expected to accelerate steadily as the baby boom generation born after the second world war ages while birth rates remain low.
According to projections from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the pace of decline will rise every year until 2045, by which time Japan will be losing about 900,000 residents a year — equivalent to a city the size of Austin, Texas.
Given many years of low birth rates, there is no quick way to reverse that decline, so the only alternative is immigration. That remains contentious in Japan, however, with politicians reluctant even to mention the word.
Instead, business lobbies have secured a succession of programmes that allow unskilled guest workers into Japan. For example, the “foreign trainee” programme is supposed to allow workers to enter Japan to learn technical skills for up to three years, before returning to their home country.
However, the system has been widely abused as a source of low-wage workers, who often work in harsh conditions. Although the number of foreign residents is up, it is unlikely to lead to a sustained increase in population.
Japan’s population continued to shift towards big cities and Tokyo in particular. The population of the capital rose by 115,000 to 13.5m, an increase of 0.9 per cent, while the surrounding prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa also gained residents.
But population decline accelerated in isolated rural areas, with Aomori, Akita and Kochi prefectures all losing more than 1 per cent of their residents.