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The story
Preliminary figures show Nagano Prefecture’s 2025 birth count at 9,873 — the first time it has fallen below 10,000 since records began. In response, the prefecture set up a task force, holding its first meeting on September 16. Governor Shuichi Abe said the prefecture would “shift gears” to tackle the population decline, but his vague phrasing drew a wave of driving-themed jabs on 5ch. Thread commenters debated how effective any countermeasures could really be, raising issues like low starting salaries for new graduates, the concentration of population in Tokyo, and policies on accepting foreign workers.
To address its rapid population decline, Nagano Prefecture set up a task force and held its first meeting on September 16.
Governor Abe:
“I want every department to shift gears more than ever before and treat this population decline as a central issue.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Come live here and you'll get it — you'll be desperate to escape
What exactly is there to admire?
Moved here last year, planning to bail before this year's out
Policies promoting immigration of foreign couples
Like Nepali refugees who lost their homes in flooding, for instance
As for new entries and the net increase of Indonesians next year (2027):
given the sharp upward trend so far, the net increase (effective inflow) is expected to keep running at roughly 50,000–70,000 people a year.
Also, in terms of total resident population, the figure had already hit 266,069 by the end of 2025, and is projected to blow past 300,000 sometime next year.
Wrong, dummy
You downshift to get more torque
Have you already forgotten the Employment Ice Age, back when there was a whole generation with lots of siblings?
What matters is how many new-grad jobs pay enough to save.
Exactly this.
Even with full-time positions open, you can't survive on ¥110,000 take-home a month and a ¥10,000 bonus.
"Sesame oil and peasants: the more you squeeze, the more comes out."
This saying is attributed to Kamio Haruhide, a mid-Edo-period finance commissioner (kanjō bugyō), and captures the cold-blooded view of farmers used to justify the era's brutal tax-collection (rate-hike) policies.
Wait, manual transmission in this day and age? lol
I live in Nagano, and now that the young people have vanished, foreigners really stand out
it's too close to Tokyo.
Why put in the effort to grow your own city when you can just go to Tokyo instead
They just have no attachment to their own hometown
Or the government could start growing test-tube babies and raising them itself
All the greater Tokyo area has ever done is skim off residents from other regions.
Tokyo, the highest-income prefecture in Japan, has a birth rate of 1.08,
while Okinawa, the lowest-income prefecture in Japan, has a birth rate of 1.80.
Improving the birth rate comes down to whether families and communities can help each other raise kids —
policy and subsidies are only secondary factors that supplement that.
The real fix for the shrinking birth rate is simply undoing the concentration of population in cities,
which is exactly what severs those family and community support networks.
To that end, levying a special tax on urban areas and redistributing it to rural regions,
or weighting votes differently between cities and depopulated areas, would serve the public good.
I wish people wouldn't start screeching about it only after the ship's already sunk — or is this just another 'we'll totally get right on it' con?
I saw something like this before:
the deadline to fix the declining birth rate without major impact or burden was around 2000;
the deadline where it could still be fixed but with a somewhat hard landing was around 2010;
the deadline where it could still be fixed but only with brutal pain was around 2015.
Background and Key Points of This Story
Setting up a “task force” to fight the declining birth rate has become common among local governments in recent years, but critics consistently note that without concrete numerical targets or budget commitments, such efforts tend to amount to empty slogans. The governor’s phrase “shift gears” likewise took on a life of its own without ever specifying what would actually change, drawing a flood of driving-themed mockery in the thread. Much of the discussion centered on structural factors like low starting salaries and poor conditions for new graduates and the population drain toward greater Tokyo, with opinions split on expanding the acceptance of foreign workers. It’s also worth noting that birth counts are affected by the sheer size of the population of childbearing age, so judging the success or failure of birth-rate countermeasures from a single year’s number alone is difficult.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Nagano Prefecture’s Birth Count Falls Below 10,000 for the First Time — Governor: “We’ll Shift Gears and Tackle It” — 2025 Preliminary Figure Is 9,873 — Prefecture Sets Up Task Force.”
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