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The story
On the 29th, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released finalized results from the 2025 national census, showing Japan’s total population — including foreign residents — stood at 122,972,528 as of October 1, 2025. That’s a drop of 3,173,571 people (2.5%) from the previous 2020 census. On 5ch, threads also cited a separate statistic based on the Basic Resident Register showing that, counting Japanese nationals only, the population fell below 120 million for the first time in 42 years — leading to confusion over why the two figures differed. Opinions on what counts as an “appropriate” population ranged from the 50 millions to the 80 millions, with posters split between those unconcerned about population decline itself and those worried about maintaining infrastructure and tax revenue.
Japan’s Total Population: 122.97 Million | NEWSjp — Kyodo News
Published 2026/09/29 14:16:36
According to finalized results from the 2025 national census released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on the 29th, Japan’s total population — including foreign residents — stood at 122,972,528 as of October 1, 2025. That’s a decrease of 3,173,571 people (2.5%) from the previous census in 2020.
Source: news.jp / Read the original article
What people said
so that really puts it under 120 million.
Yeah, pretty much.
Japan's Population Falls Below 120 Million for First Time in 42 Years — Down 910,000 to 119.7367 Million; Foreign Residents Up 350,000
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/20260729-GYT1T00324/
On the 29th, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released population figures based on the Basic Resident Register, as of New Year's Day this year.
The number of Japanese residents fell by 916,744 from the previous year to 119,736,483, dropping below 120 million for the first time in 42 years.
Foreign residents rose by 353,696 to 4,031,159, a record high.
Thought it hadn't dropped as much as expected…
turns out this is why.
910,000 people — that's basically an entire Kagawa Prefecture (aka "Udon Prefecture," pop. ~950,000) disappearing every year.
The problem is there's no real reason to think it'd stabilize at 50 million.
Say there are about 700,000 births this year —
even if every single one of them lived to 90, that's only about 63 million total.
Where does this fantasy of the population leveling off at 50 million even come from?
Forget immigration — until we stop propping up the elderly and start spending on the younger generation instead, the root problem isn't getting solved.
Thank Heizo Takenaka for that (the economist-politician behind Japan's labor deregulation reforms).
It's because companies won't hire young Japanese for blue-collar work that immigrants end up filling the gap.
You say "cut them loose" like it's nothing, but if we just abandon the elderly, we'll end up with bodies piling up everywhere — you fine with that?
And you think the young could actually live normally in a world like that?
Some super-rural prefecture, maybe?
Isn't that the one supposedly hidden somewhere between Saitama and Gunma? (a running joke about a mythical "secret" prefecture)
There are 4 million of them??
That's 1 in every 30 people.
Among people in their 20s, 1 in 10 is a foreign national.
That's Abe's parting gift.
https://bbs68.meiwasuisan.com/news/img/17890130880018.jpg
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced at the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy on the 5th that Japan would expand its acceptance of foreign workers. A new residency status covering five labor-starved industries — including construction, agriculture, and elder care — was set to launch in April 2019. It opened the door to simple labor, previously off-limits in principle, with a goal of getting over 500,000 foreign workers employed by 2025.
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO31413180V00C18A6MM8000/
A lot of what was built here assumed the number of users would just keep growing forever.
More like — in the age of IT and AI,
having a smaller population is actually an advantage.
But… this is Japan we're talking about (´・ω・｀)
The UK and France are roughly that size too.
You can say "seems about right" all you want, but that doesn't mean the decline actually stops there.
If the population shrinks, there are fewer people producing garbage too, so it evens out, right?
You're not getting it.
The real problem is Japan's population structure.
The number of elderly people who can no longer work is only going to keep climbing.
That trend isn't reversing.
The number of people around to even collect the garbage keeps shrinking too, and broken roads and bridges just staying unrepaired forever is going to become the new normal.
Then just thin out the number of roads and bridges, no?
But that makes travel and logistics less efficient,
so wouldn't you need even more manpower as a result?
I can already picture a future where bridges that couldn't be reinforced and got closed off somehow still end up being accident hotspots (´・ω・｀)
Sure, fewer old folks, but the kids aren't increasing either —
so who's going to pay the taxes?
This is a country where 1 in 3 people is elderly now.
Try actually looking at the statistics for once.
It's the kids who are shrinking.
The elderly population peaking out is still a ways off.
Downsize the country smartly, and population decline doesn't automatically mean getting poorer.
We've let ourselves become the country with the world's highest elderly ratio —
that's downsizing in about the least smart way possible.
> Downsize the country smartly, and population decline doesn't automatically mean getting poorer.
Not happening. Japan's income level is already about half that of the US/Europe. It's already getting poorer.
Even King Bombii was living large back when it was 300 yen to the dollar. (King Bombii — the poverty-god character from the "Momotaro Dentetsu" board game series, invoked here as a joke about how weak the yen has become)
Japan has no natural resources and barely any flat land — how exactly is it supposed to downsize "smartly"?
Background and Key Points of the Debate
The figures released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications are the finalized results of the 2025 national census (as of October 1, including foreign residents), showing a decline of 3.17 million from five years earlier. Meanwhile, the figure cited in post #19 — based on the Basic Resident Register — is a separate count as of January this year, covering Japanese nationals only, showing a year-on-year drop of 910,000 and a fall below 120 million for the first time in 42 years. Because the two statistics use different reference dates and different scopes (whether foreign residents are included), seeing both numbers side by side in the same thread led to the mistaken impression that the decline was “smaller than expected.” As for what counts as an “appropriate” population, opinions ranged anywhere from 50 million to 80 million, but as post #255 points out, with roughly 700,000 births a year, there’s little basis for thinking the population would actually level off in that range over the long run. On causes and solutions, opinions split over immigration, elderly welfare, and the cost of maintaining infrastructure, with no consensus reached.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Japan’s Total Population: 122.97 Million.”
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