From our other sites
The story
On September 29, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released finalized population figures from the 2025 census (as of October 1), revealing that Sendai’s population has declined for the first time since the census began in 1920. The city had previously projected its population would peak in 2028 at 1,101,000, and since this decline amounts to a mere 0.05%, officials maintain that “we do not view this as the start of a declining phase” at this stage. Looking at the breakdown, the population aged 65 and over grew 5.09% while those under 15 fell 9.47% — numbers that starkly reflect Japan’s ongoing trend of fewer children and more elderly people. On 5ch, threads buzzed not only with sarcasm over the city’s “not a declining phase” line, but also comparisons of population and vibrancy between Sendai and other government-designated cities like Kumamoto, the history of how mergers expanded Sendai’s city limits, and even broader discussion of the structural flow of people from Tohoku to the greater Tokyo area.
Finalized population figures from the 2025 census (as of October 1) were released on the 29th, revealing that Sendai’s population has turned to decline for the first time since the census began in 1920. The city says it “does not consider this the start of a declining phase” at this stage, and plans to keep a close watch on future population trends. The city had previously estimated its population would peak in 2028 at 1,101,000, and expected the 2025 figure to reach 1,100,275 — a slight increase.
By sex, the male population fell 0.38% to 529,609, while the female population rose 0.26% to 566,537. By age group, the elderly population aged 65 and over rose 5.09% to 270,319, while those under 15 fell 9.47% to 116,474 — a clear sign of the ongoing trend of fewer children and an aging population. The working-age population (15-64) was essentially flat at 673,328 (up 0.03%).
Among the city’s five wards, a “decline in the north, growth in the south” pattern emerged. Miyagino Ward fell 1.34%, marking its first-ever decline, while Izumi Ward declined for a second consecutive time. The other three wards all saw increases.
Source: kahoku.news / Original article here
What people said
will the falling birthrate shrink work for small and mid-size regional sash (window frame) manufacturers? Will they go under?
Is this the sash-maker's prefecture???
Kumamoto has like 200,000 fewer people than Gifu Prefecture, right? Even fewer than Mie Prefecture.
Sendai's basically just Kumamoto x1.2 at best.
The areas near the Yamagata border are basically nothing but untouched forest wilderness.
Honestly though, western Japan just has a lot of big, lively cities.
Supposedly it's got the second-most good-looking guys, right after Ibaraki.
Present-day Sendai got huge from repeated mergers.
That includes areas that are basically farming villages.
Outflow to the Kanto region has started outpacing inflow from the rest of Tohoku.
Probably true for Hiroshima too, not just Sendai.
Fukuoka City/Fukuoka Pref.: 167/508 (33%)
Hiroshima City/Hiroshima Pref.: 117/268 (44%)
Sendai City/Miyagi Pref.: 110/220 (50%)
Kyoto's even more lopsided — Kyoto City alone makes up 56% of the prefecture.
But Japan is so consumed by Tokyo-supremacy thinking
that people brainwash themselves into believing nothing else matters.
Well, Japan's in its shrinking phase now, so consolidating into a multi-polar network of designated cities is probably the way to go.
The way cities are built in the West, especially Europe, is just fundamentally different.
Those cities started out as walled fortress towns, so they were compact cities from the get-go, where you can live your whole life within walking distance.
Japanese cities sprawl out sloppily and assume everyone drives. That's exactly the urban form that takes the worst hit from a shrinking, aging population.
Then mergers suddenly turned it into a million-person city.
It was just small to begin with — the current built-up area is a perfectly reasonable size for a designated city.
Is Natori supposed to be Miyagi's #2 city?
That's way too lame…
Realistically, Miyagi's real #2 city is Kakuda.
Sendai basically IS Miyagi to begin with —
the other cities were originally just 'towns' and 'villages.'
Natori's actually #4.
#2 is Ishinomaki, #3 is Osaki.
If they hadn't merged, a lot of these towns wouldn't even have had the fiscal base to function as independent municipalities in the first place.
Guess if they admit the decline, they'll end up like Kobe with endless net outflow?
Thanks to Fukushima, Yamagata, and Iwate residents moving to Sendai,
its population is being propped up.
That's Sendai City for you.
In the 2025 census, Tokyo is now the only prefecture whose population is still growing.
But since its growth rate is a mere 1%, a decline is clearly visible on the horizon eventually.
Okinawa has already fallen into decline.
But then everyone realized 'huh, it's not as big a city as I thought' and started aiming for Tokyo instead.
They'd land a job in Tokyo and end up living in Chiba or Saitama.
When someone from Tohoku says 'I've got relatives in Tokyo,' it's usually actually Saitama or Chiba, occasionally Kawasaki.
Nobody's interested in Yokohama.
Nobody knows anything about Nagoya.
Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara were a one-time school trip destination, and that was enough.
Kyushu might as well be some imaginary region that doesn't really exist in Japan.
It's not that people are looking down on it — they genuinely don't know anything about it and don't even try to.
Probably only about 1 in 20 people from Tohoku has ever traveled abroad.
Don't you know it's actually the old folks out in the countryside who travel abroad the most?
Of its 215 municipalities, 165 — or 77% — are classified as 'potentially disappearing municipalities,' the highest count and rate in the country.
The report notes that 'the majority of these municipalities need countermeasures for both social decline (migration outflow) and natural decline (falling births, rising deaths).'
Tohoku: -18,902
Kansai: -25,499
Chugoku: -10,833
Shikoku: -4,490
Kyushu: -12,570
Isn't it western Japan that's really fattening up Tokyo?
Even so, Saitama and Chiba are both losing population.
In Saitama, even though the south is growing, the north and the Chichibu area are seeing sharp declines.
In Chiba, the northwest is growing, but the northeast and south are declining sharply.
Even Ichihara — the only city east or south of Chiba City with a population over 200,000 — is also losing population.
Over the 50 postwar years of the high-growth era, inflow into the capital region totaled 1.1 million from Tohoku, followed by 700,000 from northern Kanto and 600,000 from Kyushu.
Those numbers are big enough that hometown associations (kenjinkai) exist for them.
And on top of that, inflow from Kansai has been exploding at an accelerating pace over the past 20 years.
Once you look at Kyoto Prefecture's habitable land area, it makes total sense.
Is there actual data backing that up?
Ministry of Internal Affairs Basic Resident Registration data, 1956-2008
Inflow to the capital region:
Tohoku 2,757,331; Northern Kanto 1,050,757; Kyushu 1,320,572
Brutal.
Everyone dies eventually.
Why would you assume designated cities don't have elderly people in them?
A city with a giant abandoned ruin right by the station is obviously done for. It's just the biggest regional city within the vast countryside that is Tohoku. That's all it really is.
Yokohama and Kobe are seeing population declines too, you know.
Background and Key Points of This Story
Sendai’s projected population peak is 2028 (1,101,000), so this decline of 0.05% could arguably fall within the margin of error for that long-term projection. Part of why the city is emphasizing that this “isn’t a declining phase” is that it wants to stay consistent with that forecast. The populations of Japan’s government-designated cities have historically fluctuated significantly due to municipal mergers, and as posters in the thread point out, Sendai itself grew from roughly 600,000 to around a million through mergers. When a merger expands a city’s boundaries, it often absorbs rural farming areas along with it, which tends to split growth and decline trends between the urban core and the outlying districts. This time’s “decline in the north, growth in the south” pattern is one example of that, with Miyagino and Izumi wards declining while the other three wards grew. What readers might easily miss is that behind the modest 0.05% overall figure lies a much faster-moving shift in age structure — the under-15 population fell by 9.47% while the 65-and-over population grew by 5.09%. The thread’s discussion expanded into debates about Tokyo’s over-concentration and population outflow from Tohoku, but these are being read less as something unique to Sendai and more as a structural problem shared by regional hub cities across Japan.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Sendai] Population Declines for First Time in Census — City Says “Not a Declining Phase,” Emphasizes 0.05% Decline Rate.”
Leave a Reply