Japanese Population Dips below 120 Million

(The second sentence of the final paragraph should have read. “…in Osaka grew by…,” instead of as sent. A substitute story follows.) Japanese Population Dips below 120 Million Tokyo, July 29 (Jiji Press)–The number of Japanese people living in the country as of Jan. 1 fell below 120 million, logging the sharpest drop on record from a year before, the internal affairs ministry said Wednesday. The number of Japanese residents fell by 916,744, or 0.76 pct, to 119,736,483, marking the 17th consecutive year of decline, the ministry said using resident registry data. The data showed that the number of foreign residents in the country rose by 353,696, or 9.62 pct, to 4,031,159, the highest since the ministry started taking statistics for such residents in 2013. The foreign population in Japan has been growing since 2023 following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of people who moved to the country from abroad reached a record high of 720,988 in 2025. Among Japan’s 47 prefectures, Tokyo reported an increase in Japanese residents for the third year in a row, rising by 12,540, or 0.09 pct, to 13,293,851, or 11.1 pct of the total Japanese population. The remaining 46 prefectures all marked decreases in the number of Japanese people. The Japanese population in Akita fell most among them, at 1.95 pct, followed by Aomori and Kochi, both at 1.7 pct. The number of Japanese births hit a record low of 670,467 in 2025, while there were 1,593,475 Japanese deaths. The natural population decline, or the number of deaths minus that of births, reached 923,008. None of the 47 prefectures posted a natural population increase. Seven prefectures logged net social population growth, or a situation in which the number of people moving in exceeds that of those moving out, with Tokyo marking the largest net increase, at 66,661. The combined number of Japanese and foreign residents in the country fell by 563,048, or 0.45 pct, to 123,767,642. The combined population in the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya metropolitan areas totaled 65,979,272, falling for the sixth straight year but accounting for more than half of the country’s overall population. The total number of Japanese and foreign residents rose in three prefectures. The population in Tokyo rose by 75,019, or 0.54 pct, to 14,077,553, while that in Osaka grew by 3,365, or 0.04 pct, to 8,775,326, and that in Chiba increased by 2,169, or 0.03 pct, to 6,313,748. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]