Toyama, Sept. 29 (Jiji Press)–Staff of the Toyama city government may have inflated the central Japan city’s population in the 2025 census, it was learned Tuesday. On the day, the internal affairs ministry submitted a criminal complaint against unidentified city staff to the Toyama prefectural police department. The city population is believed to have been padded by at least 2,000, and several city employees were possibly involved in the suspected overstatement. According to revised data released by the ministry on Tuesday, the city had a population of 399,197, down from the preliminary figure of 402,133 released in May. Earlier this month, officials from the ministry’s Statistics Bureau visited the city government after data discrepancies were discovered. City employees are suspected of manipulating population data, including by counting households that field census takers removed. “I sincerely apologize for the great inconvenience caused,” Toyama Mayor Hirohisa Fujii told reporters on Tuesday. The mayor said he does not believe that city staff intended to keep the city’s population at or above 400,000. In the 2010 census, the town of Higashiura, Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, was suspected of overstating its population to reach the 50,000 threshold required for an upgrade to city status. The deputy mayor at the time was convicted in the case. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
