Japanese people are heading towards extinction, says scientist

© Unsplash/Paul Wong

It’s a chilling projection. Hiroshi Yoshida, a distinguished professor at the Tohoku University Center for Research on the Economy and Society of the Elderly, estimates that by 2720, there will be only one Japanese child under the age of 14. In other words, the Japanese people will soon be on the verge of extinction.

An alarming decline

This is not the first time that the researcher has made such a prediction. Last year, he predicted that all Japanese people would have the surname Sato by 2531. The reason for this was the requirement that Japanese citizens must use the same surname when married: Japan is the only country to enforce this.

“If everyone becomes Sato, we may have to be addressed by our first names or by numbers. I don't think it's a good world to live in,” he said at the time.

To arrive at this new result, Hiroshi Yoshida relied on monthly data published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. His online counter reveals a worrying drop in the number of children in the country, with a decline of 2.3% observed in April 2024. This has considerably accelerated the demographic disaster scenario; it is so significant that it brings forward by 100 years the previous estimates of 2023 on the potential extinction of the Japanese population.

In 2023, only 727,277 births were recorded in the country. The fertility rate has thus fallen to 1.2 children per woman, its lowest level since 1947, the date of the first official records. At the same time, the number of deaths reached an unprecedented high of 1,575,936, more than double. The population has therefore decreased by 848,659 people in a single year.

© Fumiaki Hayashi/Unsplash

The government is trying to find solutions

« In Japan, where the recession has been going on for a long time, the number of young people who cannot marry or have a child because of their low incomes increased  ,” explains Professor Yoshida. “ If the decline in the number of births does not stop, the clock will turn back. Japan could become the first country to disappear due to a low birth rate. We should create an environment where women and the elderly can work, and aim for a society where everyone is actively involved,” he said.

In the face of this demographic decline and the rapid aging of its population, which has fallen from a peak of 128 million in 2008 to 123.7 million today, the Japanese government is stepping up its initiatives. These include encouraging dating and marriage, improving work-life balance, reducing childcare costs, and promoting gender equality. But the results of these measures are still struggling to be felt.

• A Japanese scientist predicts that there will be only one Japanese child under the age of 14 left in 695 years.
• For several years, experts have been sounding the alarm about the potential extinction of the Japanese.
• The country is multiplying initiatives to boost births. They are, for the moment, in vain.

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