mytest
Books, eBooks, and more from Debito Arudou, Ph.D. (click on icon):
UPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito
DEBITO.ORG PODCASTS on iTunes, subscribe free
“LIKE” US on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/debitoorg
https://www.facebook.com/embeddedrcsmJapan
http://www.facebook.com/handbookimmigrants
https://www.facebook.com/JapaneseOnlyTheBook
https://www.facebook.com/BookInAppropriate
If you like what you read and discuss on Debito.org, please consider helping us stop hackers and defray maintenance costs with a little donation via my webhoster:
All donations go towards website costs only. Thanks for your support!
Hi Blog. One thing keeping me from commenting more frequently is the pressure I put on myself to write an essay before getting to the news article in question. I’m going to do less of that in future; just briefly commenting and then getting to the article/issue in question.
The point of this post is to demonstrate some more Embedded Racism that is normalized in Japan’s media and public policy. In its official population tallies, Japan will only count “Japanese nationals” as actual people living in Japan. Foreigners are mentioned in the Kyodo News article below, yes, but look how things are worded in it. I’ve underlined the questionable bits.
Again, this is normal in Japan’s population tallies, even after more than 10 years since the local registry reforms began including foreign residents on its juuminhyou Registry Certificates. It’s a highly questionable practice in terms of accurate demographics and social science, not to mention disrespectful of all the contributions foreign residents make.
Debito.org says that anyone registered as a resident in Japan should get counted as a part of the population of Japan. No walls or caveats. Little reforms like these can start now to normalize no distinctions and cost no tax money. It’s just a matter of considering NJ as fellow human beings living lives in Japan like everyone else. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
///////////////////////////////////////////
Japanese population falls in all 47 prefectures for first time
The population of Japanese nationals fell 801,000 in 2022 from a year earlier to 122,423,038, marking the largest drop since the survey began in 1968, government data showed Wednesday.
Japan Times/Kyodo News, July 26, 2023
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/07/26/national/japan-population-fall/
The population of Japanese nationals fell 801,000 in 2022 from a year earlier to 122,423,038, marking the largest drop since the survey began in 1968, government data showed Wednesday. | BLOOMBERG
KYODO
The population of Japanese nationals fell 801,000 in 2022 from a year earlier to 122,423,038, marking the largest drop and the first time all 47 prefectures have seen a decline since the survey began in 1968, government data showed Wednesday.
As of Jan. 1, 2023, Japan’s population, including foreign residents, stood at 125,416,877, down around 511,000 from a year earlier, according to a demographics survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
The trend indicates an urgent need for Japan to develop measures to address the declining birthrate and improve employment opportunities for youth and women in regional areas. [NB: Not immigration.]
While Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called for implementing “unprecedented” measures to boost the birthrate in a last-ditch effort to arrest population decline by 2030, doubts persist about whether such initiatives, which are mostly extensions of existing policies, will be effective.
Japanese nationals declined for the 14th consecutive year in 2022, with a record low of 772,000 births in Japan significantly exceeded by a record high 1.57 million deaths.
Nationals working or studying abroad accounted for a decline of around 7,000 of the population.
The number of Japanese nationals in Okinawa, which had been an outlier the previous year, shrank for first time since comparable data was made available in 1973, the data showed.
The foreign population rose for the first time in three years by around 289,000 to 2,993,839 in the reporting year, as the relaxation of strict COVID-19 border controls facilitated the return of international students and technical interns. [NB: Temporary people, not residents.]
The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates that foreign nationals will make up 10% of the population by 2070, with some local governments already engaged in efforts to attract professional talent from Asia.
By prefecture, only Tokyo saw an overall population increase due to the high influx of foreigners to the capital, while Akita Prefecture saw the largest population decrease at 1.65%.
[Note original Kyodo headline saying all prefecture populations fell. Again, foreigners don’t count.]
Among municipalities, 92.4% saw a decrease in the population of Japanese nationals, while 7.6% experienced an increase.
Those age 14 and under accounted for 11.82% of the Japanese population, falling by 0.18 percentage point from the previous year, while people age 65 and over increased by 0.15 point to 29.15%.
The working population, or people between 15 and 64, rose by 0.03 point to 59.03% of the overall population.
ENDS
======================
Do you like what you read on Debito.org? Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? Please consider donating a little something. More details here. Or if you prefer something less complicated, just click on an advertisement below.
4 comments on “Kyodo: “Japanese population falls in all 47 prefectures for first time”. Actually, untrue, even according to the article itself. Once again, Japan’s exclusionary population tallies are only for “Japanese nationals”, not all people living in Japan”
I noticed this on one of the morning news programs earlier in the week.
日本人の人口 looked so bizarre until I realised that they weren’t talking about the population of Japan, they were talking about the population of “Japanese” in Japan.
In the same week as I saw a commercial for Yakult featuring an “uncle from Mexico”, complete with sombrero, mustache, and odd accent, and a commercial depticting a “stressful situation” – in this case a Japanese woman waiting for an elevator, only to find it packed with visible “foreigners”.
Give all of Japan a Dejima Award.
Creative genuises @ Dentsu and Hakuhodo earning their millions for such incredible originality again… (sarcasm). You couldn’t make up these racist ads, but they certainly can! Well, I say “made up” but in fact these are just handed down tropes of the lowest common denominator. Their reasoning is probably that it worked before, tried and tested trad tropes. Why take a chance on progressive messaging?
It would be interesting to know how a more urban(e) and self perceived as sophisticated or cool demographic react to these ads. Is playing the gaijin card seen as sophisticated humor, or is it for the plebs?
Or is it something all Japanese regardless of income, location, and background can all “get behind and enjoy?”
I fear that it could indeed be the latter as in “hey! We are all in this together as Japanese, lets all laugh at the gaijin!” Although privately, and I stress privately, some more worldly and educated individuals have expressed their distaste at what they consider as low-end humor.
They are always at pains to stress its “Just their opinion” as apparently in Japan free speech means freedom to express somewhat racist opinions or have it explained and excused away on the grounds of age/senility/seniority like gaffe prone “shark brain” ex PM Mori.
And this is unfortunately a large part of the problem as these progressive individuals will not make a public stand. As mentioned here before, Japan does not do “Universal Values”, instead it is all down to relationships or on a case by case basis. Thus, racism is somehow down to how someone feels about it as a matter of personal preference.
And of course, its just an ad, so “it doesnt matter, its just a joke” So why don’t you lighten up, gaijin-san, drink yourself into a stupor and stop taking everything so seriously?
Sadly, this has been the default and BLM etc are probably seen as outliers.
(I may be censored now as apparently Dentsu is (or was) a taboo subject in Japan. )
“Nationals working or studying abroad accounted for a decline of around 7,000 of the population.”
This has got to be wrong, as Singapore alone has more Japanese working there than that.
The low figure does suggest that fewer Japanese are choosing to work or study abroad though; another trend.
— Maybe it’s a net exodus of 7000 Japanese citizens to residences overseas just during the year.
I’ve experienced this kind of conversation several times.
I pointed to some obviously xenophobic behaviour and was put in my place by the two seemingly contradictory arguments of Japan being “homogenous” but also very welcoming to “foreigners” because there are more and more of them, at least in some areas.
So, which is it? Surely, the definition of a “homogenous” society, in this context, would be that there aren’t many different ethnicities.
Well, my conclusion that in the ethnocentric mind it can be both, “foreigners”, i.e. anyone who doesn’t look and sound completely Japanese (whatever that means), are not a part of society, no matter how long they’ve lived here, many of them are here or even whether they were born here, and “we” welcome them the way we like while patting each other on the back about how kind we are.
Therefore, Japan’s ageing population can only be solved by Japanese people having more children, not by foreigners who don’t really belong here.
This is some top-notch proto-fascist reasoning. While I don’t think by far all locals I meet think like this, there’s enough of them, especially those in power, to prevent any kind of real diversity from being embraced any time soon. Not in the media, and definitely not by the government.