The streets of Tokyo are bustling with life. The colorful neon lights, the fast trains, the crowds of office workers swarming to their offices. But beneath this facade of dynamism lies a deep crisis: birth rates in Japan are plummeting at a dizzying rate. This is why the metropolitan government has decided to take action with a reform that is a true cultural upheaval.
A crisis that comes from afar
The birth problem in Japan is not new, but in recent years it has reached alarming proportions. In 2023 have been registered just 758.631 new births, the lowest figure ever recorded in the country's history. A number that gives pause for thought, especially when compared to the fertility rate of 1,2 children per woman, far from the 2,1 needed to keep the population stable.
Il International Monetary Fund has identified several causes behind this dramatic decline: increasingly late and rare marriages, high cost of living, significant gender wage gap and expensive childcare services. A perfect storm that is bringing the country's demographics to its knees.
The former prime minister Fumio Kishida He did not mince his words, calling it “the biggest crisis Japan is facing.”
Japan's Birth Rate Collapses, Tokyo's Response
Faced with this scenario, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has decided to take action with a bold move. From April 2025, its more than 160.000 employees will be able to benefit from the four-day work week, thus enjoying a three-day long weekend.
“We will continue to review flexible working styles to ensure that women do not have to sacrifice their careers due to life events such as childbirth or childcare,” said the governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike.
It's not all. The administration has also introduced a measure that allows parents with children in the first three grades of elementary school to reduce their working hours by up to two hours a day, in exchange for a proportional reduction in salary.
A paradigm shift
These reforms represent a paradigm shift in Japanese work culture, traditionally characterized by long hours in the office and poor work-life balance. Japan It is one of the longest-lived countries in the world, but this blessing risks turning into a curse if the birth rate trend is not reversed.
The government has already invested billions in initiatives to counter this trend, such as the “fight against loneliness“, improving access to childcare services, and promoting egg freezing. Tokyo even launched a dating app that requires users to verify their income and desire to marry.
The hope is that these measures will help create a more favorable environment for parenting, but only time will tell whether they will be enough to reverse a trend that threatens to turn Japan into “a country for old men.”
