Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released preliminary 2025 numbers on February 26 showing 705,809 births — the tenth consecutive annual record low and the fewest since tracking began in 1899. [1] Deaths for the year reached 1,605,654, producing a natural population decline of 899,845, the largest in Japanese history. [1] The 2.1 percent decline in births against 2024 was slightly slower than the 2.5 to 5.5 percent annual drops of the past nine years, but the ministry declined to call it a slowdown. [1]

The paper's Saturday piece on the American fertility rate falling to 53.1 named demographic winter as the thread and the United States as its newest entrant. Japan crossed the line earlier. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research projected in 2023 — using 2020 census data — that Japan would not fall below 710,000 births until 2042. The threshold was crossed 17 years early. [1] The total fertility rate stands near 1.2, roughly half the 2.1 replacement level and down from 1.26 in 2022. [2]

Only Tokyo and Ishikawa prefectures recorded year-over-year increases. [1] Demographers attribute the rest of the country's continued decline to sustained high living costs, long working hours, delayed marriage and cultural norms that place disproportionate household burden on women. [2] The data also tracks the erosion of immigration as a counterweight. The 705,809 figure includes foreign nationals resident in Japan and Japanese citizens born abroad; an Asahi Shimbun estimate for Japanese-only births within the country puts the likely 2025 number closer to 668,000. [1]

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government has increased child-rearing subsidies, expanded parental leave and added housing assistance. None has moved the tide. [2] Apollo Academy's Torsten Slok called the gap between deaths and births a "sustained decline." [3] The American figure at 53.1 is a rhyme. Japan is the text. The country running the experiment longest is also running it hardest.

-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo