'Japan Will Disappear': PM Kishida's Aide Sounds Alarm Over Rapidly Declining Population

Japan PM Fumio Kishida’s advisor has said in a statement that the country will cease to exist if it can’t slow the fall in its birth rate that threatens to shatter the social safety net and its economy.

“If we go on like this, the country will disappear,” Masako Mori told Bloomberg in an interview after Japan announced in February that the number of babies born last year slumped to a record low.

“It’s the people who have to live through the process of disappearance who will face enormous harm. It’s a terrible disease that will afflict those children,” she added.

The report said that in 2022, about twice as many people died as were born in Japan, with fewer than 800,000 births and about 1.58 million deaths.

The country has the world’s second-highest proportion of people aged 65 and over, after the tiny state of Monaco.

Japan’s population has fallen to 124.6 million from a peak of over 128 million reached in 2008 and the rate of decline is increasing.

According to the report, the proportion of people above the age of 65 rose to more than 29% last year.

“It’s not falling gradually, it’s heading straight down,” Masako Mori, an upper house lawmaker and former minister who advises Kishida on the birthrate problem and LGBTQ issues, said.

“A nosedive means children being born now will be thrown into a society that becomes distorted, shrinks and loses its ability to function,” she added.

She further warned that if nothing’s done, then the social security system would collapse, industrial and economic strength would decline and there wouldn’t be enough recruits for the Self-Defense Forces.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged “unprecedented” measures to tackle the country’s perennially low birthrate, and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is reportedly drafting a set of policy recommendations on the issue for the government. The measures include reducing student debt for those who have children.

Japan is seeing a decline due to its ageing population, with women there having on average 1.3 children, along with a low level of immigration.

The country lost more than three million inhabitants between 2011 and 2021.

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