Massive school closures in Japan due to the demographic meltdown

Japan's demographic suicide has reached a new milestone in 2022. For the first time since historical records have been kept, there have been fewer than 800,000 births, aggravating the aging problem in Japan. As a result, some 9,000 schools were forced to close and will not reopen.

As reported by Reuters, Japan's birth rate has plunged much faster and more dramatically than expected in recent years. The negative 2022 record means that there were 43,169 fewer births than the previous year and comes eight years earlier than official forecasts predicted. A far cry from the replacement rate and the number of Japanese who die each year. In 2022, the mortality rate also set a new record, reaching 1,582,033 deaths. In other words, the Japanese population declined by 782,305 people.

Two students in a school

Faced with this situation, school closures have accelerated, especially in rural areas such as Ten-ei, a mountainous ski and hot spring area in Fukushima Prefecture. A hard blow for regions already struggling with depopulation. Although this is a global problem, with special incidence in Southeast Asia, especially for China and South Korea, the situation in Japan has reached critical levels, because it is a trend that has been going on for a considerable time.

More than 450 schools close each year. In some regions, especially in rural and remote areas, the centers are maintained until the last students graduate. This is the case of Yumoto Junior High, in the northern mountainous area, which will close its doors after the graduation of its last two 15-year-old students.

Japan announces "unprecedented measures

The situation has forced Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, to promise "unprecedented measures" to boost the birth rate. These include doubling the budget for child-related policies. Kishida noted that the future lies in maintaining the educational environment, something for which it seems to be too late.

2030, deadline for reversing the situation

"By the 2030s, Japan's youth population will decline twice as fast as it does today. The next six to seven years will be the last chance to turn around the declining birth rate," Kishida said on March 17. In response, it intends to extend the possibility of opting for paternity leave to 85% of men before this date and will try to create an environment that will allow young people to raise their children without worrying.

In addition to the fact that the implementation of these and similar initiatives entails an increase in public spending, this is not the main problem that the government would face. The opposition called the ads "election propaganda" and invited Kishida to look at the figures. The Japanese mentality is precisely the big obstacle to their success. For example, less than 15% who were eligible to take leave after having a child did so for fear that their time off would increase the workload of their colleagues.