Key Points
・Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported that as of January 1, 2026, the number of Japanese residents recorded in the resident register stood at 119,736,483, below 120 million for the first time since 1984, while foreign residents passed four million for the first time.
・Almost the entire decline is the gap between births and deaths, and because the generations who would have children are themselves smaller, a higher fertility rate would not translate into more births for a long time.
・Nationally the change is slow, under one percent a year, but in local water systems and bus routes the loss of users is already reaching the point where services are hard to maintain, which is why the practical debate has moved toward how to prepare for a smaller population.
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Japanese Residents Drop Below 120 Million for the First Time Since 1984
On July 29, 2026, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released the results of its annual survey of population movement based on the Basic Resident Register. As of January 1, 2026, Japanese residents numbered 119,736,483, below the 120 million line. The last time the figure sat under 120 million was 1984, 42 years earlier.
The decline from the previous year was 916,744. Both the size and the rate of the decline were the largest since the survey began in 1968. Japanese residents have now declined for 17 consecutive years, and natural decline within that figure came to 923,008.
Foreign residents numbered 4,031,159, the highest since the tally began in 2013 and the first time the figure has exceeded four million. The combined total of Japanese and foreign residents was 123,767,642.
Tokyo was the only prefecture where the Japanese population grew, and no prefecture recorded natural increase. Foreign residents, by contrast, increased in all 47 prefectures.
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Three Different Statistics, and What Each of Them Counts
The 120 million line applies to Japanese residents, not to the total population
The figure that fell below 120 million counts Japanese residents only. The total population including foreign residents remains in the 123.76 million range.
Japan produces more than one population number, and they are not interchangeable. The Basic Resident Register is an administrative record: it tallies people registered at a municipal address. The Statistics Bureau, part of the same ministry, separately publishes a Population Estimate anchored to the Census, which captures where people actually live. Its preliminary figure for July 1, 2026, puts the total population at 122.93 million. The reference dates and the routes to the number are both different, so the two do not match, and neither is a correction of the other.
For the longer view, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research issued its 2023 projection. Under the medium fertility and medium mortality variant, the total population passes below 120 million in 2031 and below 100 million in 2056. That second date moved later than the previous projection, which had put it at 2053.
Why natural decline does not stop quickly
The gap between births and deaths does not close in a few years even if fertility improves. In 2025, births among Japanese nationals came to 670,467, the lowest since the survey began, against 1,593,475 deaths. The difference, 923,008, is the natural decline.
The fertility rate and the number of births are separate indicators. The total fertility rate estimates how many children a woman would have over her lifetime. The number of births is that rate multiplied by how many people of childbearing age exist. Because that age group is itself contracting, a rising rate would not restore the number of births for many years. Demographers call this inertia population momentum.
Aging has been pushing the other side of the equation. The share of the population aged 65 and over passed 7 percent in 1970 and 14 percent in 1994, and stood at 29.4 percent as of September 2025. Among Japanese nationals, net migration was a positive 6,264, which means natural decline accounts for essentially all of the loss.
Who the four million foreign residents are
By residence status, the largest group is permanent residents, at roughly 950,000. The largest category is therefore not a work visa or a student visa but people who have made Japan the base of their lives. Skilled professional categories such as engineering and humanities specialists come next, along with students, technical intern trainees and specified skilled workers.
Of these, the number actually working was about 2.57 million as of the end of October 2025, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. A separate series published by the Immigration Services Agency counts about 4.12 million foreign nationals at the end of 2025, on a different basis and a different reference date, so it does not line up with the register’s 4.03 million.
On the institutional side, the ikusei shuro system, which replaces the technical intern training program, is scheduled to take effect in April 2027, so the framework for accepting foreign workers is in transition.
Where Japan sits in the international fertility comparison
Low fertility is not a Japanese phenomenon. Recent total fertility rates in major countries run as follows.
| Country | Total fertility rate | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 1.14 | 2025 |
| South Korea | 0.8 | 2025 (preliminary) |
| Singapore | 0.87 | 2025 |
| United States | 1.60 | 2024 |
| France | 1.61 | 2024 |
| Germany | 1.36 | 2024 |
(Sources: Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare vital statistics; Statistics Korea; Singapore Department of Statistics; US CDC; Eurostat)
South Korea has now risen for two consecutive years, from 0.75 in 2024. Japan’s 1.14, by contrast, is a tenth straight annual decline and a record low. Singapore’s 0.87 is also a record low.
The level generally cited as necessary to sustain a population over the long run is 2.07. Every country in the table falls well short of it. The gaps between them are real, but the shared feature is that none reaches replacement.
What Is Already Fixed, and What Can Still Be Chosen
The effects arrive in specific places before they show in the national average
The 120 million line is a milestone in a statistical series. Nothing in daily life changed at the moment it was crossed. The total population fell 0.45 percent over the year, and the Japanese population 0.76 percent, so the movement is gradual.
That national average, however, sits at a distance from local experience. Tokyo was the only prefecture where the Japanese population grew, which means concentration in the capital region is holding the national rate up. In many regions the decline is running faster than the headline number.
Water systems and public transport have a structure in which fewer users make the burden heavier for those who remain. An analysis by the Ministry of Finance’s research institute found that 99 percent of Japan’s water utilities cannot cover the cost of renewing their facilities from tariff revenue, and that covering it would require an average tariff increase of 83.2 percent. Local bus routes covering roughly 23,000 kilometres were discontinued over the 16 years from fiscal 2008.
An analysis published by the Population Strategy Council in 2024 identified 744 municipalities where the female population aged 20 to 39 is projected to halve by 2050. That count is lower than in a comparable 2014 exercise, but the report itself notes that the improvement reflects inflows of foreign residents and that the underlying trend in fertility has not changed at all. The same decline moves at a different speed, and shows up in different ways, depending on where you stand.
The question of how many people to accept cannot be separated from how the system is built
Foreign residents make up 3.26 percent of the total population. Measured by the foreign-born share used in international comparisons, Japan is in the 2 percent range against an OECD average of around 15 percent. Japan counts foreign nationality while other countries count place of birth, so the definitions do not align exactly, but the conclusion that Japan remains a country with few foreign residents is not in doubt.
The speed of change is a separate matter. Foreign residents increased by 353,000 in a single year, or 9.6 percent, and foreign workers reached 2.57 million by the end of October 2025. Japanese residents fell by 916,000 while foreign residents rose by 353,000, which held the total decline to 563,000. It is difficult to argue that public debate over the scale of acceptance has kept pace with that rate of change.
There is a coherent case for expansion. Sectors with labour shortages already depend on foreign workers, and a sudden contraction would affect regional industries and services. Foreign workers also contribute to the base that supports social insurance.
There is an equally coherent case for caution. If numbers rise without language education, housing, schools and municipal capacity being prepared, those costs fall disproportionately on the workers themselves and on the localities where they concentrate.
The ikusei shuro system taking effect in April 2027 restates the purpose of the old program, from international contribution to developing and securing workers. That is a shift toward treating acceptance openly as labour policy.
At the same time, in the United States and Europe, politics has been moving toward restriction, with a sharp cut in the US refugee admissions ceiling and a halving of net migration in the United Kingdom. Whether Japan opens a door while the wider trend moves the other way is part of the environment. The scale of acceptance and the institutional design around education, housing and municipal support are the kind of question that has to be decided together rather than separately.
No government can promise a rebound in births, but preparation is still a choice
The criticism that the population fell because governments did nothing folds together two different arguments: failing to reverse the number of births, and being slow to prepare for a decline that was foreseen.
The first runs into a wall shared across countries. One tally puts South Korea’s spending related to low fertility at roughly 380 trillion won over 16 years, on a broad definition that includes housing and employment measures, and its fertility rate still fell into the 0.7 range. No advanced economy has reversed its birth numbers over a short horizon.
At the same time, South Korea’s rate has now risen for two consecutive years, from 0.75 in 2024 to 0.8 in 2025, so the spending cannot simply be called wasted. Under population momentum, though, with the childbearing generation itself shrinking, decades pass between an improvement in the rate and any turn in the population. Japan’s own measures are open to the criticism that the response to the conditions surrounding the decision to have children, employment, housing and the cost of education, was small in scale and piecemeal.
The second argument is more directly testable. The reorganisation of water and transport systems, wider cooperation between municipalities, and the distribution of social security across generations are all preparations for a change visible decades in advance, and progress on them can be assessed on its own terms. The results and limits of fertility policy, and the pace of adaptation to a smaller population, are two separate things to judge.
AI is a new variable, but it does not substitute for users
Automation enters this picture as something that did not exist in earlier projections. Because it reduces demand for labour itself, particularly in office work, it can offset part of the shrinking workforce.
Its reach is uneven. Physical work in care, construction and logistics is slower to substitute. More importantly, technology does not replace the people who pay taxes and premiums, or the users whose numbers determine whether a local service can operate at all. Jobs that machines can take over and infrastructure whose viability depends on headcount remain distinct problems.
The IPSS projection puts the total population at 87 million in 2070, which, taking the difference from the projected Japanese population, works out to a foreign share of about 10.8 percent. That figure rests on an assumption of net inflows of 164,000 foreign residents a year. A projection is not a fixed outcome. Policy can move some of the assumptions, while the momentum already built into the age structure stays where it is.
Raising Births and Designing for Fewer People Are Not Alternatives
Falling below 120 million marks a point where 42 years of change crossed a line that people notice. The same number means something different depending on whether it is read as a national average or as the situation of a particular town.
Policies to raise the number of births and policies to keep life workable with fewer people are not a choice between two options. Whether a government or a municipality can pursue the long horizon and the immediate preparation at once is the axis on which they can reasonably be judged from here.
Is the goal to increase the population, or to build a society that still functions as it shrinks, or both at the same time? A figure that last appeared 42 years ago is a reasonable place to take that question up directly.
Reference Links
- Population, Demographics and Number of Households Based on the Basic Resident Register (as of January 1, 2026)｜Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (in Japanese)
- Population Projections for Japan (2023 Revision), Summary of Results｜National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (in Japanese)
- Number of Foreign Residents as of the End of 2025｜Immigration Services Agency (in Japanese)
- Summary of Notifications on the Employment Situation of Foreign Nationals (end of October 2025)｜Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (in Japanese)
- 2024 Report on the Sustainability of Local Governments｜Population Strategy Council (in Japanese)
- Current State of Regional Public Transport｜Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (in Japanese)
- 2025 Fertility Rate at a Record Low of 1.14, a Tenth Consecutive Annual Decline｜Nikkei (in Japanese)
- Water Mains Short of Renewal Funds, Average 80 Percent Tariff Rise Needed, Says Ministry of Finance Institute｜Nikkei (in Japanese)
