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Japan Demographic Woes Deepen as Birth Rate Hits Record Low

People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)
People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)
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Japan Demographic Woes Deepen as Birth Rate Hits Record Low

People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)
People use their umbrellas to shelter from the rain as they walk through Shibuya district in Tokyo on June 2, 2023. (AFP)

Japan's birth rate declined for the seventh consecutive year in 2022 to a record low, the health ministry said on Friday, underscoring the sense of crisis gripping the country as the population shrinks and ages rapidly.

The fertility rate, or the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime, was 1.2565. That compares with the previous low of 1.2601 posted in 2005 and is far below the rate of 2.07 considered necessary to maintain a stable population.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made arresting the country's sliding birth rate a top priority and his government, despite high levels of debt, plans to earmark spending of 3.5 trillion yen ($25 billion) a year on child care and other measures to support parents.

"The youth population will start decreasing drastically in the 2030s. The period of time until then is our last chance to reverse the trend of dwindling births," he said this week while visiting a daycare facility.

The pandemic has exacerbated Japan's demographic challenges, with fewer marriages in recent years contributing to fewer births and COVID-19 partly responsible for more deaths.

The number of newborns in Japan slid 5% to 770,747 last year, a new low, while the number of deaths shot 9% higher to a record 1.57 million, the data showed. More than 47,000 deaths in Japan last year were caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for US and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth’s dusty sidekick.
The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon, The Associated Press reported. They shared the ride to save money but parted company an hour into the flight exactly as planned, taking separate roundabout routes for the monthslong journey.
It’s take 2 for the Tokyo-based ispace, whose first lander crashed into the moon two years ago. This time, it has a rover on board with a scoop to gather up lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.
Lunar newcomer Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is flying 10 experiments for NASA, including a vacuum to gather dirt, a drill to measure the temperature below the surface and a device that could be used by future moonwalkers to keep the sharp, abrasive particles off their spacesuits and equipment.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost — named after a species of US Southeastern fireflies — should reach the moon first. The 6-foot-6-inches-tall (2-meter-tall) lander will attempt a touchdown in early March at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in the northern latitudes.
The slightly bigger ispace lander named Resilience will take four to five months to get there, targeting a touchdown in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, even farther north on the moon’s near side.
“We don’t think this is a race. Some people say ‘race to the moon,’ but it’s not about the speed,” ispace’s founder CEO Takeshi Hakamada said this week from Cape Canaveral.
Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason Kim acknowledge the challenges still ahead, given the wreckage littering the lunar landscape. Only five countries have successfully placed spacecraft on the moon since the 1960s: the former Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan.
“We’ve done everything we can on the design and the engineering,” Kim said. Even so, he pinned an Irish shamrock to his jacket lapel Tuesday night for good luck.
The US remains the only one to have landed astronauts. NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to get astronauts back on the moon by the end of the decade.
Before that can happen, “we’re sending a lot of science and a lot of technology ahead of time to prepare for that,” NASA's science mission chief Nicky Fox said on the eve of launch.
If acing their respective touchdowns, both spacecraft will spend two weeks operating in constant daylight, shutting down once darkness hits.
Once lowered onto the lunar surface, ispace’s 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will stay near the lander, traveling up to hundreds of yards (meters) in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. The rover has its own special delivery to drop off on the lunar dust: a toy-size red house designed by a Swedish artist.
NASA is paying $101 million to Firefly for the mission and another $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to divulge the cost of ispace’s rebooted mission with six experiments, saying it's less than the first mission that topped $100 million.
Coming up by the end of February is the second moonshot for NASA by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. Last year, the company achieved the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half-century, landing sideways near the south pole but still managing to operate.