Japan population sees record five-year drop: Census
Japan's population has experienced a record decline of 2.5 percent over the past five years, according to the latest census data. The population has decreased to 123 million, marking a drop of more than 3 million since the last survey in 2020. This trend highlights ongoing demographic challenges, including low birth rates and an aging population.
- ▪Japan's population fell to 123 million in 2025, down from 126 million in 2020.
- ▪This decline of 2.5 percent is the largest recorded since the census began in 1920.
- ▪The number of births in Japan has decreased for the 10th consecutive year, with 705,809 babies born in 2025.
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Straits Times — World files mainly under world. We currently carry 1,485 of its stories.
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| Original publisher | Straits Times — World |
| Canonical URL | https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/japan-population-sees-record-five-year-drop-census |
| Publication time | Fri, 29 May 2026 12:30:00 +0800 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-29T04:34:41.843Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-29T04:34:41.843Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | rifxDz6_hp33 · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Japan population sees record five-year drop: CensusSign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inboxA preliminary tally of Japan’s census found that the population slipped to 123 million people in 2025.PHOTO: AFPPublished May 29, 2026, 12:30 PMUpdated May 29, 2026, 12:30 PMTOKYO - Japan’s population dropped by a record 2.5 per cent in the span of five years, census data showed on May 29, as the world’s fourth-largest economy struggles to overcome demographic woes.A preliminary tally of Japan’s census, released every five years, found that the population slipped to 123 million people in 2025 – more than 3 million fewer than when the survey was last carried out in 2020.It was the biggest decrease since the twice-a-decade survey started in 1920, and more than triple the decline…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Straits Times — World.