Ageing Japan
More deaths than births, eight million empty houses and a workforce running short. The care worker and the eighty-five-year-old, lonely deaths and the crematorium queue, the akiya tax, companies abolishing the retirement age, 2.3 million foreign workers, and the politics and economics of a country getting older faster than any other.
Part of Japan
19 moments in this segment.
- - Shinzo Abe dies after being shot at a campaign event. BBC News on the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, 67, shot twice during a speech in Nara on the morning of 8 July 2022.
- - The high-mortality society: lonely deaths and crematorium queues. ABC TV report on Japan's record 1.59 million deaths in a single year and the strain it places on crematoria, funerals and unclaimed remains.
- - Foreign workers in Japan pass 2.3 million, a record. TV Asahi on Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare figures showing 2,302,587 foreign workers as of October 2024, with Vietnam the largest nationality and skilled-visa categories the largest status group for the first time.
- - A record 3.67 million foreign residents: what they do and what they earn. TBS survey of foreign residents in Japan, now at a record 3.67 million, from rickshaw pullers to animators, set against a 2024 average monthly wage of about 330,000 yen.
- - Sanae Takaichi's first press conference as prime minister. Asahi Shimbun's uncut broadcast of Sanae Takaichi's press conference on 21 October 2025 after becoming Japan's first female prime minister.
- - Takaichi's first policy speech to the Diet. Uncut broadcast of Prime Minister Takaichi's first policy address on 24 October 2025, covering inflation, growth, security document revisions and population and foreigner policy.
- - Gig shift workers and monitoring sensors in Japanese care homes. Nippon TV on how care facilities are covering staff shortages with two-hour spot workers and reducing night-shift load with monitoring sensors.
- - Takaichi asks unions and business for wage rises above inflation. Nippon TV on Prime Minister Takaichi's first government-labour-management meeting, calling for shunto wage rises that outpace price increases.
- - A 78-year-old home helper caring for an 85-year-old. TBS report from Unnan, Shimane, where 40 percent of residents are over 65, following a 78-year-old home care worker; bankruptcies among care providers hit a record the previous year.
- - Bloomberg: why Japan's economy is at a tipping point. After thirty years of near-flat prices, a weak yen has changed the picture; Bloomberg looks at how consumers and firms are adjusting under Takaichi's new government.
- - Life sentence for Shinzo Abe's killer. BBC News on Tetsuya Yamagami's life sentence for the 2022 murder of Shinzo Abe, and the divided Japanese public opinion over the punishment.
- - Japan's GDP returns to growth, barely. TV Asahi on October-December GDP growth of 0.1 percent, the first rise in two quarters, with an analyst warning the recovery may be weaker than assumed as households cut back on food and eating out.
- - Who buries the elderly with no family left?. TV Asahi Telementary documentary on Japanese elderly people without relatives, and the men who take on guarantor and after-death administration duties as single-person elderly households approach 10 million.
- - A day with a care worker in Niigata. NST Niigata follows a man working at a special nursing home, on the chronic understaffing, added workload and low pay in Japanese care work.
- - CNA Insight: Japan's economy in 2026. CNA documentary noting real wages fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025 even as the Nikkei hit record highs, and asking whether the recovery is real.
- - Turning akiya empty houses into a local resource. Shizuoka TV on Kakegawa's programme to find uses for vacant houses, as akiya numbers rise nationally with population decline and ageing building stock.
- - Neyagawa introduces Japan's first city-wide vacant house tax. Yomiuri TV explains Neyagawa City's plan for a nationwide-first akiya tax covering the whole city, intended not to raise revenue but to force neglected houses back into use.
- - Companies abolish the retirement age as workers run short. Fuji News Network report on Shionogi and Meiji Yasuda raising or effectively abolishing mandatory retirement in response to labour shortages caused by demographic decline.
- - Shrinking Japan: population decline and what comes next. BS11 Inside OUT panel with former internal affairs minister Hiroya Masuda after the 2025 census recorded a fall of about 3.1 million in five years, with projections of under 100 million by 2056.
