Japanese media: The phenomenon of local recession in Japan is becoming more and more serious

According to Japan's "Mainichi Shimbun", Japan's local recession is becoming more and more serious. In fiscal 2022, 51.5% of the 1,718 municipalities in Japan (excluding tokyo's 23 wards) met Japan's criteria for "excessively sparse areas."

According to reports, after the 2020 National Situation Survey, according to the legal criteria of population decline rate and financial capacity, 885 of the 1,718 municipalities in Japan in fiscal 2022 (excluding tokyo's 23 wards) have been designated as "over-sparse areas" (referring to areas with a series of problems such as the decline in local vitality as the population decreases significantly). For the first time since the implementation of the "over-sparse area" system in 1970, more than half of the municipalities and villages have been "over-sparse".

The report pointed out that with the increasingly serious phenomenon of local recession, the effectiveness of the Japanese government's local revitalization policy may once again be questioned.

Successive Japanese governments have made the revitalization of declining regions an important issue. In 2014, then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe created a new ministerial post in charge of local revitalization and, as his signature policy, was committed to correcting the trend of excessive population concentration in Tokyo, but the effect was not obvious, so it was criticized for his intention to hold elections.

On the other hand, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida proposed a policy that takes into account economic growth and the distribution of national income, emphasizing "bottom-up growth from the local to the whole country."

Regarding the further expansion of "over-sparse areas," cadres of Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said in an interview with Japan's Mainichi Shimbun that "if this continues, the survival of basic functions of society, such as administrative services and social security, will be in danger, and it is necessary to seize the time to discuss countermeasures."

Source: China News Network