Cabinet seeks to raise percentage of men taking paternity leave to 80% by 2020
The government on Friday adopted a set of measures to fight the low birthrate through 2020, setting an extremely ambitious goal of boosting men who take paternity leave immediately after a child is born to 80 percent, which is the same rate as women ...
Local Politics: Heading for extinction?
"All politics is local." — former U.S. House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill "Local councilors, in practice, are accountable to nobody. Half of them are self-important busybodies on an ego trip and the other half are in it for what they can get out of it." — Jim ...
In shrinking villages, abandoned graves are a sign of generational flight
In the nation's declining provinces, it is not only the living who are neglected. Family shrines that hold the ashes of generations are often overgrown or broken, something once unheard of in a society that reveres its ancestors. With the population dying off at an ...
Crowdsourcing may hold key to unlocking Japan's working potential
As Japan tries to mobilize underemployed workers and revitalize business outside major city centers like Tokyo and Osaka, crowdsourcing — the allocation of tasks to remote workers online — may become a valuable tool. Crowdsourcing has blossomed with the advent of the online economy, and ...
Number of newborn babies in Japan fell to record low in 2014
Japan's population likely dropped further in 2014, with the estimated number of newborn babies in the country falling to 1,001,000, down about 29,000 from the previous year, according to health ministry estimates released on Wednesday. The estimated number of people who died in 2014 totaled ...
Number of 20-year-olds in Japan rises for first time in 21 years
The number of people aged 20, the legal age of adulthood in Japan, was estimated to have reached 1.26 million on New Year's Day 2015, the first increase in 21 years, government statistics showed on Wednesday. Of that total, 650,000 are men and 610,000 are ...
Rural support programs encouraging more people to leave cities
Public programs are encouraging more people to migrate from big cities to reverse the persistent population drain plaguing rural areas. Daisuke Moriyama, 40, quit a major securities company in Tokyo in March 2013 and moved his family to Mitane, Akita Prefecture. Now he commutes from ...
Lawmakers must set aside their partisan interests and act fast to narrow the wide gap in the value of votes between rural and urban constituencies.
Numerical plan drafted for slowing Tokyo's population growth
The government in 2020 is expected to set a goal of reducing the number of new residents in Tokyo by 70,000 per year from the 2013 level to ease overpopulation in the capital, a draft of the policy showed Friday. Later this month, Prime Minister ...
Can the Abe administrative accomplish what past governments have tried and failed to do, and revitalize Japan's regional economies?
A chain reaction of empowerment
More than anything, the world needs people who will take active steps to transform their own local community when it comes to dealing with any of the bewildering array of threats confronting humanity today.
Sitting around a table, a dozen elderly women watch affectionately as small children play next to them. When one opens her book, a little boy runs up and asks, "What are you reading?" It's a typical scene at Konoyubi Tomare, a day care facility in ...
