Japan now has more than 107,000 residents aged 100 or older, a milestone that masks a demographic crisis its own leaders have called a "quiet emergency."
Japan's health ministry announced that the country is home to 107,677 centenarians, the highest total in the world and the first time the count has crossed six figures. The figures, BBC News reported, were released ahead of Japan's annual "Respect for the Aged" public holiday.
Health Minister Kenichiro Ueno said he was "delighted that so many people are living long, healthy and active lives." He credited advances in medicine and technology. But in the same breath, Ueno warned of the challenge of maintaining a sustainable social security system, a diplomatic way of saying the money may not be there.
That tension, long life on one side, vanishing youth on the other, defines modern Japan. And it offers a cautionary tale for every industrialized nation watching its own birth rate slide.
When Japan's health ministry first began counting centenarians in 1963, it found 153. By 1981, that number reached 1,000. It hit 10,000 by 1998. Now it stands at 107,677, a 700-fold increase in roughly sixty years.
Women account for 88 percent of the total. The country's oldest woman, Kishimoto Fuyo, lives in Kyoto City and is 114. Its oldest man, Kato Hikaru, lives in Kumamoto and is 112.
Experts point to Japan's traditional diet, heavy on fish, vegetables, and rice, low in saturated fat, along with an active lifestyle built around walking, public transit, cycling, and stretching. The government honors every citizen who turns 100 with a personal letter and a traditional sake cup.
A nice tradition. But the letters keep going out while the country runs short of people to write them for.
Japan's total fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.14 last year. A population needs an average of 2.1 children per woman just to replace itself. Japan is barely halfway there.
The consequences are already visible. In 2025, Japan's total population decreased in all but two of its 47 prefectures. Adult diaper sales have exceeded baby diaper sales for more than a decade, a statistic that says more than any government white paper.
Japan's population peaked at 128 million in 2008. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research projects it will drop to 87 million by 2070, a 30 percent decline. By that point, residents aged 65 and older are expected to make up nearly 40 percent of the population, up from roughly 30 percent today.
Prime Minister Sanae Takichi has described the population decline as a "quiet emergency." Japanese authorities have gone further, calling the broader demographic trend an "existential crisis."
The Japanese government has rolled out programmes and subsidies aimed at encouraging young people to have more children. So far, the fertility rate keeps falling. The gap between stated policy goals and measurable results is wide and growing.
Japan remains one of the most ethnically homogeneous developed nations. Foreign nationals make up only about 3 percent of the population, a figure that limits the immigration-driven population growth other aging countries rely on, for better or worse.
And the centenarian count itself deserves a footnote of skepticism. In 2010, a government audit of family registries uncovered more than 230,000 people listed as aged 100 or older who were unaccounted for. Some had died decades earlier. Officials attributed the discrepancy to patchy record-keeping and suspicions that some families hid the deaths of elderly relatives to keep collecting pension payments.
Whether the current figure of 107,677 has been scrubbed against those earlier findings is an open question the health ministry's announcement did not address.
There is something admirable about a society that keeps its oldest citizens alive and active into their eleventh decade. Japan's achievement on that front is real. The diet, the culture of movement, the medical infrastructure, all of it works.
But longevity without fertility is a slow-motion fiscal disaster. Fewer workers supporting more retirees means higher taxes, strained pensions, and a shrinking economic base. Health Minister Ueno acknowledged as much when he flagged the sustainability of the social security system. He did not offer a solution.
Japan's situation is extreme, but the pattern is not unique. Across the developed world, birth rates are falling while life expectancy climbs. The question every government will eventually face is the same one Tokyo is wrestling with now: who pays, and for how long?
A country that sells more adult diapers than baby diapers has answered that question, whether its leaders admit it or not.
