‘No babies, no Japan’: PM Kishida’s aide says country ‘will disappear’ if people don’t have more children
Japan PM Fumio Kishida’s advisor recently said in a statement that the country will cease to exist if it can’t slow a fall in its birth rate that threatens to wreck the social safety net and economy.
Masako Mori, an upper house lawmaker and former minister who advises Kishida on the birth rate problem and LGBTQ issues, said in an interview in Tokyo that, “If we go on like this, the country will disappear.”
She added, “It’s the people who have to live through the process of disappearance who will face enormous harm. It’s a terrible disease that will afflict those children,” reported Bloomberg.
Japan had earlier announced on 28 February that the number of babies born in the country last year slumped to a record low.
Last year, roughly twice as many people died as were born, with fewer than 800,000 births and nearly 1.58 million deaths.
PM Kishida later vowed to double the spending on children and families in an effort to control the declining birth rate in the country.
Bloomberg reported that the pace of decline is increasing. The population has dropped to 124.6 million from a peak of slightly more than 128 million in 2008.
Meanwhile, the proportion of people aged 65 and older increased to more than 29 percent last year.
“It’s not falling gradually, it’s heading straight down,” said Mori.
She added, “A nosedive means children being born now will be thrown into a society that becomes distorted, shrinks and loses its ability to function.”
Mori also said that if nothing is done, then the social security system would collapse, industrial and economic strength would decline and there wouldn’t be enough recruits for the Self-Defence Forces to protect the country, according to Bloomberg.
Kishida has said that the new package will be ‘on a different dimension’ from previous policies, but he hasn’t yet announced how the package will be spent.
With inputs from agencies
