Tokyo: The annual number of babies born to Japanese citizens in Japan fell by 14,937 from the previous year to 671,236 in 2025, hitting a record low since statistics became available in 1899, the health ministry announced Wednesday. This marks the 10th consecutive year of a record low in birth numbers.

According to Philippines News Agency, the total fertility rate, indicating the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, also fell to a record low of 1.14. While the government has been implementing countermeasures under its child future strategy and launched the Population Strategy Headquarters last November to address population decline, the declining birthrate is progressing about 15 years faster than projections from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

A ministry official stated, "The population decline is related to a drop in the number of young women, late marriage, and late childbirth," highlighting the seriousness of the situation. The number of births has been on a downward trend since 1975, falling below one million in 2016 and slipping below 700,000 for the first time in 2024.

Although the rate of decline has been above 5 percent since 2022, it slowed to 2.2 percent in the latest reporting year. Births increased in Tokyo and the prefectures of Toyama, Ishikawa, and Kagawa. The country's total fertility rate fell 0.01 percentage point from the previous year, marking the 10th consecutive year of decline.

By prefecture, fertility rates were generally higher in western Japan, with increases in 13 of the country's 47 prefectures. Okinawa had the highest fertility rate at 1.52, followed by Miyazaki at 1.46 and Fukui at 1.45. Tokyo recorded the lowest rate at 0.96, below 1 for the third consecutive year, with Hokkaido and Miyagi following at rates of 1.00 each.

The number of couples who got married increased for the second consecutive year in 2025 to 489,119, up by 4,027 from the previous year, though still below the pre-pandemic level of about 599,000 in 2019. The number of couples who got divorced slipped to 179,068. The average age at first marriage was 31.0 for men and 29.7 for women, with the average age of mothers at the birth of their first child being 31.0.

The annual number of deaths was 1,589,489, posting the first decrease in five years. This marked the 19th consecutive year in which deaths exceeded births, resulting in a natural population decrease of 918,253.