Demographics
The age pyramid of the Japanese population is that of an elderly country, even if the average age in Tōkyō is slightly lower than in the rest of the country. The country has one of the highest life expectancies in the world (89 years for women and 82 years for men). What's more, a falling birth rate is leading to a shrinking population. The tipping point came in 2005. For the first time since 1899, Japan's population was down on the previous year. Today, 30% of the population is over 65. Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, with 7.1 births per year per 1,000 inhabitants. The Land of the Rising Sun is now one of the world's oldest countries, along with Italy and Germany. City centers are inhabited by a younger, often single, population, while families and the elderly are found on the urban periphery. Generally speaking, the Japanese countryside is undergoing a major ageing process, with a rural exodus of young people to the cities (for work). Many counties are now trying to revitalize the birth rate by offering financial assistance to families wishing to have a third child.
Birth
Japanese women have an average of 1.36 children, compared with 1.84 in France. This rate does not allow for the renewal of generations. Without significant immigration over the next few years, Japan's population will continue to decline. For several years now, the government has been encouraging couples to have children, by offering parents a bonus.
Composition
Japan's population is one of the most homogeneous in the world. According to official sources, there are less than 3.6 million foreigners in Japan, or around 3% of the population. By comparison, in industrialized countries, around 10% of the population is made up of immigrants. Japan has recorded two waves of immigration in its history: the first from China and Korea during the colonial period, and the second from Latin America, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand in the 1980s. Today, Koreans make up Japan's largest foreign community. And it's not so easy to become Japanese. The law of the land does not necessarily prevail. Since the 1990s, a policy of "selective" immigration has been in place. The authorities give preference to South Americans of Japanese origin. They have never concealed their intention to maintain an ethnically and culturally homogeneous nation. Not surprisingly, Japan's third largest foreign community is of Brazilian origin. And to maintain the current share of its working population in the overall population, the authorities have no choice but to attract foreigners.
Language
In Japan, over 120 million people speak... Japanese. The remaining millions are immigrants who are trying to learn the language, with varying degrees of success. Apart from Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and English are the languages most commonly heard, even if they remain marginal. A few dialects are spoken by people, mainly from other parts of the archipelago. Japanese developed, among other things, on and around the dialects of the Kansai region (Kyōto, the former capital). From the 17th century onwards, it was built around the main dialect of the Kantō region, and thus the one spoken in Tōkyō. The growing political influence of Edo allowed this dialect to influence Japanese as it is spoken today. To find all the signs needed to write Japanese, you need to know three systems: kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese), katakana and hiragana. The last two are syllabic alphabets. Japanese is traditionally written from top to bottom and from right to left, with no spaces between words. This type of formatting is called tategaki. Japanese writing is thought to date back to 400 B.C. Influenced by Chinese characters, it was not completed until the 8th century, then the 19th century, with the creation of the katakana by Kibi-no-mabi, and the hiragana invented by the Buddhist saint Kōbō-daishi.
