Negeri Sakura Jepang memang sudah jadi piramida terbalik, yang tua lebih banyak daripada yang muda, Sabtu (4/5/2013), Kementerian Dalam Negeri Jepang mengumumkan jumlah anak usia 14 tahun atau di bawahnya, untuk 32 tahun berturut-turut, jumlahnya menurun terus-menerus, mencapai 16,49 juta manusia per 1 April 2013.

Demikian diungkapkan Tribunnews.com langsung dari Tokyo, Minggu (5/5/2013), dengan mengutip informasi yang disampaikan Kementerian Dalam Negeri Jepang kemarin.

Jumlah tersebut turun 150.000 orang dibandingkan setahun sebelumnya. Bahkan dari jumlah populasi keseluruhan hanya menjadi 12,9 persen terendah dalam sejarah Jepang selama ini. Hari Minggu ini adalah hari libur nasional di Jepang sebagai peringatan Hari Anak Nasional.

Jumlah anak-anak terendah ini, lebih rendah daripada tahun 1982. Pada tahun 1950 jumlah anak-anak sepertiga dari populasi. Kemudian boom tahun 1970 awal. Dari tahun 1975 perlahan-lahan turun kembali dan kini mencapai titik terendahnya.

Melihat jenis kelamin, laki-laki tercatat 8,44 juta anak. Jumlah ini 400.000 lebih banyak dari pada anak gadis. Jumlah terbanyak anak-anak itu antara usia 12-14 tahun dengan jumlah 3,55 juta anak.

Sedangkan jumlah anak sejak lahir sampai dengan usia 2 tahun jumlah terendah yaitu 3,16 juta anak. Menurut data perfektur per 1 Oktober tahun lalu, hanya Tokyo dan Okinawa yang naik sedikit saja. Tokyonaik 3000 anak dan Okinawa naik 1000 anak.

Okinawa mencapai rasio tertinggi mencapai 17,6 persen. Shiga Prefecture mencapai 14,8 persen dan Saga mencapai 14,4 persen, Tokyo 11, persen, Hokkaido 11,7 persen. Sedangkan perfektur Akita mencapai angka pertumbuhan terendah yaitu 11 persen.

Di antara 47 perfektur, perfektur Fukushima dan Osaka penurunan jumlah penduduk anak-anak sangat banyak, turun sekitar 11.000 anak dibandingkan tahun lalu.

Dari segi pertumbuhan anak, Jepang adalah negara dengan pertumbuhan anak terendah dari 29 negara yang berpopulasi 40 juta atau lebih. Sedangkan Ethiopia memiliki pertumbuhan anak terbesar, tulis United Nations Demographic Yearbook tahun 2011.

The aging of Japan is thought to outweigh all other nations, as the country is purported to have the highest proportion of elderly citizens; more than 20% are over the age of 65 today.

The Japanese Health Ministry estimates the nation's total population will fall by 25% from 127.8 million in 2005, to 95.2 million by 2050

about by a combination of low fertility and high life expectancies (i.e., low mortality). In 1993 the birth rate was estimated at 10.3 per 1,000 population, and the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime has been fewer than two since the late 1970s (the average number was estimated at 1.5 in 1993). Family planning was nearly universal, with condoms and legal abortions the main forms of birth control.

A number of factors contributed to the trend toward small families: high education, devotion to raising healthy children, late marriage, increased participation of women in the labor force, small living spaces, education about the problems of overpopulation, and the high costs of child education. Life expectancies at birth, 76.4 years for males and 82.2 years for women in 1993, were the highest in the world. (The expected life span at the end of World War II, for both males and females, was 50 years.) The mortality rate in 1993 was estimated at 7.2 per 1,000 population. The leading causes of death are cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease, a pattern common to industrialized societies.

A growing number of young women are remaining unmarried in Japan today, a development often viewed as a rebellion against the traditional confines of women's restrictive roles as wives and mothers. In 2004, 54% of Japanese women in their 20s were still single, while only 30.6% were single in 1985.

Public policy, the media, and discussions with private citizens revealed a high level of concern for the implications of one in four persons in Japan being 65 or older. By 2025 the dependency ratio (the ratio of people under age 15 plus those 65 and older to those age 15–65, indicating in a general way the ratio of the dependent population to the working population) was expected to be two dependents for every three workers. Despite claims, this is not a particularly high dependency ratio, for example, Uganda has 1.3 dependents for every one worker. The aging of the population was already becoming evident in the aging of the labor force and the shortage .