Japan’s minister for gender equality and children's issues called the country’s record low births and plunging population a national crisis and blamed “indifference and ignorance” in the male-dominated Japanese parliament for the neglect.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Seiko Noda couched the steadily dwindling number of children born in Japan as an existential threat, saying the nation won’t have enough troops, police or firefighters in coming decades if it continues. The number of newborns last year was a record low 810,000, down from 2.7 million just after the end of World War II, she said.
