Monday, January 14, 2008 10:20 pm | 
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A woman participating in a Coming-of-Age ceremony at Meiji Shrine, Tokyo. | Photo: Jean-Francois Chenier. Creative Commons |
New adults fewer than ever
The number of people who reached the legal age of adulthood was only 1.35 million last year, which is the lowest number on record and 40,000 less than the previous year, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Monday.
The announcement came on the national holiday Coming-of-Age Day, held annually on the second Monday of January, as most new adults participate in Coming-of-Age ceremonies, women traditionally in expensive “furisode” kimonos and men in suits or dark kimonos with hakama.
Of the new adults, 690,000 are men and 660,000 are women, according to a Kyodo News report. Percentage wise, the new adults constitute 1.06 percent of the total population, which is down 0.03 points since the previous year.
The legal age of adulthood is 20 in Japan.
The previous record low, 1.36 million new adults, was recorded in 1987.
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While low-cost carriers have since long been successfully operating throughout the U.S., Europe, and southern Asia, Japan has seen very little of the low-price action.
[…] year’s festivities, however, were a bit dampened by the news that new adults in Japan last year numbered only 1.35 million (690,000 men and 660,000 women), the lowest number on […]
[…] New Adults Fewer Than Ever The number of people who reached the legal age of adulthood was only 1.35 million last year, which is the lowest number on record and 40,000 less than the previous year, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Monday. […]
It was a great day out and about yesterday.
http://neilduckett.com/the-coming-of-age-festival-seijin-no-hi/
Lovely pictures, Neil! Thanks for sharing.
So the Animation industry in Japan is struggling, and they blame it on piracy by Americans and other Europeans.
Here is a thought; The Anime industry gradually created the “otaku”, a nerd obsessed with his hobby, and therefore, an unsocial shut in. This otaku culture is nearly sexless, less sex = less children = low birthrate.
The point is, since there are less Japanese children, there are less people who will buy pokemon toys and DVD’s. The Japanese animation industry created their own downfall, and now they blame it on American downloaders. The downloading certainly doesnt help, but fix your own problems before you blame others please.
The otaku culture sexless?? Do you have ANY idea of what you’re talking about? The culture itself is full of sex… well, pornography, at least.
Still, blaming otaku culture is, no matter how you look at it, ridiculously farfetched. It only goes to show you have a poor understanding of Japanese culture.
your retort was full of thought and insight. You clearly didn’t just disagree for the sake of disagreeing, so thanks for that. I’m not blaming the otaku culture for the entire drop, but you can’t say it doesn’t make a significant impact. There are more dildos per capita in Japan than anywhere else… So just because the sex entertainment industry is large, doesn’t mean there is a lot of actual sex. Actually, it almost denotes the opposite. It only shows that you have a poor understanding of sex. You must be otaku…
You sort of missed the irony when I subsituted “sex” for “pornography”…
It’s not irony when you spell it out. On a less argumentative note, what do you attribute the population drop to?
Thanks for the intelligent discussion
[…] The number of young men and women reaching the legal age of adulthood in Japan was only 1.35 million people or 1.06% of the entire population. There were 40,000 fewer new adults than last year, and marks the lowest tally on record. 1987 was a year when only 1.36 million university aged individuals attained the right to drink and vote, and the new record low is another sign of population woes to come. […]