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The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will allow its staff to work four days a week as authorities in the world’s largest city begin a radical experiment to reverse Japan’s low birth rate.
The program, which adds Tokyo to a global movement among local and central governments to adopt the “four against three” approach to work-life balance, comes at a time when Japan’s population is on track for its 16th consecutive year of decline.
The Tokyo government project, which will begin in April 2025, will allow employees to adjust their work hours to completely free up one day of their choice each week. The project will benefit thousands of city government employees.
The larger block of non-work time and greater flexibility should, in theory, make parenting less daunting. The number of babies born in Tokyo fell by more than 15 percent between 2012 and 2022.
“We will continue to review our work style in a flexible manner so that no one has to sacrifice their career for life events such as giving birth and caring for children,” Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said at the assembly’s latest meeting. latest from the city this month. where the plans for the four-day week were established.
She added that the goal of empowering women was a long-standing problem for Japan and an area where the country “has fallen far behind the rest of the world.”
Tokyo’s four-day weekly experiment follows similar programs in local governments in prefectures and cities across Japan.
Koike’s enthusiasm comes in part from a commitment to 4 Day Week Global, a UK-based nonprofit that promotes what it says are the many benefits of a shorter work week. The organization has conducted pilot tests around the world to evaluate the effect of a policy that often meets fierce resistance from traditionalists.
The founders of 4 Day Week Global described the step taken by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as “extraordinary, in a country that has such a reputation for lacking flexibility in this area and has a real say [karoshi] due to death due to overwork.”
Founder Charlotte Lockhart said the results were “boringly consistent” in four-day-a-week pilots the group conducted in 20 countries with different political systems, social expectations around work and at different points of economic development, including South Africa, Brazil and Germany.
“Productivity increases, the ability to attract and retain staff improves, and sick days are cut in half,” Lockhart said. “The benefits become quite material and this is something that transcends borders.”
He added that the consistency of the results arose from the fact that, in any context or country, people say they lack free time. In the case of Japan, he said, authorities have identified this as part of the reason births remain low.
Tokyo’s bid for the magical powers of the four-day week comes as the number of babies born in Japan in 2024 is on track to fall below 700,000 for the first time since records began in 1899.
The figures underscore Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s recent warning that Japan’s demographics are a “silent emergency.” . . that challenge the very foundations of the country.” The economy is already grappling with the consequences of labor shortages and the world’s highest proportion of elderly people. The fall in the birth rate has been faster than expected.
The number of babies born in Japan fell below 1 million in 2016 and below 800,000 in 2022, despite government efforts that include cash incentives for larger families, tax breaks and the creation of more daycare centers.
Tokyo’s efforts to address the low birth rate have become increasingly desperate. This year, the metropolitan government launched a dating app, hoping that its official partnership with the software and its strict membership rules would ease concerns and attract users serious about forming marriages and families.
Along with personal and educational details, the app requires users to promise that they will use it for the purpose of marriage and not for short-term relationships. Governor Koike is one of many politicians who see Japan’s low marriage rate as a direct obstacle to more births.