April in Japan: Cherry Blossoms, Policy Shifts, and the Question No One in Government Is Asking
April has arrived. Just days ago I was still running the heat and layering up in thermal underwear; now I’m comfortable in shirtsleeves by midday. The Japanese fiscal year turns, thecherry trees bloom, and the country moves through its familiar springtime choreography ̶ graduation ceremonies, entrance ceremonies, office transfers, new beginnings. Change is everywhere.
The March installment of the Nikkei Shimbun’s long-running series “My Personal History”(Watashi no Rirekisho私の履歴書), in which prominent figures write their own life story over the course of a month, featured Atsuko Muraki 村⽊厚⼦さん, former Administrative Vice Minister of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Her story is remarkable on several counts. She rose to the top of Japan’s notoriously hierarchical civil service despite having graduated from Kochi University ̶ a regional institution, in a world where the upper echelons of the bureaucracy are dominated by graduates of Tokyo and Kyoto. More striking still: in June 2009, while serving as Director-General of the Equal Employment, Children and Families Bureau, she was arrested and indicted on charges she had absolutely no knowledg eof ̶ charges that, as later came to light, were built on evidence prosecutors had actually falsified. She endured a prolonged detention, fought her case to the end, and was ultimately acquitted. Running through her account of that long career is something that will resonate with many of our clients: the unglamorous, daily difficulty of raising children while holding down serious work. Many of the business owners and executives we advise have walked that same road.
It is in this context that the government is launching, this April, a new program called the Kodomo Kosodate Shienkin (⼦ども・⼦育て⽀援⾦）̶ the Child and Childcare Support Levy. The mechanics are straightforward: the levy is income-linked and collected alongside existing social insurance contributions. A salaried worker earning \6 million annually will pay \575 per month; one earning \8 million will pay \767. By fiscal 2028, those figures rise to \1,000 and \1,350 respectively. The program extends to National Health Insurance and Late-Stage Elderly Medical Insurance subscribers as well. Revenue will be directed toward child allowances and parental leave benefits. The agency responsible, the Children and Families Agency (Kodomo Katei-cho こども家庭庁), frames it as “a structure in which all generations support child-rearing together” ̶ Japan’s institutional answer to its demographic crisis.
The goal is hard to argue against. Just as elder care through long-term care insurance commands broad social acceptance, few people will object to a program aimed at supporting families with children. I have no quarrel with the ambition.
What gives me pause is a prior question the program does not address: the attitudes of younger Japanese people toward marriage and parenthood in the first place. I’ve touched on this before, but it bears repeating. Financial support matters. But it is not obvious that financial support is what is holding young people back. Beneath the falling birth rate lies something more elusive ̶ a generational shift in how people think about how to live: what they want from partnership, from parenthood, from work, from life. That inner landscape seems largely invisible to those drawing up policy. And until policymakers are willing to engage with it seriously ̶ not just issue transfers and call it a solution ̶ the problem is unlikely to yield.
Japan’s demographic challenge and its defense posture are both issues of civilizational weight. Spring is, I think, the right season to feel that weight ̶ not merely as a line item on a pay stub, but as a genuine invitation to ask what kind of country we want to be, and what it actually means to live well across generations.
