Tokyo's 'Children First' Agenda Reverses Decade of Demographic Decline

Tokyo has registered its first increase in births in a decade, a milestone that Governor Yuriko Koike describes as vindication of her decade-long "children first" agenda. In 2025, the capital welcomed 85,064 babies—857 more than the year before, a gain of 1.02 percent. The number may sound modest, but it arrives after ten years of unbroken decline, and it signals something deeper: marriages in Tokyo rose for a second consecutive year, climbing to 79,481 couples in 2025, an increase of 3,040 pairs. Because very few babies in Japan are born outside marriage, a sustained rise in unions serves as an early indicator of births yet to come. The momentum has carried into 2026. In the first half of the year alone, Tokyo recorded 2,278 more births than during the same period in 2025, according to preliminary data from the Health Ministry released in late August. This local surge is beginning to lift national figures as well: Japan recorded 342,068 births in the first half of 2026, representing the country's first nationwide first-half increase in eleven years.

For a city long viewed as a sterile pressure cooker—nearly ten million people compressed into 627 square kilometers across Tokyo's central wards, a footprint slightly smaller but denser than Singapore—this demographic reversal carries symbolic weight. Tokyo stands apart as one of the few Japanese prefectures whose population is still growing, though that growth has historically come almost entirely from young people migrating to the capital for work. The fertility rate within the prefecture itself remains the lowest in Japan at 0.96 children per woman, a figure that masks the city's actual capacity to retain and support families once they form.

Koike, a 74-year-old former Cabinet minister and television journalist who became Japan's first female governor of a major prefecture, has spent her ten years in office systematically removing barriers to marriage and parenthood. In September 2024, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government launched an artificial intelligence-driven matchmaking application called Tokyo Enmusubi, designed as a secure alternative to commercial dating platforms. Users must submit official certificates confirming their single status. The app has registered more than 38,000 users and facilitated at least 300 marriages, though officials acknowledge this is likely a conservative count, since users are not required to report successful matches to the city. Beyond the digital platform, the government also organizes in-person matchmaking events to combat the isolation of urban life.

Once couples marry, Tokyo's policy apparatus shifts to removing the financial and biological anxieties that delay parenthood for career-focused women. In October 2023, Tokyo became the first prefecture in Japan to subsidize elective egg freezing for female residents aged 18 to 39, offering up to 200,000 yen (approximately 1,600 Singapore dollars) during the fiscal year of the procedure, plus 20,000 yen annually for up to five years to cover storage. Two years later, in October 2025, the prefecture introduced another first: a subsidy of up to 100,000 yen for epidural deliveries, removing a financial obstacle to pain-free childbirth. After birth, support continues through direct mail catalogues allowing new parents to exchange municipal credits for baby supplies, free childcare, subsidized school lunches, and effectively free high school tuition on top of Japan's nine compulsory years of education.

Yet Koike has recognized that money alone cannot reverse a demographic crisis rooted in cultural expectations and professional penalties. She launched aggressive public awareness campaigns and introduced flexible work arrangements for public servants to normalize paternity leave, a practice that historically carried shame and career risk for fathers. The results have been striking: in 2016, only 7.4 percent of new fathers in Tokyo took paternity leave. By 2025, that figure had surged to 61.2 percent. In July 2026, Tokyo became the first prefecture to enact a dedicated ordinance promoting women's professional advancement, explicitly protecting working mothers from career penalties.

Koike told The Straits Times that the city's approach rests on providing "seamless support at every stage from meeting someone, dating, marriage, childbirth, child-rearing and education." She acknowledged the structural mismatch between women's career-building years and their biological timelines, and framed the city's role not as mandating family formation but as creating conditions where people feel secure enough to pursue their own aspirations. Singapore's Minister for Social and Family Development visited Tokyo in July to discuss the city's matchmaking app, birth statistics, and parental support initiatives, recognizing that densely populated, aging societies face similar urban and demographic pressures. Koike emphasized that stopping the reform process would mean moving backward, and that a healthy society is one where "you can hear the voices of children everywhere."