Japan's low birthrate has accelerated the graying population.
According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, the past 29 years have seen a continuous decline in the number of people under age 15. There were just 17 million of them as of April, down 190,000 from a year ago.
The nation's total fertility rate — the number of children a woman would bear throughout her life if she follows the age-specific fertility rates of a given year — was only 1.37 in 2008, although it has been slightly increasing since 2005, when it hit a record low 1.26.