With his "new capitalism" doctrine failing to take off, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has decided to invest his diminishing political capital in child care policy in an attempt to bolster his tarnished image ahead of April’s regional elections and the Group of Seven meeting in Hiroshima in May.

Kishida has pledged to take "unprecedented steps" to address the issue, causing a stir in Japan's political world and prompting parliamentary debate. The topic has gained even greater impetus after data showed births in 2022 fell under 800,000, the lowest figure on record.

But the government's response is still in its initial stage, and for now Kishida's administration is focused on casting child-rearing in a more positive light — in Japan, there is a lingering perception that the barriers to having children are just too great.

“In Japan, there is a high mental hurdle toward having children or a family — for instance, the idea that you shouldn’t have kids if you’re not married or financially stable," said Eri Kasagi, a law professor at the University of Tokyo and member of a government panel on social security. "But there are also legal circumstances too. The family registration system is strict, and regulations concerning marriage and familial issues tend to be conservative.

“People give up on having kids when they feel a lot of uncertainties — in terms of policy, working to eliminate these uncertainties would probably be the thing to do.”

Discussions on child care have begun in earnest within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. In addition to an existing committee already working on child care measures, the party has set up an ad-hoc panel on youth and children with a broader and longer-term scope that is focusing on the Kishida administration's policies.

"We have decided to make our contribution as a party, after the prime minister’s remarks at the start of the year and his intention to draw up a preliminary plan by late March,” said Minoru Kihara, chairman of the panel.

It is important to approach the topic in a more comprehensive manner, taking into consideration issues such as people’s life stages and changes to education, Kihara said.

“We have asked the government to let us know what it is that they intend to do," Kihara said. "It is also important to change the perception of child rearing.”

While it could be argued that there is not much scope to speak of unprecedented measures, considering how Japan has been trying to deal with a declining fertility rate for decades, some say the government’s approach toward the issue has changed in recent years — there is a new urgency to connect the topic with structural economic issues.

“In the past, we tackled the issue of low fertility rate as a structural problem connected to regional revitalization," said Keitaro Ohno, a LDP lawmaker and a central figure in drafting former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s child care policies.

"Toward the end of Abe’s government, we felt an urgency to make the approach even more structural, this time by linking it to economic issues, and the need to ease anxieties regarding the future," he said. "This approach has continued under the Kishida administration.”

The necessity of bringing about a radical refashioning of people’s mindset — specifically in terms of their view of what child-rearing and having a family entails — falls in line with the current administration’s position.

Kishida has framed the expansion of his child care policies as part of a larger project of "social change" to be achieved by inducing a shift in mentality regarding major social problems and increasing awareness of them — although policy content and wording has so far been extremely vague.

Devising the expansion of child care policies as part of a wider policy program tightly tied to economic legislation could lead to a greater sense of urgency among the public, helping the administration make it a top issue for voters.

“I think it is very important to change people’s mindset and work to ease people’s anxiety," Ohno said. "I think we could have intervened more boldly on easing concerns over child care in the first place.”

The University of Tokyo's Kasagi highlights the need to tackle unaddressed issues, such as those connected with work, as well as to intervene more heavily in areas like labor rights that have so far received inadequate support.

“This is not the first time the government has classified child care support as a key issue," Kasagi said.

"(But) this time, together with strengthened support for the promotion of a work-life balance, especially for women, issues such as the income of the working population and the treatment of 'nonregular workers' have been emphasized,” she said, referring to employees hired on a part-time or temporary basis who typically earn much less.

There is not always a direct line between issues such as these and measures to combat the low fertility rate, so it had been quite difficult to include them in the political debate around child care policy, Kasagi observed.

While there seems to be general consensus over the necessity of larger government intervention, a highly rumored tax hike to finance new child care services would likely ignite a severe public backlash and put Kishida's political survival at risk.

According to a poll conducted by Sankei Shimbun from Feb. 18 to 19, 55.8% of respondents opposed the idea of increasing the tax burden for citizens, while only 39.8% supported it. Another Nikkei survey conducted at the end of January revealed that 55% of respondents did not expect Kishida's child care policies to amount to anything.

With the government set to carry out internal discussions until the end of April, and then presenting a more detailed proposal in June, Kishida's attempts to change perceptions around child-rearing will likely remain prominent.