The latest demographics data show that the concentration of Japan's population in the Tokyo metropolitan area is accelerating, not slowing as the government has sought. The flow of people into the greater Tokyo area (including Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures) exceeded the outflow by 139,868 in 2018, with the net inflow increasing by 14,338 from the previous year. Of the nation's 47 prefectures, 39 experienced a net population outflow, as did 72 percent of the cities, towns and villages. Greater Tokyo is the only one among the nation's three big metropolitan areas — Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka — to see a net population inflow last year.
The regional revitalization initiative, one of the key policy agenda of the Abe administration since 2014, set a target of balancing out the population flow into and exodus out of the Tokyo metropolitan area by 2020. But the administration's policy measures to reverse the population flight to greater Tokyo — such as encouraging businesses to move their headquarters out of central Tokyo, transferring national government functions out of the capital, providing special grants to local governments to help revitalize their economies, as well as prohibiting universities in Tokyo from increasing their enrollment limits — have had little impact.
With the population concentration in Tokyo now greater than when the administration set the target and the goal practically out of reach, the government needs to assess why the measures it introduced are not having their intended effects and explore more effective steps to address the problem. More people keep moving to the capital because of the Tokyo-centric economic and social systems. Businesses that concentrate in the metropolitan area experience improved earnings and generate more local jobs, and the growing manpower shortage in the construction and service sectors to cope with redevelopment projects, hotel construction and projects linked to the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games are also fueling the population inflow.