Japan: Internal migration and population decline

Abstract Examining the interdependencies between internal migration and national population decline in Japan, this paper begins by analysing the impacts of internal migration on national fertility decline, for example, through the early post‐World War II flows from high‐fertility countrysides to low‐fertility cities. It then focuses on the way in which, in the context of national population decline, internal migration exacerbates the problems facing Japan's rural areas by adding population loss and, in particular, the loss of young adult populations, to the mounting problems of public and private‐sector disinvestment, job losses, ageing (both social and physical) and the abandonment of land use and built form.