‘If we go on like this, the country will disappear’: Japan prime minister’s aide

Tokyo: An advisor to the Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan said that the nation cannot survive without tackling its fall in birth rate.

Masako Mori shared widely reported concern over birth rate days after Japan announced the number of babies born last year dropped to a record low, saying, ‘If we go on like this, the country will disappear.’

‘It's the people who have to live through the process of disappearance who will face enormous harm. It's a terrible disease that will afflict those children,’ she reportedly said.

Last year, the alarming situation of Japan’s low birth rate showed fewer than 800,000 births while reporting about 1.58 million deaths, marking about twice as many people died as were born in the nation, according to Bloomberg.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida offered to double spending on children and families to stem the rapidly falling birth rate.

From a peak of over 128 million population in 2008, Japan saw a shocking demographic fall to 124.6 million.

Signaling the country to be fast becoming a nation of aging people, the proportion of people 65 or over rose to more than 29% last year.

Masako Mori said that birth rate is ‘heading straight down’, adding that a nosedive could mean that children being born enter into a society that ‘becomes distorted, shrinks and loses its ability to function’.

Urging to do the needful she said social security system would collapse, industrial and economic strength would decline.

She said there would not be enough people available to be recruited to protect the country.