The Biggest Problems Which Japan Faces

A national crisis Japan is facing is that everyone is aging and there are not enough babies to keep a healthy population. People are retiring, meaning they need more people to fill in for their jobs, but there are not enough people. Soon, there will not be enough people to sustain the country. The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe is trying to solve this problem by supporting young children, for example, like reducing costs of education. But statistics say that it will be hard to reverse this aging population. The number of babies said needed to maintain a population per woman is 2.07. Once Japan’s fertility rates went below 2.07 in around 1970, it has never gone back above 2.07. Japan has about 1.47 babies per woman in 2019. They have increased a bit from 1.26 in 2005, but it has not been enough. The reducing number of fertility rates could be caused by many reasons including; a larger amount of people marrying later in their life or not at all, people wanting no children because of money or time etc. The prime minister is aiming to set the fertility rate back to 1.8 by 2025. He is also trying to encourage people to retire later on in their lives so they can keep working long enough so that another person can take over.

Japan has many earthquakes. .Japan’s islands sit in the ring of fire, a horseshoe-shaped arc where many tectonic plates collide, it is where most of the world’s biggest earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen. The world is like a jigsaw puzzle made up of several pieces. These pieces are called tectonic plates. Tectonic plates move, as fast as our fingernails grow. When tectonic plates crash into each other due to moving, they cause an earthquake. There are different types of tectonic plate movement which can result in different things, Volcanic eruption, mountains, valleys etc Japan’s islands are on top of the Philippine, Eurasian, Pacific and the North American plate. Japan is the 5th most earthquake-prone country in the world. They also ad the 4th biggest earthquake ever recorded. It has about 1500 earthquakes every year. The size of an earthquake is measured with something called a ‘Richter Scale’. A 6.0 on the scale is already disastrous. Japan also has many tsunamis. Tsunamis are caused by earthquake in which their epicentres are in the water and are shallow. Japan’s biggest earthquake was a magnitude 9.0 and a 30-foot tsunami in Tohoku 2011.It killed about 20000 people. About 500000 were left homeless because of this massive earthquake and tsunami.

Japan is the 2nd biggest producer of plastic in the world. Japanese customers get about 30 billion plastic shopping bags per year. The Japanese didn’t want to sign a charter stating that they will reduce reuse and recycle all of their plastic waste by 2030. Instead, they compensate with them reducing about %25 of single-use plastic. Japan doesn’t even have enough space to store all their garbage, so they try to send most of it to other countries. They once sent 1.5 million tonnes of their plastic waste to China per year until Beijing shut them off in 2017. Many countries reject and send back Japanese’ plastic waste leaving Japan stacking up their plastic. The environment minister made retailers make customers pay for their plastic bags although he’s not doing anything to help the plastic already in the oceans. Luckily, some countries are more proactive than others. Kameoka will ban about 800 retailers from selling plastic bags next year. Kamikatsu is aiming to be completely waste-free next year. Seven-Eleven will replace all plastic with paper and other biodegradable materials. But even with all of this, Japan still has much to go as factories will have to make a harsh turn to go back.