Tokyo wants more sexual activity

Since 1950, the global birth rate has halved. Statistically speaking, marriages are few, divorces are increasing, and socio-economic conditions make it increasingly difficult to start a family. Japan is one of the epicenters of this phenomenon, as revealed by the government itself, which has been reporting a worsening birth rate every year since 2015, with a decline of 5.1% between 2022 and 2023. The Japanese government's solution? Create a government-run dating app to stimulate the country's birth rate. The app, created under the current administration of Fumio Kishida, cost 500 million yen (2.86 million euros) between 2023 and 2024 and should already be ready for the metropolitan public of Tokyo by the end of the summer. To make the platform more efficient and avoid sakura - people who deceive and scam in the dating world - the app involves a very long and thorough process to scrutinize the users who can use it. From educational background to height, users will need to answer about fifteen personal questions, which will then be compared with official government documents.

The most controversial feature of the app is precisely the registration process. According to Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, when creating an account, each user must upload their official family status document - to check that the person is not already married - and their personal income statement. The former stems from a recent trend among young Japanese people, highlighted in the videos of Japanese content creator Takashhii from Japan, where fidelity is seen as a gray area for both women and men, making infidelity not a moral damage - as perceived in many countries - but simply a physical need that does not compromise feelings for partners. The latter has caused much controversy, especially among interested men, who fear that information about their low wealth might hinder their chances of finding a partner. As explained by officials to the national newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, this option is not intended to ostracize certain individuals, but is considered a crucial indicator to actually understand if it is possible to start a family with the interested person. The app's intent, as communicated to AFP by another official, is to give a dedicated boost to the 70% of Japanese people who are interested in marriage but have not yet found their soulmate and are unsure how to find one.

The government's decision comes from the fact that the dating apps currently circulating in the nation are not destined to be deleted, and most are used only for sexual purposes and temporary encounters. The creation of the new platform could be a temporary solution, but the reasons for the ever-decreasing birth rate in Japan remain unchanged. As mentioned by several interviewees on the YouTube channel AsianBoss, the main reason concerns the toxic work culture: taxes continue to rise and wages remain stagnant, forcing Japanese workers to stay in the office until late at night. The plummeting birth rate is not a problem that concerns only Japan; China and South Korea also complain about the same issues, and more commonly around the world, fewer people are willing to start a family. In the greatest moment of the global dating crisis, with Gen Z having less sex than all previous generations, could trusting our governments be the solution? The app will be released in time for the end of summer, so its effectiveness cannot yet be measured, but we suspect that Japan might be the pioneer of the repopulation operation the world has been waiting for.