Tokyo decides to implement four-day work week

The move comes as an attempt to shed Japan’s title of “world’s oldest population”

TOKYO: Japan has decided to experiment with a new practice – of four-day work week – to get rid of its global reputation as the country with the world’s oldest population. The country’s capital and largest city, Tokyo, has decided to take the lead in resolving the issue.

The new work week will come into implementation in April next year. Tokyo Metropolitan Government is one of the largest employers in the country, will allow its employees to work for only four days, along with a new “child care partial leave” policy. Put together this will not only reduce the number of workdays but also reduce the number of hours worked per day – for starters, this policy will allow parents to work two hours fewer per day.

We will continue to review work styles flexibly to ensure that women do not have to sacrifice their careers due to life events such as childbirth or child-rearing.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike

The new policy came into effect after the birthrate hit a record low in 2024. In the first half of the calendar year, the new births were 5.7 per cent lower than the same period in 2023. The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare shared data showing 350,074 babies born between January 2024 and June 2024.

While, the fertility rate for the country clocked in at 1.2 for Japan, for the capital city Tokyo, it was recorded at 0.99. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says that a birth rate of 2.1 is needed for maintaining a stable population. So the lower rate in Japan led the government to opt for remedial measures. Moreover, the median age of a Japanese citizen is 49.9 years, considerably lower than that of United States at 38.9 years.

This is not the first step that the East Asian country has taken to improve its low birth rate. Since the 1990s, Japan has been taking initiatives like longer parental leaves, subsidised daycare as well as cash payments to parents. The government has also gone one step further with the launch of dating apps to help single people get married. But despite all of this, Japan’s birth rate continues to fall.

The new policy of reduced workdays is expected to treat some core issues, including softening of the heavy work culture. Women especially, are doing unpaid labour five times more than men in Japan, and this policy is aiming to reduce that gap and to lessen the burden on women.

Reduced workdays have proven records of men spending more time on childcare and women becoming more willing to have more kids. For the corporates as well, there are experiments carried out worldwide proving that one less workday improves employee productivity and leads to higher motivation.

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