Japan’s struggle with a shrinking population may have just produced a census scandal. Police raided city hall in Toyama on Saturday after national officials said the city appears to have padded its resident count by slipping empty households into Japan’s once-every-five-years census, per the New York Times. The Internal Affairs Ministry says it found irregularities in the 2025 count and has filed a complaint against several unnamed local officials, who could face fines or up to six months in jail if the statistics were falsified.
Toyama’s mayor, Hirohisa Fujii, has apologized and pledged cooperation after a nearly 3,000-person gap emerged between a preliminary population estimate and the final census tally released last week, pegging Toyoma’s population at 399,197. Leaders of the city have reportedly been anxious about slipping below a population of 400,000, both for image reasons and because national subsidies are tied to head count. As the Japan Times reports, the city may have received an additional $400,000 in allocation tax grants based on the preliminary census figure.