Coming of Age Day - Declining Attendance

Declining Attendance

Japan's low birth rate and shrinking percentage of young people, coupled with disruptions to some ceremonies in recent years (such as an incident in Naha in 2002) and a general increase in the number of 20-year-olds who do not feel themselves to be adults have led to decreased attendance of the ceremonies, which has caused some concern among older Japanese. In 2012, the decline continued for the fifth year in a row, with the total of 1.22 million adults celebrating the holiday in 2012 - under half of the participants seen at its peak in 1976, when 2.76 million adults attended ceremonies. This is the first time it has declined below the 50% threshold.

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