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.
Read more about this topic: Coming Of Age Day
Famous quotes containing the words declining and/or attendance:
“Parents are used to being made to feel guilty about...their contribution to the population problem, the school tax burden, and declining test scores. They expect to be blamed by teachers and psychologists, if not by police. And they will be blamed by the children themselves. It is hardy a wonder, then, that they withdraw into what used to be called “permissiveness” but is really neglect.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)