Going, Going, Gone

Updated population figures for the prefecture are published the first of every month in the local paper, and those for February, 2025, continue a decades'- old pattern: decline (everywhere in Japan, in fact, except Tokyo). Since February, 2024, Niigata has seen a drop of 27,251 to current total 2.098 million. This trend, irreversible, in what was the country's most populous prefecture in the late 1800s, for reasons to do with labor-intensive rice production.