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Four-Day Work Week Experiment in Tokyo: Hope for Recovery from the Fertility Crisis

More than 50 years into Japan’s fertility crisis, the government hopes to solve it by reducing working hours. 4-day workweeks with 6-hour schedules is a temporary pilot program to be started in Tokyo in the spring of 2025. 

A year ago, the national authorities summarized the demographic situation in the country. Inexorable statistics showed that the number of newborns has already reached a critically low level, declining by more than 5% annually. Such an urgent problem can no longer be ignored. For this reason, a new experiment to be implemented under the supervision of Tokyo municipalities involves reducing working hours for public employees. Theoretically, these steps will help improve work-life balance and create more favorable conditions for having children.

Bold Initiative: More Free Hours for Home and Family

The key goal of the pilot program is to help improve work-life balance, boost quality of life, and motivate Tokyo residents to build families and have children. To begin with, the initiative will only affect public sector workers, but private companies can also join the program and show their readiness for the current changes. 

The initiators of the experiment say that by freeing up more time for rest and leisure with relatives, there will be a major reduction not only in workload and tasks but also in stressful situations for each worker. Single people will have time to build strong relationships. While young couples will get more chances to bond and learn new methods of pregnancy planning. According to many mira reviews, home tests are one of the most progressive methods of hormone cycle monitoring and fertility planning. Thanks to the effective technology of home fertility tracking systems, prospective parents can choose the best time to have children. 

International Experience: European Countries that Chose a 4-day Work Week

In developing the experimental program, Japanese sociologists and reproductive scientists looked at the extensive experience of European countries, which have been testing various methods of dealing with the phenomenon of “aging of the nation” for several decades. 

  • In Iceland, one of the first such experiments lasted more than 4 years (2015-2019) and showed excellent results. Then about 1% of the country’s workforce participated in the program. The working week was reduced from 40 to 35 hours without loss of wages. The researchers concluded that a more harmonious and balanced work distribution greatly lowered overall stress levels, and even boosted productivity. The Icelandic government is planning a complete transfer of all public and private companies in the country to an official four-day working week.
  • Belgium has already implemented a law at the state level for two years that allows both employers and workers to adopt a 4-day working week with full pay. Already, Belgian demographers are talking about demonstrable results and a marked improvement in people’s psycho-emotional health.
  • United Kingdom conducted its short work-week experiment in 2022 with more than 60 major companies. The results showed that employees became more productive and satisfied with their jobs. Most of the companies that had been able to experience the benefits of the program were so satisfied that they continued to use the 4-day work schedule. 

Fertility and Time to Rest: What’s the Connection

Following the success stories of their European colleagues, the Japanese authorities are on the verge of a key shift in the way they think about how to stimulate demographic growth. Tokyo City Governor Yuriko Koike bravely declares that the initiative is primarily aimed at supporting working women so that they do not have to choose between career and family. 

The Oriental culture of workaholism that brought Japan to its heyday has shown its dark side and has become one of the reasons for the low birth rate. Extreme chronic stress, constant tension, and lack of free time have become not only the companions of professional burnout but also hormonal failures and lower fertility. 

An additional role is played by the social pressure of the community, where unrealistic norms are demanded from women to successfully combine the image of a career lady and a perfect mother. Reducing workload seems to be the best way today to relieve this tension and open up a new format of free work-life balance for Japanese women for better psychological and physical health.

Findings: Challenges and Future Prospects for Japan

The sad statistics of recent years are no longer just indicators in official reports. In just a few months, Tokyo’s birth rate improvement experiment will begin, and it will undoubtedly change the traditional lifestyle of the ordinary city person. Despite some challenges that work teams will have to overcome to transform their work routines and find a new way of organizing tasks, the European experience offers hope for positive results. If Tokyo’s initiative meets its goals, the program could spread to other regions of Japan. After going through a period of adaptation, businesses will have more motivated and satisfied employees, and the government will finally start on the path of correcting the difficult demographic situation and improving the standard of living of society in general.