TOKYO -- Gov. Yuriko Koike announced in a Dec. 10 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly meeting a plan to make day care services free of charge for firstborn children starting in September 2025.

This will be the first such initiative at the prefectural level in Japan, and the aim is to reduce the financial burden on families raising children.

In response to a question from a representative of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Koike expressed her strong commitment to "further promote efforts to tackle the declining birth rate, without cutting corners, since there is not a moment to lose." According to a source close to the matter, the budget for the initiative is expected to exceed 40 billion yen (about $264 million).

The Japanese government began in 2019 to waive day care fees for children aged 3 to 5, as well as for infants aged 0 to 2 that meet certain criteria such as those from households exempt from resident taxes. Combining its own measures with the national system, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government began offering free day care services for children from second-born and on, up to 2 years of age, without income limitations from 2023.

The metropolitan government covers the full cost for privately operated services, while it splits the cost in half with municipal governments for public day care centers. It is expected that the same cost-sharing arrangement will be applied to the firstborns as well.

Before being reelected in the Tokyo gubernatorial election this July, Koike included the expansion of free day care services for firstborns as one of her campaign promises. Since this fall, she has been coordinating with municipalities and other related bodies to implement the plan.

(Japanese original by Taisuke Shimabukuro and Shunsuke Yamashita, Tokyo City News Department)