Through empowering digital human capital, advancing public-sector DX platforms, and investing in tomorrow’s innovators, CHANGE Holdings blends transformation, public-value, and growth—shaping Japan’s tech-led future from within.
Thank you for joining us today. To start, I would like to ask about Japan’s long-standing challenge of population decline. This trend has continued since the 1970s and has now become an urgent issue. Projections suggest a 12% population decrease by the 2040s and as much as 50% by the 2050s. Under these circumstances, households and community foundations are weakening while labor shortages are becoming increasingly serious. Today, much hope is being placed on external digital platforms and technologies as solutions. How are your platforms and services contributing to addressing these challenges?
Thank you for the question. This is a very important issue that we cannot avoid when thinking about the future of Japan. As you pointed out, Japan’s population decline is no longer a projection but a certain future that we must accept. Therefore, it should be treated not as a “risk” but as a “premise” on which all strategies and policies must be built.
While policies to welcome foreign workers, residents, and tourists are also essential, more fundamentally, technology is the key to adapting to these structural changes in society.
At Change Holdings, we are addressing the challenge of population decline with what we call “two pillars.”
The first pillar is “reinvigorating demand,” which means how to respond to declining consumption. As the population shrinks, the number of consumers naturally decreases. To maintain and expand economic activity under these conditions, it is necessary to circulate existing assets more effectively.
In fact, Japan has total assets of about 1,300 quadrillion yen, while its GDP is only about 600 trillion yen. If we compare this to a company, it would be like owning 13 billion yen in total assets but generating only 600 million yen in annual sales. In other words, there are assets, but the money is not circulating. Technology must be used to promote the flow of funds.
The second pillar is addressing labor shortages. By 2040, Japan is expected to face a shortage of about 11 million workers. To tackle this issue, we are promoting automation and labor savings through AI and robotics.
Industries where labor shortages are particularly severe—such as retail, food service, logistics, healthcare, nursing care, and tourism—must adopt technology. For example, our group company DFA Robotics has already deployed more than 5,000 serving robots across Japan, equivalent to supplementing 10,000 workers.
In the healthcare sector, we are collaborating with our group company BECAP to use beacon technology to visualize the movement and activity patterns of nurses in hospitals. Data shows that about 30% of a nurse’s daily tasks involve moving around, which, across Japan’s 1.3 million nurses, translates to about 390,000 people’s worth of labor dedicated to “movement.” If this movement could be cut in half, it would effectively create the equivalent of 200,000 additional workers.
In this way, we are breaking down operations into smaller tasks to analyze which processes can be replaced with technology. For example, in logistics or healthcare, it is not just about moving objects but also ensuring that the accompanying information is linked accurately. A blood test sample, for instance, must be automatically processed along with information on whose sample it is and which doctor should check it. This integration of “hardware” and “software” is one of our strengths.
In addition, we are also working on automating white-collar tasks. Intellectual work such as handling inquiries, searching and categorizing documents, and collecting information can also be made more efficient with AI. By addressing both physical and intellectual labor, we provide comprehensive solutions to the challenge of labor shortages.
That is a very multifaceted and practical approach. As you mentioned, not only Japan but also advanced economies around the world will face the same challenges. Projections suggest that by 2050, 97% of advanced countries will be experiencing population decline. I believe your solutions have global potential. Which industries and regions will you focus on in the future?
You are right, not just Japan but many countries will rapidly face aging and population decline. For example, Korea, China, and ASEAN nations are already showing similar trends. Population projections are already available through around the year 2100. While our first priority is to solve Japan’s structural challenges, when we expand abroad we will prioritize based on demographic statistics.
However, since each country has different cultures, infrastructure, and levels of acceptance of technology, it is not enough to simply export solutions that worked in Japan. Localization tailored to each country’s market environment and values is essential.
We are also considering rolling out solutions that combine hardware (robotics) and software (AI and SaaS) in collaboration with local partner companies.
In fact, for some solutions we are already collaborating with companies in the U.S. and China, though given the geopolitical factors between these two countries, we are carefully considering how to proceed with further expansion.
In addition, although slightly different from productivity measures, we operate a hometown tax donation platform in Japan. The “Hometown Tax” system is designed to promote regional revitalization, and we are using digital technology and system design to channel hundreds of billions of yen in donations to local governments. The system was officially introduced in Korea in January 2023. In the future, we hope to expand similar mechanisms to ASEAN countries as well, contributing to the revitalization of regional economies there.
In regional economic revitalization, we focus first on the flow of money before addressing labor shortages, and then expand into solving workforce issues step by step.
That is a very meaningful initiative. I personally have ties to Ehime Prefecture, where I lived for seven years from 2018. Ehime is also facing a shrinking population. For example, from around 188,000 people in 1970, the population is projected to drop by 22% to about 134,000 by 2025. How do you view the role of technology in such regions?
The situation in rural areas is indeed very serious. With the triple challenge of population decline, aging, and shrinking local economies, many municipalities are approaching the limits of their financial and human resources. One of the biggest issues is inefficiency in administration.
Currently, Japanese municipalities provide over 10,000 types of administrative services, each governed by separate laws and delivered in a highly fragmented manner. The majority are still run using analog methods such as paper, stamps, phone calls, and cash, which greatly increase the workload.
We are leveraging our connections with more than 95% of municipalities nationwide to provide SaaS-based administrative support tools. By digitizing and automating these services, we reduce the burden on municipal staff while improving services for residents.
For example, allowing documents to be submitted online instead of on paper, replacing phone calls with chat systems, using smartphone authentication instead of stamps, and introducing cashless payments instead of cash all significantly boost administrative productivity. To fundamentally resolve these challenges, we are rolling out SaaS solutions tailored for municipalities.
In a Japan where population decline is accelerating, our ultimate goal is to foster a cultural shift toward a society where “robots and humans coexist” and where maximum results can be achieved with fewer people. We believe it is technology that will make this vision possible.
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