Tokyo to waive childcare fees for firstborns from September 2025

TOKYO — Governor Yuriko Koike announced at a meeting of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on Dec. 10 a plan to make child care free for first-borns starting September 2025.

This will be the first initiative of its kind 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 his strong commitment to “further promote efforts to combat the declining birth rate, without cutting corners, because it “There’s not a moment to lose.” According to a source familiar with the matter, the initiative’s budget is expected to exceed 40 billion yen (around $264 million).

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

The metropolitan government covers the full cost of privately run services, while it splits the cost in half with municipal governments for public child care. It is expected that the same cost-sharing arrangement will also be applied to firstborns.

Before she was re-elected in Tokyo’s gubernatorial election last July, Koike included expanding free child care for first-borns among her campaign promises. Since this fall, it has been coordinating with municipalities and other related organizations to implement the plan.

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