Demographics of Imperial Japan

The population of Japan at the time of the Meiji Restoration was estimated to be 34,985,000 on January 1, 1873, while the official original family registries (本籍, honseki^?) and de facto (or present registries (現住, genjū^?)) populations on the same day were 33,300,644 and 33,416,939, respectively. These were comparable to the population of the United Kingdom (31,000,000), France (38,000,000) and Austria-Hungary (38,000,000).

Meiji government established the uniformed registered system of koseki (戸籍, family registries^?) in 1872, which is called Jinshin koseki (壬申戸籍^?).

population

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The first national census based on full sampling of inhabitants was conducted in Japan in 1920, and was conducted every five years thereafter. Per the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the population distribution of Japan proper from 1920 to 1945 is as follows

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