Police search Toyama City Office over census population inflation
Police searched the Toyama city office on Saturday regarding suspected Statistics Law violations involving inflated population figures in the 2025 census.
About 10 Toyama prefectural police investigators in suits arrived at the city office around 10 a.m. with cardboard boxes in hand and headed to the fifth floor of the building, where the division in charge of census-related duties is located.
On Tuesday, the internal affairs ministry filed a criminal complaint against unidentified city staff for the alleged violations of the statistics law.
According to final figures released by the ministry on Tuesday, the city had a population of 399,197, down from the preliminary figure of 402,133 released in May. The ministry said that Toyama's population had been padded by at least 2,000, and that multiple city staff members were suspected of involvement.
Toyama Mayor Hirohisa Fujii denied at a press conference Friday that the inflation was motivated by a desire to keep the city's population above 400,000.
"There were no instructions from senior officials" to inflate the figure, Fujii added. "I will take due responsibility at the appropriate time."
The preliminary census population figure was used to calculate local allocation tax grants for fiscal 2026. According to a city estimate, Toyama may have received about 60 million yen more than it was entitled to as a result.
"We take the police search very seriously and will continue to fully cooperate with the investigation," Fujii said in a statement.
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
