Police search Toyama City Hall after the census count falls under 400,000

Toyama prefectural police searched Toyama City Hall on Saturday over allegations that staff inflated the city's population in the 2025 census. About ten investigators arrived around 10 a.m. with cardboard boxes and went to the fifth floor, where the census division sits. The search follows a criminal complaint the internal affairs ministry filed on Tuesday against unidentified city staff for suspected breaches of the statistics law.

The numbers that triggered the complaint are now final. The ministry's Tuesday release put Toyama at 399,197. The preliminary figure published in May was 402,133. The difference is 2,936. The ministry said the population had been padded by at least 2,000, and that more than one city employee was suspected. Crossing under 400,000 is the political sting. Japanese cities treat that line as a status marker for grants, staffing formulas and the way a mayor describes the place. Mayor Hirohisa Fujii denied on Friday that anyone had been told to keep the city above it.

Fujii said there were no instructions from senior officials to inflate the figure. He added that he would take due responsibility at the appropriate time. He did not resign on Friday, and the Saturday search does not by itself name him as a suspect. The complaint is against unidentified staff. The fifth-floor search is where the working papers for the census would be, if they are still in the building.

What a padded census changes

A census count is the base for local allocation tax, for some infrastructure formulas, and for the population a city quotes for five years. A preliminary figure of 402,133, published in May, would have kept Toyama in the class of cities over 400,000 through the summer. The final figure of 399,197 pulls it out. The ministry's claim is not that the city mislaid a few forms. It is that staff added people who were not there, by at least 2,000, and that the addition was large enough to hold the preliminary number above the line.

The statistics law is the charge the ministry chose, rather than a general false-document count under the penal code. A conviction under that statute is aimed at the official who fills the return, which is why the complaint names unidentified staff and why the search started at the division that handled the forms. If investigators find a written instruction, Fujii's Friday denial becomes the next document in the file. If they find only altered returns with no upward order, the case stays at desk level and the mayor's promise to take responsibility remains a political statement.

The 400,000 line, and the boxes

Fujii's denial was specific. He rejected the motive, not only the act. He said the inflation was not driven by a wish to stay above 400,000, and that senior officials gave no such order. The preliminary-to-final drop does not prove the motive. It does show the result: a city that looked, from May to late September, as if it had held the line, and that now sits 803 below it even before any further correction. The ministry's at least 2,000 is a floor. The raw gap between 402,133 and 399,197 is 2,936, which leaves room for ordinary revision as well as for the padding the ministry alleges.

Saturday's search is the first visible police step since Tuesday's complaint. Ten investigators, boxes, fifth floor, late morning. The next public fact will be whether anyone is named, and whether Fujii's appropriate time arrives before or after that name. Until then the operable figures are the two population counts, the ministry's floor of 2,000 added people, and a mayor who says the order did not come from above.