TOKYO: The total number of Japanese born in the Year of the Rat is estimated at about 10.62 million as of Wednesday, the first day of 2020, which features the animal from the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, according to an internal affairs ministry report.

Year of the Rat-born people -- 5.16 million men and 5.46 million women -- account for 8.4 pct of Japan's population, constituting the third-largest group after the Year of the Boar-born and Year of the Ox-born groups.

Of the Rat-year people, the number of those who were born in 1948, in the "first baby boom" generation in Japan, and will turn 72 this year, is the largest, at 2.09 million.

The second -- and third-largest Rat-year groups are two million people born in 1972 and 1.51 million born in 1960, respectively.

Those in the second-largest group will mark their 48th birthday this year, and those in the third-largest group their 60th birthday. People who were born in 2008, the previous Year of the Rat, and will turn 12 this year account for 1.08 million.

Japanese celebrities and athletes born in the Year of the Rat include 1972-born Masahiro Nakai, former leader of disbanded male pop group SMAP, 1984-born soccer player Makoto Hasebe and 1996-born ski jumper Sara Takanashi.

Among politicians, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was born in 1948, turning 72 in 2020. "I'll do what I should do firmly and sincerely," Suga, a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said before the new year began.

A total of 25 Rat-year lawmakers were born in 1960 and will turn 60 this year, including Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Taku Eto and former Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Seiko Noda, both of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, acting secretary-general of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and Japanese Communist Party executive Akira Koike.

Jiji Press