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In 2006, Japan reached a demographic
and social turning point. According to Tokyo’s official statistics, deaths that
year very slightly outnumbered births. Nothing like this had been recorded
since 1945, the year of Japan’s catastrophic defeat in World War II. But 2006
was not a curious perturbation. Rather, it was the harbinger of a new national
norm.
Japan is now a “net mortality
society.” Death rates today are routinely higher than birthrates, and the
imbalance is growing. The nation is set to commence a prolonged period of
depopulation. Within just a few decades, the number of people living in Japan
will likely decline 20 percent. The Germans, who saw their numbers drop by an
estimated 700,000 in just the years from 2002 to 2009, have a term for this new
phenomenon: schrumpfende Gesellschaft, or “shrinking society.” Implicit in the
phrase is the understanding that a progressive peacetime depopulation will
entail much more than a lowered head count. It will inescapably mean a
transformation of family life, social relationships, hopes and expectations—and
much more.
But Japan is on the cusp of an even
more radical demographic makeover than the one now under way in Germany and
other countries that are in a similar situation, including Italy, Hungary, and
Croatia. (The United States is also aging, but its population is still
growing.) Within barely a generation, demographic trends promise to turn Japan
into a dramatically—in some ways almost unimaginably—different place from the
country we know today. If we go by U.S. Census Bureau projections for Japan,
for example, there will be so many people over 100 years of age in 2040, and so
few babies, that there could almost be one centenarian on hand to welcome each
Japanese newborn. Population decline and extreme population aging will
profoundly alter the realm of the possible for Japan—and will have major
reverberations for the nation’s social life, economic performance, and foreign
relations. Gradually but relentlessly, Japan is evolving into a type of society
whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction. It
is not clear that Japan’s path will be a harbinger of what lies ahead in other
aging societies. Over the past century, modernization has markedly increased
the economic, educational, technological, and social similarities between Japan
and other affluent countries. However, Japan has remained distinctive in
important respects—and in the years ahead it may become increasingly unlike
other rich countries, as population change accentuates some of its all-but-unique
attitudes and proclivities. . . .
Japan’s postwar fertility plunge
has been so steep that it can be described as a virtual collapse. In 2008,
barely 40 percent as many Japanese babies were born as in 1948. In fact, the
country’s annual birth totals are lower today than they were a century ago—and
if current projections come to pass, Japan will not have many more newborns in
2050 than it did in the 1870s.We can get a sense of the shape of things to come
by comparing Japan’s current population profile with an estimate for 2040. Not
even 30 years from now, more than a third of Japanese will be 65 or older.
Japan is already the world’s grayest society, with a median age of almost 45
years. By 2040 its median age, to go by U.S. Census Bureau projections, will
rise to an almost inconceivable 55. (By way of comparison, the median age in
the retirement haven of Palm Springs, California, is currently under 52 years.)
This aging society, of course, will
also be shrinking. By Tokyo’s projections, Japan’s population will decline from
about 127 million today—the 10th largest in the world—to about 106 million in
2040. The working-age population (ages 15–64) will plunge 30 percent, from 81
million to 57 million. In 2040, by these projections, the total population will
be declining by about one percent annually (roughly one million people per
year), and the working-age population by almost two percent annually.
But there is more. Japan’s
historically robust (if perhaps at times stifling) family relations, a pillar
of society in all earlier generations, stand to be severely and perhaps
decisively eroded in the coming decades. Traditional “Asian family values”—the
ideals of universal marriage and parenthood—are already largely a curiosity of
the past in Japan. Their decay has set in motion a variety of powerful trends
which virtually ensure that the Japan of 2040 will be a country with far
greater numbers of aged isolates, divorced individuals, and adults whose family
lines come to an end with them.
At its heart, marriage in traditional
Japan was a matter of duty, not just love. Well within living memory, arranged
marriages (miai) predominated, while “love matches” (renai kekkon) were
anomalies. Love matches did not exceed arranged pairings until 1970—yet by
2005, only six percent of all new marriages fit the traditional mold. The
collapse of arranged marriage seems to have taken something with it. Remarkably
enough, there is a near perfect correlation between the demise of arranged
marriage in Japan and the decline in postwar Japanese fertility.
Unshackled from the obligations of
the old family order, Japan’s young men and women have plunged into a
previously unknown territory of interpersonal options. One consequence has been
a headlong “flight from marriage,” as Australian demographer Gavin Jones
describes it. Increasingly, men and women in modern Japan have been postponing
marriage—or avoiding it altogether. Between 1965 and 2005, for example, the
proportion of never-married women in their late thirties shot up from six
percent to 18 percent. Among men, the proportion rose even more steeply, from
four percent to 30 percent. Many of these single adults still have not left
home, creating a new breed of parasaito shinguru, or “parasite singles” . . .
Despite salutary trends in “healthy
aging,” Japan’s extraordinary demographics can only mean that a rapidly growing
share of the country’s population will be frail in the years ahead—and that
public pension allowances, health and medical services, and long-term care will
be ever more pressing priorities for Japanese society. Not the least of the
problems may concern Alzheimer’s disease. A study commissioned by Alzheimer’s
Disease International suggests that, on current track, the prevalence of
dementia in the Japanese population could rise to five percent by 2050—one
person in 20. The caregiving implications of such an outcome are staggering—and
given the coming erosion of the Japanese family, a steadily decreasing
proportion of senior citizens will have children to turn to for support. Under
such circumstances, an increase in long-term institutionalization among the
elderly seems inescapable. . . .
For better or worse, depopulation
and pervasive graying look to be Japan’s lot for as far as our imaginations can
stretch. In one sense, this may simply make the Japanese a “pioneer people”:
Many other nations and populations may likewise eventually find themselves to
be shrinking societies, too. Japan’s efforts to cope with the problems posed
(and also to capitalize on the opportunities presented) by a prosperous and orderly
depopulation may prove exemplary for the rest of the world. On the other hand,
as Japanese themselves are so often the first to point out, their own
minzoku—an emotive and heavily freighted term meaning “tribe,” “race,” or
“nationality”—is in important ways unique. “Depopulation with Japanese
characteristics” may therefore turn out to look different from prospective
depopulations elsewhere—and Japan may face special, self-imposed constraints in
dealing with its impending appointment with this demographic future. In either
case, making the most of the new demographic realities that lie in store in the
decades ahead could be one of this great nation’s very greatest trials.
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