I am not worried about the population decline in Japan. As I see it, the problem itself will bring about the solution. I mean that the reasons the population is declining will be fixed by the decline itself. Sooner or later, people will start having more children again. Here is a quote from CNN article about Japan:
Japan’s high cost of living, limited space and lack of child care support in cities make it difficult to raise children, meaning fewer couples are having kids. Urban couples are also often far from extended family in other regions, who could help provide support. In 2022, Japan was ranked one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a child, according to research from financial institution Jefferies. And yet, the country’s economy has stalled since the early 1990s, meaning frustratingly low wages and little upward mobility. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/asia/japan-births-2022-record-low-intl-hnk/index.html All true, and everyone knows it. But other than Tokyo, there is more space in most cities than there used to be, and much more space in small towns. More space, because apartments are larger than they used to be, and because most towns are depopulated. Houses are cheaper than they used to be. Small towns and cities are handing out houses to young couples for free. Here are the stats for my home-away-from-home Suo-Oshima, Yamaguchi. It is an island in the middle of nowhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su%C5%8D-%C5%8Cshima The population peaked at 65,000 in 1945. It fell to 34,000 in 1975. The population of Japan was still rising, but young people were leaving. The population is now 15,000. There are many abandoned houses. You can walk for an hour on the farm roads and not see a person or a car. If you wander into the deep woods, you may be eaten by a wild boar. Old people suffering from dementia sometimes wander off and are never seen again. In other rural districts, the government is trying to encourage people to buy rifles and shoot the bears and deer. (It is a myth that they do not allow guns. During hunting season the place sounds like a war zone.) Japan has a high population density, but that is an average. The population is crammed into one or two big cities. There is plenty of space elsewhere. Young people left Oshima in the 1960s because there were no jobs there. Until 1968, there was no off-island telephone service. It is a beautiful place, but as a friend of mine there said, "we don't want to live in a museum." There was no bridge. You had to take a ferry, which did not run often. Until sometime well into this century, there was no internet as far as I know. No fast internet, anyway. Now, there is. If a young person wanted to move there and work virtually in Tokyo, or Hiroshima, which is the closest city, she could do that. She could commute to Hiroshima once or twice a week. She could have a large house for not much money, and an acre or two of land. Raising children there is not expensive. Japan is supposedly rule-bound and conformist, but not in the countryside. Not in my experience. On one of the islands nearby, you can build your own house and you can have an illicit automobile for free. No inspections. Just hide it in the orange grove when the police visit once or twice a year. 12-year-old kids drive cars there, with no license, the way my mother did in the 1920s in New York City. Edo-period happy-go-lucky lifestyles have survived. I found a pile of discarded condoms in the woods near the highschool. There was no telecommuting in Japan until COVID struck. Everyone had to go to the office, and stay late in the evening, doing nothing. COVID showed that is not necessary. Or even useful. Offices were drowning in physical paperwork, which meant people had to actually go there to shuffle papers and stamp seals. It turned out that served no purpose either. Who knew?!? (Everyone knew.) There is no reason why they should not have more kindergartens. It just has never been a priority for the national or local governments. Everyone knows there are not enough, but the government prefers to send billions to well-connected construction companies to build useless roads. Urban couples are far from family, but they could move closer if work were decentralized. Childcare will be easier when robots become more capable. In other words, depopulation will open up resources and opportunities to re-populate. And I am sure young people decades from now will enthusiastically re-populate.
