A Dis­patch from Japan 2025

A Dispatch from Japan 2025

Japan 2025 is a ver­sion of Japan 2000—albeit with few­er young peo­ple, many more old peo­ple, and a soci­ety that has no idea where it is going. Japan sim­ply runs in place, wait­ing to see what might evolve next. Change comes slow­ly here, but even­tu­al­ly enough will accu­mu­late to bite you in the oshiri. You want it to hap­pen so bad­ly, to be the future, but Japan stub­born­ly refus­es to accept the assign­ment.

None of that is vis­i­ble at first or even sec­ond glance in a place like Tokyo. The trains run fright­en­ing­ly on time, down to the sec­ond. The air­port tick­et machines are still over­ly com­plex but accept 10,000 yen notes (about $63) casu­al­ly in a coun­try where many peo­ple out­side the big cities still con­duct life almost entire­ly in cash. But Apple Pay from your Amer­i­can smart­phone? Maybe not so much. The tick­et machines do have an “Eng­lish” but­ton that removes some but not all of the mys­tery; if this is insuf­fi­cient­ly clar­i­fy­ing, an atten­dant is near­by at the air­port sta­tion to remove more, but still not all, of the mys­tery.

In the news, you can’t miss what’s going on. Japan leads the world in per capi­ta sales of adult dia­pers. Japan’s pop­u­la­tion is get­ting so old that one major dia­per man­u­fac­tur­er is now mak­ing prod­ucts only for adults, not for babies. Japan’s births dropped more than 5 per­cent in 2023, to their low­est lev­el in cen­turies. Japan had more than twice as many deaths as births, lead­ing to a nat­ur­al pop­u­la­tion decline of over 800,000. There’s an arti­cle about the gov­ern­ment ask­ing schools and com­pa­nies to sched­ule group excur­sions out­side of peak sea­son, because a labor short­age makes it impos­si­ble to serve every­one prop­er­ly. Some of the blame falls on us, it says, the for­eign­ers trav­el­ing to Japan to enjoy the weak yen—no mat­ter that tourism is one of the few grow­ing sec­tors nation­wide, thanks to that cheap cur­ren­cy plus the lure of ani­me and man­ga. Plen­ty of that, no short­ages there. For­get steel and Toy­otas; Japan wants to dou­ble the num­ber of for­eign tourists over the next few years as a major indus­try.

But even if you’ve missed the news, signs of a labor short­age are not hard to spot. More and more of Japan’s famous con­ve­nience stores and super­mar­kets are near­ly entire­ly vague­ly super­vised self-check­out now, tak­ing advan­tage of the extreme hon­esty of the Japan­ese peo­ple. In small­er sub­way sta­tions, there are no longer atten­dants to resolve prob­lems. You’re on your own with the machines there along­side 124 mil­lion (and decreas­ing) Japan­ese.

One solu­tion in play is pro­mot­ing elder­ly employ­ment. To address the labor short­age, Japan has been encour­ag­ing old­er peo­ple to remain in the work­force longer. The gov­ern­ment raised the retire­ment age and is pro­mot­ing “sil­ver work­ers.” But many of these jobs appear to be make­work rather than real responsibilities—ushers in a bank lob­by to show patrons to a seat, human light poles to direct traf­fic around con­struc­tion, that sort of thing. It feels like too lit­tle, espe­cial­ly as 20 per­cent of peo­ple over 65 live in pover­ty.

The country’s pop­u­la­tion peaked in 2008 and has since been steadi­ly decreas­ing due to low birth rates and an aging soci­ety. In 2023, approx­i­mate­ly 29 per­cent of Japan’s pop­u­la­tion was aged 65 or old­er, mak­ing it one of the old­est pop­u­la­tions in the world. The pro­por­tion of elder­ly peo­ple is pro­ject­ed to rise even fur­ther, pos­si­bly reach­ing 40 per­cent by 2050 if cur­rent trends con­tin­ue. This is cou­pled with a low birth rate—one of the low­est in the world. This is due to var­i­ous fac­tors, includ­ing social and eco­nom­ic pres­sures, high cost of liv­ing, delayed mar­riages, and chang­ing atti­tudes toward fam­i­ly life. On the oth­er end of the scale, Japan has one of the high­est life expectan­cies glob­al­ly, with an aver­age at birth of around 82 for men, 87 for women.

At the res­i­dence of a Japan­ese friend in a Tokyo sub­urb, there’s a dai­ly announce­ment at 5 p.m. ask­ing every­one in the mas­sive East­ern European–style block apart­ment com­plex to look for the hand­ful of Alzheimer’s‑afflicted res­i­dents who have wan­dered off dur­ing the day. This is treat­ed as if it has always been the case. Peo­ple look out their win­dows, and moms at the play­ground are espe­cial­ly alert, as many of the old peo­ple like to gath­er there to watch the chil­dren. It would make you cry if you let it, but no one in Japan lets it.

With a rapid­ly grow­ing elder­ly pop­u­la­tion, Japan has seen an increas­ing demand for care­giv­ing ser­vices. The bur­den is often placed on fam­i­ly mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly women, tak­ing them out of the work­force. The gov­ern­ment has been try­ing to address this with var­i­ous reforms, includ­ing allow­ing more for­eign care­givers to work in Japan, but talk is talk. These improve­ments fea­ture more on Sun­day morn­ing polit­i­cal talk shows than on the street (or on the play­ground) where they are need­ed.

It can be hard to sort out, this mod­ern Japan. It is so clean, every­where. Crime only exists in the most orga­nized fash­ion and rarely touch­es the aver­age per­son, at least one who shies away from loan sharks. If you drop some­thing, some­one will pick it up and try to return it to you. There are few pub­lic trash cans because there is no one to emp­ty them. Peo­ple thus car­ry their dai­ly trash of food wrap­pers and cig­a­rette butts with them, until they get home if nec­es­sary. You could eat off the sub­way floor. (Con­trast New York, where the home­less on the trains are immo­lat­ed for kicks.) Even the grow­ing home­less pop­u­la­tion gath­ered near Japan­ese train sta­tions is qui­et and neat, not want­i­ng, it seems, to make a fuss or cause a dis­tur­bance. In near­ly every such way Japan is a bet­ter, clean­er, and safer place than any­where else in the world. It can be hard to look past such a mir­a­cle to crit­i­cize her.

And that’s what makes a vis­i­tor want to scream out loud, “You are almost there.” Just let in some immi­grant nurs­es to care for the elder­ly and cre­ate a sub­si­dized child­care sys­tem so moth­ers who want to work can. That would also encour­age women to have chil­dren, along­side a nation­al cam­paign to assure peo­ple work­ing moms are a valu­able part of the econ­o­my. But no one seems to be lis­ten­ing; the government’s cur­rent effort is to offer women only a measly sum of about the equiv­a­lent of $630 as an incen­tive to have chil­dren.

If Japan does not suc­cess­ful­ly address its demo­graph­ic chal­lenges, the coun­try will face long-term eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, reduced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and increased soci­etal pres­sures. Japan’s advanced infra­struc­ture and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions may allow it to con­tin­ue to mit­i­gate some of the most severe impacts of its aging pop­u­la­tion and run in place for many more years. The pop­u­lar cul­ture ver­sion of this answer takes the form of robots, either in the form of a movie-like android walk­ing awk­ward­ly the clas­sic Japan­ese fem­me­bot recep­tion­ist. (No robots lift­ing an elder­ly woman out of the tub or chang­ing a dia­per on the TV.) Per­haps it’s all for the good, but Japan 2025 seems to have left too many ques­tions unan­swered to real­ly know.

A Dis­patch from Japan 2025

Aging dom­i­nates more and more of Japan­ese pub­lic life.

Tokyo,,Japan,-,July,4th,,2018.,Old,Japanese,Couple,Walking

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