"Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past."
"This is the world's third-largest economy. It's a peaceful, prosperous country with the longest life expectancy in the world, the lowest murder rate, little political conflict, a powerful passport, and the sublime Shinkansen, the world's best high-speed rail network."
"America and Europe once feared the Japanese economic juggernaut much the same way they fear China's growing economic might today. But the Japan the world expected never arrived."
But why?
"If you want to see what happens to a country that rejects immigration as a solution to falling fertility, Japan is a good place to start."
"Japan is estimated to have had fewer than 800,000 births last year. In the 1970s, that figure was more than two million."
Population peaked at 128 million in 2017, is 125 million now, is projected to be 53 million by the end of the century.
"Japan now has the world's second-highest proportion of people aged 65 and over -- about 28% -- after the tiny state of Monaco."
