Bending Adversity: Japan And The Art Of Survival - Plot & Excerpts
‘If we go on this way, the Japanese race will become extinct,’ Chikara Sakaguchi said melodramatically in 2002.1 Sakaguchi was basing his alarmist prediction on extrapolation. If you continue any downward-moving graph far enough into the future it will eventually reach zero. Japan’s fertility rate fell below 2.1, the level needed to maintain a population, in the 1980s.2 Between 2005 and 2010, it averaged just 1.27.3 Although it has edged back up again, not nearly enough babies are being born to replenish the population. Japan’s case is particularly stark since it is more resistant to immigration than most countries in its less-than-fecund position. Britain’s population would be at risk of falling too were it not for a steady influx of outsiders.4 Part of the ‘problem’ is that people are living too long. Japan’s life expectancy has risen dramatically. It is now the highest in the world, with men living to an average age of eighty and women to a remarkable eighty-six. In 1947, the average was fifty and fifty-four respectively.
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