I’m not sure Japan is in a population crisis. I’ve been to Japan many times on business and the place is just teeming with people. It’s a very overpopulated place. Taking the population down from 140 million to 120 or 110 million might just improve the quality of life for the Japanese people. What’s the alternative? Let the population grow to 150 or 160 million?
Japan is in a population crisis, and the large numbers that you are seeing are part and parcel of the problem. Why? Well, because most of those people are middle-aged (with a good number of elderly since Japan has a large ratio of the elderly). However there are very little young people. Now, the problem arises when those middle-aged people become elderly, and the number of young people becoming adults to replace them is not sufficient. In essence, there are fewer people coming up into adulthood than there are adults going into the elderly brackets. This has huge implications in terms of everything ....e.g. tax, social services, employment, etc.
Now, there is a simple solution to this ....immigration. The problem is that this 'simple' solution is not all that simple. For one, Japan is probably the most 'homogenous' (I would say xenophobic, but homogenous will do for now) society in the world. Not racist per se ....they simply like their own (and there are a number of pluses with that approach, so it shouldn't be knocked on its head). Second of all letting the numbers of immigrants that would be required to 'mend' the situation in the future would lead to a lot of problems. For instance, the fabric of Japanese society (which does depend some bit on it being ...well ....'homogenous') would change.
Now, there is the option of the japanese people simply starting to more offspring. The issue is that, as in many wealthy nations, kids do not compute (e.g. in the US it is an issue ....it is just that immigration tends to whitewash it, but take away the numbers coming in from immigration and the US is more or less like Europe when it comes to birth rates). There are more and more numbers of SINKs and DINKs (Single Income No Kids, and Dual Income No Kids) coming up all over the industrialized and industrialising world. Thus, unless you can convince people to 'sacrifice' and ave kids for the benefit of the nation, building up the population through births is an issue. Already in japan there are areas where schools are shutting down because of having no children (one documentary i watched showed a school with exactly ONE child).
Thus, they do have an issue over there, and it is one without easy answers (unless you can somehow make people start reproducing ....not having sex, but actually reproducing). Japan will either have to cut down on their living standards as well as watch their economy decline, or they will have to do what has always been anathema in Japanese culture .....allow mass immigration.
I'm sure both approaches must be unpallatable.
For now everything is alright ....but all those myriad people you saw while in Japan on biz will age some day (unless they stumble on the fountain of youth), and when they do they will not have enough young people growing up to take their place.
That is when the problem will kick in.
I don’t know man, that’s close to those culture of death theories. I’m not saying that’s what you believe in of course.
I believe (have faith) that population is always good, even overpopulation. It is always good to have lots of people. Birth control is not a good mentality.