Incredible Shrinking Country
By ROSS DOUTHAT
New York Times
April
28, 2012
ÒTHE
Children of Men,Ó P. D. JamesÕs 1992 novel, is set in a future where the
worldÕs male population has become infertile, and an aging Britain is adapting
to the human raceÕs gradual extinction. Women push dolls in baby carriages.
Families baptize kittens. There are state-run Ònational porn shopsÓ to
stimulate the flagging male libido. Suicide flourishes. Immigrants are welcomed
as guest laborers but expelled once they become too old to work. The last
children born on earth — the so-called ÒOmegasÓ — have grown up to
be bored, arrogant, antisocial and destructive.
JamesÕs
book, like most effective dystopias, worked by exaggerating existing trends
— the plunge in birthrates across the developed world, the spread of
voluntary euthanasia in nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland, the European
struggle to assimilate a growing immigrant population.
But
one developed nation is making ÒChildren of MenÓ look particularly prophetic.
In Japan, birthrates are now so low and life expectancy so great that the
nation will soon have a demographic profile that matches that of the American
retirement community of Palm Springs. ÒGradually but relentlessly,Ó the
demographer Nick Eberstadt writes in the latest issue
of The Wilson Quarterly, ÒJapan is
evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have
only been contemplated in science fiction.Ó
Eberstadt has spent years
writing about the challenges posed by declining fertility around the globe. But
Japan, he notes, is a unique case. The Japanese birthrate hovers around just
1.3 children per woman, far below the level required to maintain a stable
population. Thanks to increasing life expectancy, by 2040 Òthere could almost
be one centenarian on hand to welcome each Japanese newborn.Ó Over the same
period, the overall Japanese population is likely to decline by 20 percent,
with grim consequences for an already-stagnant economy and an already-strained
safety net.
Japan
is facing such swift demographic collapse, EberstadtÕs
essay suggests, because its culture combines liberalism and traditionalism in
particularly disastrous ways. On the one hand, the old sexual culture, oriented
around arranged marriage and family obligation, has largely collapsed. Japan is
one of the worldÕs least religious nations, the marriage rate has plunged and
the divorce rate is higher than in Northern Europe.
Yet
the traditional stigma around out-of-wedlock childbearing endures, which means
that unmarried Japanese are more likely to embrace Òvoluntary childlessnessÓ
than the unwed parenting thatÕs becoming an American norm. And the traditional
Japanese suspicion of immigration (another possible source for demographic
vitality) has endured into the 21st century as well. Eberstadt
notes that Òin 2009 Japan naturalized barely a third
as many new citizens as Switzerland, a country with a population only 6 percent
the size of JapanÕs and a reputation of its own for standoffishness.Ó
These
trends are forging a society that sometimes evokes the infertile Britain in
JamesÕs dystopia. Japan has one of the highest suicide
rates in the developed world, and there were rashes of Internet-enabled
group suicides in the last decade. Rental ÒrelativesÓ are available
for sparsely attended wedding parties; so-called ÒbabyloidsÓ
— furry dolls that mimic infant sounds — are being developed for
lonely seniors; and Japanese researchers are at the forefront of efforts to
build robots that
resemble human babies. The younger generation includes millions of
so-called Òparasite singlesÓ
who still live with (and off) their parents, and perhaps hundreds of thousands
of the ÒhikikomoriÓ — Òyoung adults,Ó Eberstadt
writes, Òwho shut themselves off almost entirely by retreating into a
friendless life of video games, the Internet and manga
(comics) in their parentsÕ home.Ó
If
thereÕs any reason for real optimism in this picture, itÕs for Americans,
rather than for Japanese. Twenty years ago, when declinists
predicted that the United States would soon cede global leadership to Japan,
they cited the same domestic trends that pessimists (this columnist included)
often cite today: our unsustainable deficits and our fraying social fabric, our
decadent culture and our uncompetitive economy.
These
problems are still with us, and some of them are worse than ever. But they
havenÕt left us in anything like the plight the Japanese are facing. Our family
structures are weakening, but high out-of-wedlock birthrates may be preferable
to no births at all. We assimilate immigrants more slowly than we should, but
at least weÕre capable of assimilation. American religion can be shallow,
narcissistic and divisive, but our religious institutions still supply
solidarity and uplift as well. Our economy is weak and our deficits are large,
but at least we arenÕt asking the next generation to bear the kinds of burdens
that todayÕs under-30 Japanese will someday have to shoulder.
There
is one modern world, but every civilization takes a different route through it.
For all our problems, 21st-century Americans should be thankful that we arenÕt
headed toward the same sunset as Japan.