The world is facing a declining birthrate, an aging population, and a declining population. In the midst of this, the world’s view of Japan’s state is gradually changing. Until now, there was a tendency to ridicule the state of low productivity and continued low growth as the “Japanese disease.” Even within Japan, it has been called the “lost 30 years” and has been viewed as a problem.
It is certainly a problem, and solutions must be taken. On the other hand, during the lost 30 years, Japan achieved a feat that could be said to be the first in human history.
That is, the economy continued to grow even as the society aged and the population decreased. It was low growth. It is still low growth today. But it has grown.
Japan is probably the first country to show that economic growth is possible even with an aging and declining population. There is a theory that one of the factors that caused the fall of both the Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire was economic decline due to aging and population decline.
Therefore, countries around the world have seen aging and population decline as a signal of collapse. It is thought that the reason Western countries continue to accept immigrants despite facing various problems is because they are afraid of aging and population decline.
It may actually be Japan that is trying to overturn this conventional wisdom. At least in Europe and the United States, it seems that the number of knowledgeable people who are looking at Japan from this perspective is gradually increasing.
In recent years, the concept of “degrowth” has come up as a result of reflection on the excesses of capitalism. I see degrowth as a movement that seeks to manage the country and benefit the people in an essential sense. From a realistic perspective, degrowth means low growth. Japan today may be putting together a degrowth model.
Sooner or later, Japan will have to overcome its aging population and put a stop to its population decline. At the same time, it needs to establish a model that can maintain a prosperous society even with low growth, and present it to the world as the Japanese model. I have even come to think that this is the mission that has been imposed on Japan today. (Kitajima Kei)

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