| Did you visit the countryside, or the smaller cities? A lot of Japan is getting abandoned, Akiya (abandoned buildings) are becoming more prevalent, small communities are dying out as the younger generations are forced to move to the larger cities like Tokyo to get a good living, which leads to death spirals. And then there's the age groups skewing, as less people are born and more people reach the point where they're dying but not fast enough, who's left to take care of the older generations, or who pays taxes to maintain their quality of living? In 2022 the population across 47 prefectures fell over 800k [1]. Sure, immigration can help combat the issue somewhat, but Japan is a homogeneous society, and at some point you'll end up having more "foreigners" than natives if you don't properly combat the internal decline in numbers. You ask, is that what bad looks like? I gotta ask, what would constitute bad enough if not the death of all those communities that make the country. Tokyo isn't Japan, all the prefectures and the smaller towns are what make Japan Japan, and as they slowly die out, so does a big part of their culture that so many people love and brings in so much tourism and millions to consume their media, food, fashion and more. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/26/japan-populati... |
That sounds like a good thing, from an ecological perspective.