Spaces for living: How Tokyo’s urban landscape deals with change

 Tokyo has a long and storied history, and yet little of it can be traced back to when the city became the country’s de facto capital under the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603.

This is largely the consequence of a need to rebuild the city constantly following frequent periods of destruction. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the firebombing of Tokyo in the final months of World War II are the two most obvious examples, and yet its residents have also survived massive conflagrations on a regular basis.

Between the decisive Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 that eventually allowed Tokugawa Ieyasu to establish the shogunate three years later and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, historians estimate that Edo (present-day Tokyo) experienced anywhere between 49 and 85 large fires that devastated vast swathes of land.

The observation deck of Shibuya Scramble Square offers a magnificent view of Tokyo. | BLOOMBERG

If smaller fires are included, historians estimate this number skyrockets to almost 1,800 and, even today, Edo is sometimes called “kasai toshi,” or “city of fire.”

As a result, much of Tokyo’s architecture has been constructed in the 20th century, with the city constantly rebuilding areas that have been destroyed. The architecture and aesthetics of the capital today reflect its past, while continuously being reimagined for the present.

A Herculean task

The postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games have been the latest impetus of change, with developers in the city gaining access to a range of attractive financing packages once organizers secured the rights to host the games in 2013.

Rail companies in the capital have taken advantage of favorable market conditions and, given how entrenched their operations are with property developments in areas surrounding stations, have planned numerous projects to overhaul the infrastructure of their investments.

As a result, train stations around the city appear to be in a constant state of flux. Subterranean Ginza Station, for example, was a warren of taped-off zones and construction screens for three years, with its renovation finally finished in October. It cost around ¥22 billion ($200 million) to redevelop the hub and the work is part of a wider renovation of stations along the Ginza Line — Tokyo’s oldest underground railway.

Shibuya Station is also a constantly shifting transport hub, with temporary routes from A to B changing direction almost on a monthly basis. Raised footbridges at the station overlook gigantic holes gouged in the Earth, waiting for the arrival of additional skyscrapers and other structures that will comprise an “Entertainment City” — a dream for 2027 that will finally realize a neo-Shibuya that was partly prophesied as “neo-Tokyo” in Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga “Akira.”

“It may sound presumptuous,” Shibuya Mayor Ken Hasebe told The Japan Times several years ago, “but I want people to think of Shibuya in the same way they do London, Paris and New York.”

Of the large-scale developments planned for the Shibuya area, the Hikarie building was completed in 2012, while Shibuya Stream and Shibuya Scramble Square were finished in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Three more developments — in Dogenzaka, Sakuragaoka and the southern area of Shibuya Station — are in the works.

Writing for an online travel guide, Tim Hornyak states: “By the end of the decade, Shibuya will have completely changed into a nearly unrecognizable new town. But if you’re longing for the past, you might still be able to find Nonbei Yokocho (Drunkard’s Alley), a collection of tiny postwar bars by the Yamanote Line tracks that survives to this day and is proudly scruffy. The cooperative that runs it is determined to keep the establishments alive, along with the original community spirit of Shibuya.”

Just behind Nonbei Yokocho, however, looms large a potential rival: Shibuya Yokocho. Part of the Miyashita Park development that opened in summer, the new collection of izakaya (traditional Japanese pubs) located here is a decidedly modern take on the retro grit of typical yokochō establishments. The constant crowds and lines have already affirmed its popularity and, for now, both alleys survive side-by-side — for how long remains to be seen.

Moving further east, an entirely new station opened on the Yamanote Line in Minato Ward on March 14. Dubbed Takanawa Gateway after crowdsourcing ideas for the name, the station and surrounding area is a joint project between JR East and the Urban Renaissance Agency to transform the neighborhood into “a global transportation and business hub.” Skyscrapers, commercial buildings and hotels are scheduled to be built in the area over the next four years.

It’s certainly not the first time the capital has overhauled itself ahead of an Olympic Games.

Tokyo’s selection as host city of the 1964 Olympics prompted many advancements that are now an accepted part of the furniture.

The Tokyo Monorail was finished over Tokyo Bay just 23 days before the games’ opening ceremony. Meanwhile, a number of metropolitan expressways were created in the capital and the Tokaido Shinkansen was unveiled. Roppongi-dori was also widened and a host of large hotels — Tokyo Prince Hotel and Hotel New Otani, to name two — sprang up.

What’s more, there was infrastructure directly related to the games themselves: Yoyogi Park — home to several venues and the Olympic Village — and Komazawa Olympic Park, for example, reshaped whole districts of the capital and still provide meaningful recreation spaces for locals.

But Yoshiyuki Kawazoe, an associate professor of design of architecture at the University of Tokyo, warns against comparing the property development in the city in 1964 to that which has taken place ahead of the 2020 Games.

Pedestrians walk by the redeveloped Miyashita Park in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward. | AP

“The situation of the city is very different between the Olympics held during the postwar recovery period and the Olympics 50 years later,” he says.

Ricky Burdett, director of LSE Cities and a professor of urban studies, says new developments should try to incorporate historical elements of the areas they’re replacing.

“In order for cities to remain alive and energetic, they need to accommodate change,” Burdett says.

“An old city like London has the capacity to adapt and absorb new development without completely losing its identity and DNA,” says Burdett, who was chief adviser on architecture and urbanism for the 2012 Olympics in London. “Given that the Olympic site at Stratford used to be a railway yard and became redundant and empty, the planning approach has integrated — wherever possible — new and sustainable types of development with the historic fabric and grain of London.

“It is not a question of either/or but about inclusive growth and integration.”

In Tokyo, however, this may be difficult to accomplish.

Sayonara, Harajuku Station

A short distance from Shibuya, one of the capital’s long-established landmarks is slated for removal: Harajuku’s iconic wooden train station.

Designed by Railways Ministry engineer Kaoru Hasegawa, the station was built in 1924 following the Great Kanto Earthquake. It sits opposite the frenetic and equally iconic Takeshita-dori.

Citing the station’s limited size and issues with fire safety, local lawmakers decided to dismantle the station following the Paralympics (a process that has already started due to the postponement of the games). A new station building has already appeared, unveiled without much ceremony, and started handling operations on March 21.

Replacing the old station is a minimal structure, aesthetically distant from the original — a revision to the Harajuku skyline that occludes the greenery of Meiji Shrine behind it.

Thomas Daniell, a professor in the department of architecture at Kyoto University, isn’t bothered by the design of the new building.

“I have no problem with it,” Daniell says. “The old one was a charming hybrid of Japanese and European elements, but it was too small.”

However, Daniell says the fate of the old station was probably determined by its lack of space.

“Private landowners are difficult to relocate (because the domain laws are weak), so it is difficult for developers to assemble sites large enough for coherent projects,” Daniell says. “Land readjustment is the usual model, which is quite bottom-up in principle.”

In 2016, Regis Arnaud, editor-in-chief of Japon France Eco, wrote an article that was published by Tokyo Keizai titled “The major problems of Japanese tourism policy as indicated by the dismantling of Harajuku Station.”

In the article, Arnaud equates ruthless edificial change with a lack of knowledge in what overseas visitors really want.

“Shabby” Golden Gai in Shinjuku Ward, he says, is now “one of the trendiest places on Earth” — and Arnaud says that this is primarily due to foreign tourists. New developments such as Akasaka’s Tokyo Midtown, for instance, provide only “mechanical interactions” and are not necessarily where foreign tourists want to go.

“In other words,” Arnaud argues, “the places where ordinary Japanese people do not find value are really ‘Japanese-like’ places.”

Arnaud calls Harajuku Station a “symbol of Japan’s unique culture of the fusion of old and new things” found nationwide, and cannot understand why it is scheduled for removal.

“Harajuku Station is about to become a symbol of mottainai (waste),” he writes.

Nevertheless, it is out with the old, in with the new insofar as Harajuku Station is concerned. After its removal — a slow process — a replica is planned to be built nearby, partially using parts of the original.

Julian Worrall, a professor of architecture at the University of Tasmania, notes that the new station “appears to make little attempt to respond to the history or context of its site.”

That said, he goes on to qualify this statement somewhat.

“It does, however, have large glazed exterior walls and a branch of an upmarket cafe. Coffee and transparency (for both views and for shopping) are two features of contemporary urban culture that are found in many cities,” he says. “In this sense, the new station building is weakly expressive of the period that it has been built in — as was the old one.”

Similarly, Kawazoe believes that the new station buildings, including the rail company-operated stores inside and around stations, do not necessarily detract from a city’s character.

“The personality of a city is updated daily, so I don’t think that newness means that a city loses personality,” he says. “However, I do think it’s important that each new building creates its own individuality.”

Kawazoe admits it is probably “better to think more seriously about the beauty of a building than just its function.” The look of Harajuku Station — bar the green backdrop that exists on the Meiji Shrine side — is more utilitarian than aesthetically pleasing: glass for shopping, coffee for stopping.

Although the old building at Harajuku Station is being replicated at a site nearby, not all defunct architecture is so lucky.

Still, those that are saved from the proverbial fire may find a home alongside other architectural monuments of the past at Meiji Mura, a museum at Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, founded by architects Yoshiro Taniguchi (1904-79) and Motoo Tsuchikawa (1903-74).

The museum began preserving buildings in the midst of Tokyo’s rapid development in the 1960s — when value was placed on economic growth rather than preserving old things.

Takanawa Gateway Station | KYODO

The story goes that Taniguchi caught sight of the Rokumeikan (1833) — a prominent and controversial Western-style building in Hibiya — being demolished whilst riding the Yamanote Line. He immediately felt that historic structures needed to be preserved rather than knocked down, and the rest is, well, history.

Today, the museum holds treasures such as the lobby of the 1923 Imperial Hotel, designed in the Maya Revival style by celebrated U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).

“A more satisfying approach,” notes Worrall, “would have been to produce a design in a contemporary architectural language, but ensure that it consciously explores and expresses the historical layers of the site and context. You can see the results of a more historically sympathetic approach at Maach Ecute, designed by Mikan Architects at the site of the old Manseibashi Station down near Akihabara.”

Although somewhat alien to Western sensibilities, the idea of “rebuilding” heritage is something that has been done again and again in Japan to “general approval,” Worrall says.

However, if such plans fall through for Harajuku Station and it is to be lost entirely, it may be better that it is displayed in the architectural shadow box of Meiji Mura than not at all.

Looking to the future

In the “Japan Now 2020” episode of BBC Radio 3’s “Free Thinking” podcast, the state of “progress in Tokyo” is discussed by guests, including novelist and former voice actor Yukiko Motoya, who states that globalization is a “desirable direction” for the country.

“I go to places such as Shibuya and Shinjuku in Tokyo, and there’s no sense of history there,” Motoya says. “They’re a patchwork: They’ve been demolished and rebuilt, and I haven’t come across that lack of history anywhere else. I think it’s very Japanese. And I think, rather than clinging onto our image of what Japan should be, I think that this is much more interesting.”

That sense of Japanese-ness in the spirit of new buildings is something Worall agrees with.

“‘Built heritage’ has a different meaning and a weaker support base in Japan compared to many other countries in Europe and elsewhere,” he says. “In general, buildings are valued based on their economic and functional contribution, in addition to a short-lived fashion-based dimension that is related to their ‘newness’; they are essentially consumables, more akin to clothes than monuments.”

Property developers have grand redevelopment plans for the area surrounding Takanawa Gateway Station on the Yamanote Line. | KYODO

The landscape of Tokyo is constantly changing, something that has always been the case. Remembering that the old Harajuku Station was once new and expressive of 1920s Tokyo actually helps to process the new station building — a reflection of Tokyo 100 years later.

And as the retro facades and tiles of Tokyo’s train stations are being renovated, it’s also important to remember that the city itself is in a constant state of flux. Although a sense of history may be more and more difficult to find in increasingly densified areas such as Shibuya, it still exists.

“I don’t think (the city) much cares about history at all,” Kawazoe says, “but sometimes you can find fragments of the past where it wasn’t intended.”

In closing, Worrall sums it up well. Eschewing a “singular, privileged and protected version of the past,” he believes that history is bolstered by buildings that can link to different layers of the past instead.

“However,” he warns, “this should not overwhelm the future-oriented aspirations of those living in the present. Both the dead and the living have their rights.”

(Source: JT)

Singapore offers 'pandemic baby bonus' to boost births

 Singapore is offering a one-off payment to encourage people to have babies during the coronavirus pandemic.

The worry is that citizens are putting off parenthood as they struggle with financial stress and job layoffs.

Details of the amount that could be paid have yet to be released. It is in addition to several hefty baby bonuses offered by the government.

Singapore has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, which it has struggled to boost for decades.

It is in stark contrast to some of its neighbours such as Indonesia and the Philippines, which are facing the prospect of a massive spike in pregnancies from their coronavirus lockdowns.

Children playing a traditional game in Singapore, which has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Reuters

"We have received feedback that Covid-19 has caused some aspiring parents to postpone their parenthood plans," Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Monday.

Mr Heng said more details about amounts and how they will be paid would be announced at a later date.

Singapore's current baby bonus system provides eligible parents up to S$10,000 ($7,330, £5,644) in benefits.

Singapore's fertility rate touched an eight-year low in 2018, according to government data, at a rate of 1.14 births per woman.

Many Asian countries face a similar issue of falling fertility rates, which could worsen during the pandemic downturn.

Earlier this year, China's birth rate fell to its lowest since the formation of the People's Republic of China 70 years ago. This came despite the easing of the much criticised one-child policy.

Baby boom

But some of Singapore's neighbours face the opposite problem.

In the Philippines, unintended pregnancies are forecast to spike by almost half to 2.6 million if Covid 19-induced movement restrictions remain until year-end, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

"These numbers are an epidemic in itself," Aimee Santos, a spokesperson for UN agency in the Philippines, said last month.

The Philippines has the second-highest population in South East Asia at 108.4 million. It has one of the region's worst virus outbreaks with more than 307,000 infections.

"These issues of women and children have largely remained invisible during the pandemic. It's time to put them front and centre," Senator Risa Hontiveros, head of the chamber's committee on women, said last month.

She has backed calls for more female officials in the nation's task force against the coronavirus outbreak.

(Source: BBC)

Babies born in Japan to drop below 900,000 in 2019 for first time

The number of babies born in Japan fell an estimated 5.9 percent this year to fewer than 900,000, the first time since the government started compiling data in 1899, the welfare ministry said Tuesday.

The dwindling number of births will put more strain on welfare finances to support the snowballing costs of supporting an aging population, undermining economic growth, analysts say.

The annual total is expected to fall by some 54,000 from the 918,400 born the previous year, hitting a record low for the fourth straight year.

The expected drop below 900,000 will come two years earlier than had been projected by a research institute of the ministry.

The number of babies born in Japan fell an estimated 5.9 percent this year, to fewer than 900,000 for the first time. | KYODO

This was the biggest decline in births since 1975, driven by the lower number of women age 25 to 39, said a ministry official in charge of compiling the data.

The government is hoping for a birth rate of 1.8 percent — which would appear to be a tall order given the rate was 1.42 percent in 2018.

The number of deaths is projected at 1,376,000, a postwar record. The nation’s natural population decline is estimated at 512,000, topping 500,000 for the first time, after exceeding 400,000 for the first time last year.

The number of newly married couples is estimated to hit a postwar low of 583,000, down 3,000 from last year. The number of divorces is projected to reach 210,000, up 2,000. As reasons for the expected sharp drop in the number of newborns, the ministry also cited the plunge in the number of couples married last year.

The ministry believes that the current trend will continue.

A demographic forecast released in 2017 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research projected that the number of babies born in Japan, including non-Japanese babies, would total 921,000 in 2019, 902,000 in 2020 and 886,000 in 2021.

(Source: JT)

Anti-natalists: The people who want you to stop having babies

They believe humans shouldn't have children. Who are the anti-natalists - and how far are they willing to push their ideas?

"Wouldn't it just be better to blow a hole in the side of the earth and just have done with everything?"

Thomas, 29, lives in the east of England, and although his idea of blowing up the world is something of a thought experiment, he is certain about one thing - humans should not have babies, and our species should gradually go extinct.

It's a philosophy called anti-natalism. While the idea dates back to ancient Greece, it has recently been given a huge boost by social media.

On Facebook and Reddit, there are dozens of anti-natalist groups, some with thousands of members. On Reddit, r/antinatalism has nearly 35,000 members, while just one of the dozens of Facebook groups with an anti-natalist theme has more than 6,000.

They are scattered around the world and have a variety of reasons for their beliefs. Among them are concerns about genetic inheritance, not wanting children to suffer, the concept of consent, and worries about overpopulation and the environment.

But they are united in their desire to stop human procreation. And although they are a fringe movement, some of their views, particularly on the state of the earth, are increasingly creeping into mainstream discussion.

While not an anti-natalist, the Duke of Sussex recently said he and his wife were planning to have a maximum of two children, because of environmental concerns.

Philosophical chat
Thomas hadn't heard of anti-natalism before someone used the term to describe his views in a YouTube comments thread a few years ago. Since then, he's become an active member of an anti-natalist Facebook group. It provides him with intellectual stimulation and a place to test his debating skills.

"I think it's awesome, you're discussing real life problems," he says. "You've got an idea - let's say humans do go extinct. What if humans then evolve again? Then you haven't really solved the problem.

"There's a lot of discussion, some of it gets quite touchy."

But his passion for anti-natalism isn't only theoretical. Thomas believes all human life is purposeless and has tried, although not succeeded, in getting a vasectomy on Britain's National Health Service (NHS). NHS doctors can refuse to perform sterilisation operations if they believe the procedure is not in the best interests of the patient.

Non-violence and consent
Despite some of the nihilist rhetoric in anti-natalist groups, there's no indication that they're a violent threat. When they do talk about extinction it often feels as though it's a debating exercise. No-one in their online communities is threatening murder or violence.

Thomas's idea of blowing a hole in the side of the earth - he imagines a big red button that would end human life and says he'd "press that in an instant" - is actually highly controversial because of a key anti-natalist principle: consent.

Put simply, it's the idea that creating or destroying life requires the consent of the person who will be born or die.

Kirk lives in San Antonio, Texas. He says he recalls a conversation with his mother when he was just four years old. She told him that having children was a choice.

"This doesn't make any sense to me, to voluntarily put someone who has no needs or wants prior to their conception into this world to suffer and die," he says.

Kirk says that even at that young age, he became an anti-natalist. He opposes the creation of human life because none of us were explicitly asked if we wanted to be here.

"If every person gave consent to play the game of life then I personally wouldn't have any objection to that," he concedes. "It hinges on the consent or lack thereof."

The concept also works in reverse. The problem with that big red humanity-eraser button is that plenty of people enjoy life - and not everyone would consent to it all coming to an end. Instead, Kirk and most anti-natalists want people to volunteer to stop giving birth.

Mental health issues
There's another distinct theme common in anti-natalist groups. Posters frequently share experiences of their own mental health, and occasionally condemn those with mental health problems for having children.

One post included a screenshot of a post from another user that read: "I have a borderline personality disorder, in addition to bipolar and generalized anxiety". The anti-natalist added their own comment: "This individual has two kids. I feel bad for the kiddos".

In another group, there was also a comment where someone was clearly contemplating suicide.

"I've had schizophrenia and depression," Thomas explains. "Depression does run in my family too. I think if I have kids there's a high likelihood that they're going to be depressed and they're not going to like their life."

But he also says the community is often wrongly labelled by outsiders.

"People start labelling us crazy psychos," he says. The truth, he says, is much more complex.

Saving the earth?
Fuelling anti-natalist arguments in recent years is an increasing focus on the environment and the potentially devastating effects of climate change.

Judging from posts in the anti-natalist groups, there's clearly a large overlap between their ideas and environmental activism.

"I feel that it is selfish to have children at this time," adds Nancy a vegan, plastic-free, animal rights enthusiast and yoga instructor from the Philippines."The reality is that the children being born into the world are creating more destruction for the environment."

In a Facebook group called "very angry anti-natalists" a petition is being shared which they hope to send to the United Nations. Its title is "Overpopulation root of the climate catastrophe - worldwide birth stop now." So far it has 27,000 signatures.

The idea of refraining from having children to benefit the environment isn't a new one. In Britain a charity called Population Matters has proposed this for years - although they are not anti-natalists. In fact, they argue in favour of the sustainability of the human race rather than its extinction.

"Our aim is to achieve harmony between the human race and the planet we're fortunate to inhabit," says Robin Maynard, the group's director. "If we have fewer children across the globe and smaller families we can achieve a much more sustainable population."

But will an increasing population necessarily lead directly to environmental disaster? According to the BBC's Global Population Correspondent Stephanie Hegarty, it's hard to say, because the future is so difficult to predict.

"According to scientific projections, due to economic development and dropping fertility rates, the population of the world is likely to plateau at about 11 billion in 80 years," she says. "Whether the planet can sustain that or not - we do not know.

"It's also very difficult to predict how many people the planet can sustain because it's all about consumption. And that means everything from air, water, food, fossil fuels, wood, plastic - the list goes on and on," she says. "Clearly some of us are consuming a lot more than others. A family of 12 in a country like Burundi will consume less, on average, than a family of three in Texas.

"There are so many factors that are going to be changing over the next decade and the next century that we can't predict right now."

Insults and criticism
Among the intense philosophical and ethical debates going on anti-natalist groups, there's a darker and less edifying undercurrent. Some routinely insult parents - calling them "breeders". Other slurs are directed at children.

"Whenever I see a pregnant woman, disgust is the first feeling." wrote one user next to a picture that said: "I hate baby bump".

But that doesn't mean that all anti-natalists hate children, according to those who spoke to the BBC.

"I would say I personally like children and it is because I like them that I don't want them to suffer," Nancy says. "Maybe bringing them into the world would give me some pleasure but the possible threat is so huge I'm just not sure it's worth it."

But that's not the only criticism. In some anti-natalist groups, users allude to the notion that babies shouldn't be born in war zones, if there is a high chance of disability, or even to low-income parents. At times the rhetoric sounds like selective breeding - or eugenics.

The anti-natalists we spoke to had mixed feelings about those ideas.

"What are their motives behind having a kid?" says Thomas when asked if he's concerned about children being born in war-torn areas. "In such a country there's less hope that things are going to turn around."

He's more relaxed about children being born into low-income households.

"Obviously I'm against having kids... but I think you can be happy and in a low-income area."

"My anti-natalism is across the board," states Nancy. She opposes eugenics. "Why are we picking and choosing some groups because they are in a position of disadvantage?"

So is there a general anti-natalist life philosophy?

"Do the best you can," says Kirk. "Be kind - and don't procreate."

(Source: BBC)

India to overtake China as most populous country within a decade, UN report finds

Nigeria is expected to push US from third to fourth place

India is forecast to overtake China as the most populous country in the world within a decade, according to a United Nations report.

China and India combined currently account for 38 per cent of the world’s population, with 1.43 billion and 1.37 billion people respectively.

However, India is projected to overtake China by 2027, according to the UN’s 2019 World Population Prospects report.

The change is expected to come about as a result of the death rate exceeding the birth rate in China, whose population is projected to fall by 31.4 million between 2019 and 2050.

Meanwhile, India’s population is forecast to increase to 1.5 billion.

The UN report also predicts the planet’s population will increase to 9.7 billion people by 2050, and up to about 11 billion by the end of the century.

Within the next 30 years, India and China are expected to be followed by Nigeria with 733 million people, after it pushes the US from third to fourth place with 434 million people, while Pakistan will remain the fifth largest with 404 million.

The population of sub-Saharan Africa was expected to double by 2050.

The nine countries expected to show the biggest increases were: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the US.

Liu Zhenmin, the UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, said: “Many of the fastest growing populations are in the poorest countries, where population growth brings additional challenges in the effort to eradicate poverty, achieve greater equality, combat hunger and malnutrition and strengthen the coverage and quality of health and education systems to ensure that no one is left behind.”

(Source: Independent)

The fate of Japan, and everyone else

If you want a peek at the future, try looking at Japan. It’s a sobering exercise. Here’s how economist Timothy Taylor, managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, describes the country’s outlook:

“[Japan] is facing a situation of a declining population and workforce, and the share of the population that is elderly is on the rise. [This is] driving up government spending on pensions and health care, and together with attempts to stimulate its economy through government spending (much of it on infrastructure), Japan has run up an enormous government debt.”

To put it bluntly (as I have argued before): Japan is slowly going out of business; its population is shrinking and it resists immigration. This cannot continue indefinitely.

What is significant about Japan’s situation is that it’s shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by most of the world’s advanced countries. Birth rates are depressed; economies are expanding slowly, if at all; and debt burdens are high and often growing.

You may recall, or not, that in the late 1980s, Japan was widely expected to overtake the United States as the world’s leading economy. Japanese firms also increasingly dominated old-line manufacturing industries (steel, autos) as well as new high-technologies (electronics).

What a difference a few decades make! Japan’s economy, though huge, remains the world’s third largest, behind the United States and China. But it is no longer the envy of the world. Many practices admired in the 1980s are less so today.

Based on present demographic trends, Japan's labor force will drop 25 percent by 2050. | GETTY IMAGES

The biggest problem is the nation’s aging. A new report on Japan from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — quoted by Taylor and posted on his useful blog, the Conversable Economist — reports this astounding fact: Half of Japanese children born in 2007 are expected to live to 107.

Meanwhile, Japanese births have slumped. The total fertility rate — the number of children women are expected to have during their lifetimes — was only 1.4 in 2016, compared with an OECD average of 1.7. (A fertility rate of about 2.1 is needed for a population to replace itself.) Deaths have exceeded births since 2007, and the population is “expected to decline by 8.2 million in the 2030s, the equivalent of losing Tokyo.”

Naturally, there are spillovers. Based on present trends, the labor force will drop 25 percent by 2050, while the relationship between working-age Japanese (20-64) and the 65-and-over population shifts sharply. There are now two working-age Japanese for everyone 65 and over; by 2050, that ratio is projected to fall to 1.3 working-age Japanese for each elderly person.

What this describes is an economic doomsday machine. The increasing number of older Japanese has already put enormous pressures on the government’s budget. Since 1991, public social spending — mainly for retirement pensions, health care and long-term care — has doubled as a share of gross domestic product, from 11 percent of GDP to 22 percent of GDP in 2018.

The mounting deficit spending has in turn ballooned Japan’s government debt to 226 percent of GDP — “the highest ever recorded in the OECD area” and roughly twice the U.S. level. But efforts to reduce the deficits by cutting spending or raising taxes risk squeezing the incomes of younger workers and discouraging them from having more children.

Of course, Japan’s imbalanced population could be rectified through more immigration. But this has never been popular in a country with such a strong sense of its own identity. True, the number of foreign workers doubled from 700,000 in 2013 to 1.46 million in 2018. Still, that was only 2 percent of Japan’s labor force. The share of foreign residents was only 1.9 percent of Japan’s population in 2017, while the OECD average was 13 percent.

The ultimate cures for Japan’s ills are obvious: women should have more children; people should work longer; economic growth should be accelerated. Despite some small improvements, all have been impossible to achieve.

Whether Japan can find its way out of this box is uncertain. There are good reasons (politically) to do nothing and weak reasons (substantively) to do something. Many advanced countries, including the United States, face similar — though less severe — problems. “The rest of the world will be watching,” says the OECD. It may not like what it sees.

(Source: JT)

A flurry of ideas to reverse China’s declining birthrate, but will Beijing listen?

One proposal would end financial penalties for babies born out of wedlock. Another would lower the legal age of marriage. Others would ban discrimination against mothers and mothers-to-be in the workplace and would expand or extend parental leave to fathers.

China’s annual legislative session — the National People’s Congress — is typically a staid affair to aggrandize Communist Party rule, but this year it has produced a flurry of proposals to address what experts and officials now acknowledge is a looming demographic crisis caused by the country’s sharply declining birthrate.

A mother and a child at the daily flag ceremony at Tiananmen Square,
Beijing, last year. CreditCreditGilles Sabrié for The New York Times

The ideas now being floated by regional officials, businesspeople and others reflect the depth of the concern over the issue but also the fact that there is not yet a clear consensus on what the government should do about it.

One deputy, Huang Xihua, went so far as to propose amending the Constitution to remove all limits on family planning, which until 2016 notoriously forbade most Chinese families from having more than one child.

“The reason so many deputies are putting proposals forward is that the birthrate has declined for two consecutive years,” He Yafu, a demographer and the author of a book on the impact of China’s population controls who helped Ms. Huang write her proposal, said in a telephone interview. “The reasons to limit births no longer exist.”

The government has, so far least, showed no sign of abdicating its heavy-handed approach to social policy — nor the vast bureaucracy that still enforces family planning laws.

For more than three decades, China enforced its “one child” policy harshly, imposing fines and in some cases abortions and sterilizations. The government only relented in 2016 after experts anticipated the demographic issues that the country is now facing.

Virtually all families can now have two children, but the anticipated baby boom did not materialize. In the last two years, births have dropped precipitously, falling by 12 percent in 2018. The trend has prompted increasingly dire warnings that China faces a graying population and a dwindling work force to support it in the decades ahead.

The debate at the congress might signal changes in the months ahead. Some of the proposals could serve as trial balloons to gauge or shape public sentiment, especially on such sensitive issues as marriage and gender equality.

The proposal that has generated the most attention outside the Great Hall of the People, where the congress is being held, would remove legal restrictions on children born out of wedlock. While Chinese law nominally gives children of single mothers the same rights as others, the mothers can face fines or other penalties.

In many provinces, for example, a child can only receive a residence permit — known as a hukou — if their parents’ marriage was registered. Others require single parents to pay a “social maintenance” fee to cover the cost of public services a child receives — essentially a tax. There have been cases where single mothers have been fired from their jobs, the Chinese news outlet Caixin noted last month in a survey of regional policies.

The National People’s Congress is typically a staid affair to aggrandize Communist
Party rule, but this year it has produced a flurry of proposals to address a looming
demographic crisis caused by the country’s sharply declining birthrate.
CreditAndy Wong/Associated Press

In a conservative society like China’s, single mothers remain stigmatized, though perhaps less so than before. A change in the law could also affect single women who choose to have children on their own through artificial insemination — either in China or abroad. Ms. Huang’s proposal would remove all the legal constraints on the practice.

“Giving a hukou to children born out of wedlock is not to encourage unmarried childbearing,” she said in a video interview on a Chinese website, NetEase, “but to provide them with the protection of their rights.”

An enthusiastic supporter is Zou Xiaoqi, an accountant in Shanghai who gave birth two years ago to a son. She was 41, unmarried and not previously inclined to have a child when she became pregnant. “I didn’t used to particularly like children,” she said, “but I felt I couldn’t give him up.”

While pregnant, she discovered that the local authorities would not provide her maternity benefits, which included the cost of prenatal care and her salary during six months of leave. She sued the local family planning council and the social services department, but ultimately lost.

“Stigmatization is still quite powerful, especially in some smaller cities or rural areas,” she said. “These mothers do not have the courage to fight for their own rights,” she said, referring to unwed mothers.

While the largely ceremonial legislature ultimately ratifies new laws, the government ministries themselves draft them and submit them to the deputies for approval, often after months or years of consideration. It remains to be seen which, if any, of the proposals the government will take up. Ms. Huang, for example, has raised her proposals before without success.

Other proposals have focused on offering incentives to families with children — through tax breaks, subsidies or greater government spending on schools and services.

Yao Jinbo, the chief executive officer of 58.com, an online consumer retail site, proposed increasing living allowances for families that choose to have a second child.

Another executive, Ding Lieming of Betta Pharmaceuticals, proposed lowering the legal age for marriage to 20 for men and 18 for women, from 22 and 20 today. At least two delegates suggested laws to expand paternity leave — “to encourage fathers to share family responsibilities,” as one of them, Ke Jianhua, put it.

Premier Li Keqiang, who opened the congress with a lengthy work report, pledged that the government would “move faster” to develop child-care services and early education, though he made no specific proposals.

He also pledged to end discrimination in the workplace, especially that facing mothers, who can lose their jobs when pregnant or on maternity leave. His remarks echoed a directive issued in February by nine government ministries and agencies prohibiting employers from asking job applicants about their marital or childbearing status.

“We will resolutely protect against and stop gender and identity discrimination in employment,” he said.

(Source: NYT)

Indian population is growing much faster in the north – and the south is paying the price

The disparity in the rate of population growth could reshape the country politically, economically and culturally.

That India has a population problem is a truism every schoolchild learns. It was the first country in the world to adopt family planning, back in 1952. Yet, the problem persists: India is expected to surpass China as the most populous country on the planet by 2024, an incredible overtake given that in 1950, China’s population was one and a half times more than India’s.

This overarching narrative of India’s population explosion, however, becomes complicated as one zooms in. West Bengal’s fertility rate – the average number of children a woman would have in a given population – is lower than that of Norway, a nation worried about its social welfare system being stretched by an ageing population. Japan’s fertility rate of 1.5 is so low that the country is facing a socio-economic crisis. Yet, according to data released by the Union government last week, Kerala’s fertility rate is nearly the same – 1.56.

Clearly, then, it makes little sense to talk of India’s population problem without discussing the vast disparities that characterise how the population is growing across states. Have a look at this map:

Most news about fertility rates tends to separate the data by religion. But given that states and not religious communities make up India’s constituent units, significant differences in population growth rates among states will affect Indian politics far more explicitly. As the map shows, there is a clear cleavage between South India and North India. The south is blue, with fertility rates lower than the replacement rate, meaning that fewer babies are being born than people are dying – a trend that would eventually result in a declining population. The north is mostly orange or red with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar – two states that together make up a quarter of India’s population – recording very high fertility rates of 2.74 and 3.41, respectively. The result: in 1951, Tamil Nadu’s population was slightly higher than Bihar’s. Six decades later, Bihar’s population is nearly 1.5 times Tamil Nadu’s. Madhya Pradesh in 1951 had 37% more people than Kerala; in 2011, it had 217% as many.

Question of representation

The direct effect of such significant changes in population will be on the representation of states in Parliament. In other federal polities such as the United States, methods to decide seats in the federal legislature have often been torturous. In 1787, for example, the US went so far as to institute the odious practice of counting each African-American slave as three-fifths of a White person – known to history as the “Three-Fifths Compromise” – to get states with competing interests to agree to a formula for deciding the number of seats in one house of the federal legislature. In the other house, each state, no matter its size or population, is represented by two members. The US has thus ignored the principle of one-man-one-vote in order to get its union working.

India has had to make its own adjustments in order to keep big and small states in the same boat. In 1976, Parliament – then under the Emergency – passed a constitutional amendment that froze the number of seats each state had in Parliament as per the 1971 Census. The freeze was to end in 2000. But because it was so expedient, Parliament, in 2001, extended it till 2026. Thus, until 2026, Parliament’s seat composition will essentially represent a population snapshot taken more than 50 years ago.

The freeze has meant that the Hindi-speaking states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which have outstripped many other sates in population growth since the freeze, have not seen their seats in Parliament increase as they should have. Like the compromises to constitute the US Congress, this has weakened the principle of one-man-one-vote in India’s Parliament. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, one Lok Sabha MP now represents 25 lakh people. In Bihar, 26 lakh. In West Bengal, however, the number drops to 22 lakh. In Tamil Nadu, it is 18 lakh and in Kerala only 17 lakh. In effect, a Malayali has more than 1.5 times the representation of a Bihari in the Lok Sabha.

India has tolerated this attenuation of the one-man-one-vote principle given the instability redistributing seats among states might cause. But considering the significant changes in population, the seats have to be redistributed. When that happens, the share of parliamentary seats of low fertility southern states will fall sharply.

The consequences for Indian politics could be significant: the country is already politically dominated by the more populous Hindi states and any change in the current distribution of seats in their favour will seal this domination. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, for example, the Bharatiya Janata Party won 51% of its seats from just four states – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. If the seats were allotted proportionate to population, this ratio would likely have been much higher.

A central government that does not reflect enough states from all corners of the Union might breed disaffection. This is especially true for southern states, which already feel neglected. They contribute much more to the Indian Union’s finances per capita than, say, Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, but get much less funding from the Centre. Nor does their financial muscle translate to political heft. For example, former Tami Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa opposed the Goods and Services Tax on the ground that it would hurt the state but was powerless to stop it given how few members of Parliament the state had.

Changing migration patterns

The vastly differing rates of fertility – paired with differences in economic growth – will also affect inter-state migration.

India has actually seen little migration across states so far, mainly because of vast cultural differences between states. For example, between 1991 and 2001, intra-state migrants were nearly five times the number of inter-state migrants.

Inter-state movement is still fairly modest considering the overall population, but it is growing fast. Compared to the 1991-2001 period, the following decade saw inter-state migration nearly double. Moreover, the influx of migrants is acutely concentrated in the southern states. From 2001 to 2011, migration into Tamil Nadu went up by 39 times. The outflux of migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the same period went up by 2.3 times and two times, respectively

Politics in the southern states has responded to this sharp uptake in migration from the north. In 2015, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu called for Telugus to have more children, comparing Andhra Pradesh with Japan. Bengaluru has seen a vigorous agitation against Hindi signage, driven by the fact that Hindi is the lingua franca of migrants to the city while older residents speak mostly Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and (Dakni) Urdu.

There are few parallels to India given that it is a multi-ethnic, uber-polyglot country of 1.3 billion people. China is the closest and migration in the Communist state is closely controlled by the state. Moreover, even in China, inter-provincial (and hence inter-ethnic) migration has led to significant tensions.

The European Union is much smaller than India but migration across the region caused tensions sharp enough to break the confederation. One of the key justifications for Brexit that was articulated by right-wing parties was migration from mainland Europe into the United Kingdom. In France, the far right captured a large share of vote in last year’s parliamentary election by opposing migration and promising to leave the European Union.

(Source: Scroll)

What goes up: Are predictions of a population crisis wrong?

Changing fertility rates challenge dystopian visions and UN projections about the future of our overcrowded planet

She is a well-educated, professional woman, working in an office tower in central Nairobi, Kenya. Because of her status and education, the price required to marry her is bound to be high. Although dowries are often now paid in cash, she expects hers will be paid in the traditional method of cows and goats, and that the wedding will take place in the village she came from.

“I’m a traditional girl,” she explains.

It could take a long time for any suitor to accumulate the capital needed to pay – or at least down-pay – her dowry. She’s fine with that.

“We [women] are getting married later,” one of her colleagues explains. “We want an education, job security, and a nice place to live… This also means that we can’t have as many kids, even if we want them.”

These remarks offer a window on one of the most compelling questions of our time: how many people will fill the Earth? The United Nations Population Division projects that numbers will swell to more than 11 billion by the end of this century, almost 4 billion more than are alive today. Where will they live? How will we feed them? How many more of us can our fragile planet withstand?

But a growing body of opinion believes the UN is wrong. We will not reach 11 billion by 2100. Instead, the human population will top out at somewhere between 8 and 9 billion around the middle of the century, and then begin to decline.

Niamey market in Niger, where the fertility rate, at 7.24, is the highest in the world. The population is set to double in 17 years. Photograph: Danita Delimont/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

Jørgen Randers, a Norwegian academic who decades ago warned of a potential global catastrophe caused by overpopulation, has changed his mind. “The world population will never reach nine billion people,” he now believes. “It will peak at 8 billion in 2040, and then decline.”

Similarly, Prof Wolfgang Lutz and his fellow demographers at Vienna’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis predict the human population will stabilise by mid-century and then start to go down.

A Deutsche Bank report has the planetary population peaking at 8.7 billion in 2055 and then declining to 8 billion by century’s end.

The UN discounts the claims of these experts, relying on the authority of experience. “We imagine that countries that currently have higher levels of fertility and lower levels of life expectancy will make progress in the future in a similar manner, at a similar speed, to what was experienced by countries in the past,” John Wilmoth, director of the UN Population Division, says. “It’s all grounded in past experience.”

But the dissident demographers think this is wrong, primarily because the UN is failing to account for an accelerating decline in fertility as a result of urbanisation. In 2007, for the first time in human history, the majority of people in the world lived in cities. Today, it’s 55%. In three decades, it will be two-thirds.

A lot happens when people move from the countryside into the city. First, a child changes from being an asset – another pair of shoulders to work in the fields – to a burden – another mouth to feed.

Even more important, a woman who moves to a city has greater access to media, to schools, to other women. She demands greater autonomy. And many women who are able to exercise control over their own bodies decide to have fewer children.

 Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s fertility rate has fallen from 6.21 in 1960 to 1.73. Photograph: Ingo Roesler/Getty Images

“The brain is the most important reproductive organ,” Lutz asserts. “Once a woman is socialised to have an education and a career, she is socialised to have a smaller family. There’s no going back.”

Religious and familial pressures to settle down and make babies also recede in the city; friends and co-workers, who are largely indifferent to one another’s reproductive choices, become more important.

Already, almost two dozen countries are getting smaller every year, from Poland to Cuba to Japan, which lost almost 450,000 people in 2018. In these countries, women have fewer than the 2.1 babies that they must produce, on average, for a population to remain stable. The population decline would be even steeper were it not for steadily increasing life expectancy.

The fertility rate in the UK is 1.7. Most population growth in the UK today is the result of international immigration, according to the Office of National Statistics. Without immigrants, Great Britain would eventually enter an era of population decline.

More old people and fewer young people place an increased strain on society’s ability to generate the wealth and taxes needed to fund, among other things, healthcare for the old.

 As people move to cities, marginal farmland reverts to bush, a natural carbon sink and a boon to wildlife
The really big news, however, is found in the large countries of the developing world, where the great majority of people live. There, declines in birth rates have been simply astonishing. China, the world’s largest country, has a fertility rate of 1.5, lower than Britain’s. India, soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, is at the replacement rate of 2.1 and falling. Brazil, the fifth most populous country, has a fertility rate of 1.8.

Africa remains the cradle of overpopulation, with fertility rates far above replacement. If the human population truly is heading towards 11 billion people, as the UN predicts, then the African story in this century will be grim; the continent will remain largely poor and rural. Women will be forced to have child after child, swelling the numbers of humanity in the one place on Earth that can least easily sustain them.

But this is far too pessimistic a prognosis. Parts of Africa are making great strides in empowering women and reducing the number of children they have. Kenya is one example, though not the only one.

The horrific attack by the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab on a hotel and business complex earlier this month brought home once again the challenges facing this sub-Saharan nation of 50 million.

Only about a quarter of its people earn a salary from either a private- or public-sector employer, which is the very definition of a modern workforce. Half the population doesn’t believe it gets enough to eat and about a third reports sometimes going to bed hungry.

On the other hand, over 75% of the population have mobile device subscriptions. In the past three decades, the country’s urban population has more than doubled to 32%. And as it urbanises, Kenya’s fertility rate plummets: from 8 in 1960, according to World Bank figures, to 3.4 today, according to a new study of global fertility rates published last November in the Lancet.

Women working in a textile factory in Guangdong province, China. There were 15.2m births in China last year, down from 17.2m in 2017. Photograph: Qilai Shen/Corbis via Getty Images

Almost as many girls as boys sat last year for the exams that permit students to graduate from primary school (at the age of 14, after eight years of formal education). On average, the girls scored better.

Many Kenyan women live two lives at the same time. The first is immemorial, agricultural, subsistent and patriarchal. However in her back pocket, she has a mobile phone. And though she hasn’t told her parents yet, she’s planning to move to the city.

Elsewhere the fertility rate figures are less encouraging: Niger, 7; Mali, 6; Nigeria, 5. But even there, changes are happening: Nigeria’s fertility rate was almost seven in 1980.

Women make up 61% of the members of Rwanda’s parliament, the highest proportion of any government. The fertility rate in that country has plummeted from 8 to 4 in the past 30 years. Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest urbanising part of the world, with annual urban population increases of 4%, twice the global average.

With any luck, Africa in this century will feature urbanisation, better-educated girls and women, and falling fertility. Not everywhere, and not all at once, but in more places than not, and sooner rather than later.

Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, Japan. The country’s population shrank by a record 448,000 in 2018. Photograph: Danita Delimont/Getty Images/Gallo Images

From Malthusian predictions at global conferences to the latest dystopian offering from Hollywood, pessimists predict a future of overcrowding, scarcity, conflict and possible collapse. But the premise is probably false. We need to prepare, not for the consequences of a population boom, but a population bust. A child born this decade will probably reach middle age in a world where population growth has stalled, and may already have begun to shrink. There could be much about this world to admire. It may be cleaner, safer, quieter. Urbanisation produces a marked decrease in carbon emissions per person – people using public transport, for example, rather than travelling by car – and as people move to the city, marginal farmland reverts to bush, a natural carbon sink and a boon to wildlife.

Economically, however, things could be more challenging, as societies struggle to grow with fewer young workers and taxpayers. Automation will help, but robots don’t buy refrigerators or a smart dress for the office party. Consumption remains the bedrock of any economy.

Population decline is not a good thing or a bad thing. But it is a big thing. It’s time to look it in the eye.

(Source: The Guardian)