In 2014, Japan's population decreased by 270,000 from the previous year. Beginning in the 2040s, the population is poised to decline by 1 million a year. The nation has 126.89 million people today. If the current low birthrate of 1.42 continues, the population will shrink to just 50 million by the end of the century — roughly equivalent to the level 100 years ago.
But unlike Japan of the Meiji Era, the future Japan will not be a youthful country. Instead it will be the most aged country in the world, with the elderly comprising 40 percent of the total population. Moreover, some estimates indicate that if the population continues to decline at the current pace without any improvement in productivity, Japan in 2040 and onward will experience negative economic growth of about 0.1 percent on average each year.
A recently published report by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, an independent think tank of which this writer is the chairman, titled "Population Implosion: The Shock of Japan as a Country of Fifty Million" (Shinchosha, Japanese only with English translation forthcoming), describes the nation's increasingly acute population problem as the "greatest crisis in Japan's history."