Japan is officially shrinking. Last October's census found 19,000 fewer Japanese than the previous year; the first time, barring the catastrophic year of 1945 that the population has dropped since censuses began in 1920.
The peak population figure of 127.75 million may well one day be burned into the brains of future students. By 2050 that is expected to fall to 100 million and some alarmist predictions have the last Japanese switching off the lights sometime in the next century.
Of course such doomsday scenarios seldom materialize but the shrinking population already has consequences, notably on the country's creaking pension and health systems, which face collapse under the strain of an inverted population pyramid.