I wonder though. The ones running the governments, maximizing the revenues for them to spend, might want more of a population. They might need more rate payers as they borrowed (read stole) the pension contributions in excess of current pension costs over the decades, and now with more retirees, and that money they already taxed already spent, there is a shortfall they don’t want to pay back. They all want to default, and the right wing everywhere will try to in whatever ways they can first chance they get, and Japan is no exception.

The ones providing jobs likewise probably want a larger pool of desperate unemployed to keep wages down, so they don’t have to give back to workers some of which they took from to give to investors.

I wouldn’t take as gospel that we need more people, the ones telling us the way things are are the last ones we can trust, and that will follow from the west, to the far east here as Japan has the same dynamic the western nations do.