Demographic train wreck: Will Japan throw its old people on the tracks?

OPINION:

It didn’t take long to start heading where no civilized people should go. A Japanese professor at Yale is talking about euthanasia for his country’s growing population of older adults.

One-third of Japanese are over 65. One in 5 live alone. More than 30,000 die alone each year. A small industry has sprung up to remove their remains.

Japan’s elderly crisis is a consequence of its demographic crisis. The nation has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates — an average of 1.3 children per woman, with 2.1 needed to maintain population stability.

In 2022, its population declined by 800,000. It’s projected to fall an additional 30% by 2045. Back in the 1980s, Japan’s economy seemed invincible, and we were all learning Japanese business techniques. It worked for a while. In 1990, the nation’s gross domestic product grew 4.9%. By 2019, this growth had slowed to 0.3%. There aren’t enough young workers to keep the economy growing and pay social benefits to care for the aged.

In such a situation, ice floes look increasingly inviting. Professor Yusuke Narita, who is 38, told The New York Times in a Feb. 12 interview: “I feel like the solution is pretty clear. In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass seppuku of the elderly?”

And it needn’t necessarily be voluntary. “The possibility of making it mandatory in the future will come up in the discussion,” the professor remarked.

Mr. Narita has a huge social media following. Some Japanese lawmakers are saying he’s creating the conditions for a much-needed discussion. “There is criticism that older people are receiving too much pension money and young people are supporting all of the old people,” a leading member of the Diet says.

Solutions — other than seppuku?

In a Jan. 23 policy address, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that “it’s now or never” for addressing the nation’s demographic tailspin. He wants to double child-related spending, including more for day care and childrearing support — the sort of unimaginative solutions that politicians on the left and right favor.

But Japan also has a low marriage rate, a precursor of a low birthrate. Will the government set up Vegas-style wedding chapels where couples can be united by Elvis impersonators? Can young couples be bribed to have children?

Nippon isn’t alone. After decades of its ruinous one-child policy, China faces its own demographic disaster. In 2022, for the first time since the mass starvation of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, China lost a population of 850,000 from the previous year. And it will only get worse. China’s population is expected to decline by 100 million by 2050 and 600 million by the end of the century.

Some China watchers say Chinese President Xi Jinping is panicking over his nation’s coming population collapse, which may force him to try to achieve his territorial ambitions while he still has the military muscle.

Ailing Asian dragons are at the forefront of what could be the great plague of the 21st century. But the West can’t afford to be complacent. America’s fertility rate has fallen to 1.6. Over the past decade, fewer babies have been born each year — the first time that’s happened since we began keeping records.

East and West, all of us suffer from the same ailment. In each generation, fewer are marrying, and those who do aren’t having enough children.

We live in an anti-child culture driven by the myths of climate change and overpopulation and good old-fashioned misogyny.

James Cameron, director of the noble-savage Avatar movies, told Time magazine that he can “relate to Thanos,” the villain in Marvel’s Infinity Wars, who wants to wipe out half of all life in the universe, in the belief that population growth is unsustainable.

I keep thinking of another work of fiction — “The Children of Men,” a dystopian novel set in Britain, where a worldwide plague of infertility leads to forced euthanasia. In ceremonies called Quietus, the old are towed offshore on barges that are sunk, and the people drown. Those who survive to reach the shore are clubbed to death.

Are such horrors to mark the end of civilization? The answer isn’t a change of policy but a change of heart. We must return to a culture of life — one that doesn’t sacrifice the vulnerable on either end of life’s spectrum but treats each as a gift from God.

Those with faith in the future have children. Those who don’t don’t. Where does faith in the future come from? It comes from faith in a higher power.

• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.