Entering the post-demographic transition phase in Japan: Dynamic social changes toward new population regime

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the population of Japan began to decline, after reaching its peak of 128 million with the highest proportion of the elderly in the world. As witnessed its drastic shift to a new population regime, here we introduce the new concept of “post-demographic transitional phase” for Japan. In this paper, first, we give a characterization of the “post-demographic transitional phase,” rethinking classical theories of demographic transition. Second, we examine demographic indicators which show when and how Japan entered this new era, concluding that the shift occurred between the middle of the 1970s and the late 2000s as a process of inescapable event chain. Third, we illustrate that this shift is closely associated with the socioeconomic, cultural and even political changes prominent in its recent history. We are now faced with many difficult problems such as a rise in underemployment associating with marriage squeeze among youths, an increase in poor single households particularly among the elderly, and economic downturns and fears of a financial crisis at the national level. The study of the post-demographic transition of Japan from both theoretical and empirical aspects is imperative because the other Asian countries seem to follow the same dynamics.