The mantra since Shinzo Abe returned to office in 2012 has been about pulling Japan out of its long deflationary spiral. But that is much easier said than done when the population is ageing and shrinking more rapidly than any other. In May a think-tankpredicted that within a little more than three decades some 1,000 rural towns and villages will be largely empty of women of childbearing age. The government forecasts that Japan's overall population, currently 127m, will shrink by a third over the next 50 years (see chart). Indeed, it predicts there will be a mere 43m Japanese by 2110. The latter forecast is unscientific extrapolation-no one can possibly know what the country will look like a century from now. Still, the forecast is a measure of the government's mounting alarm, and it is hard to square with the prime minister's notions of returning Japan to national greatness. In short, demography is once again coming to the fore as a hot political issue.
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