Alone in Japan is a vivid and wide-ranging portrait of love, work, sex and death in contemporary Japan and the warning it holds for the rest of us
When I moved to Tokyo as a student in the nineties, Japan was a beacon of the future: an economic miracle, a technology giant, and a global symbol of prosperity, civility and success. When I returned twenty-four years later, the country was still a sign of things to come but this time it was a warning: Japan's population is shrinking rapidly, falling by a third with each new generation, and the UK and other rich nations are going on the same path.
This book offers a unique portrait of life in contemporary Japan, from the quiet of its furthest flung villages to the dynamism of its megacities. Travelling through shrines and bars, rice fields and mango farms, coffee shops and old peoples homes, I meet those affected by, and driving, this transformation. Through countless interviews and extensive research, Iweave together a powerful account of how and why men and women are ceasing to pair off and have kids. Tracing the causes and effects through every area of Japanese life, I reveal how technology, cities and sexual appetites are both shaped by and reshaping the economy, and consider the risks and the opportunities of the rise in solo living in Japan, and beyond.
Clear-sighted and surprising, Alone in Japan is an electrifying portrait of a nation on the brink.
Alone in Japan: the story of the book in twenty-one photos
Click on an image to see a large version
Alone in Japan: the story of the book in twenty-one photos
In the mountains near Okamibuchi, Hiroshima prefecture. Five decades ago, Paul Erlich's book The Population Bomb sparked global fears of 'mass starvation' on a 'dying planet' because of overpopulation. In 2024, however, the UN revised its population estimates, and now expects the population of the world to peak at about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s before starting to fall.
A hearse in Hirado, Nagasaki prefecture. The population of Japan has been falling since 2011, and the speed of decline accelerates with every passing year. The population shrank by 644,000 in 2021, 730,000 in 2022 and 837,000 in 2023. That is the equivalent of losing a city the size of Glasgow (or San Francisco) every year.
The ancient Shinto shrine on the tiny subtropical island of Aoshima. It is listed in Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan), the second-oldest book of classical Japanese history, as answering the prayers for happiness of couples engaged to be married. At the peak of the island's popularity in 1974, over a third of Japan's newlyweds honeymooned in the area and most visited the shrine.
Lake Towada in Aomori prefecture. In 2022, Japan registered just 4.1 new marriages per 1,000 inhabitants, a huge drop from the 10 per 1,000 it registered in 1970. In Japan, at least, no marriage means no children. Very few people have kids outside marriage, and even cohabiting between unmarried couples is dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.
Sign in a souvenir shop at Lake Towada, Aomori prefecture. According to a survey conducted by the NIPSSR in 2021, growing numbers of single men and women regard relationships as more trouble than they're worth. One in three singletons said that they were not interested in having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex.
An abandoned school in Yokohama, Aomori prefecture. Children account for just 11.9 per cent of the Japanese population, the lowest proportion of any country in the world
Tokyo as seen from the top deck of the Sky Tree, the tallest building in Japan. An evolutionary psychologist might argue that spurning childbirth is an instinctive response to overcrowding. It is probably no coincidence that every developed-world country with high population density also has a low fertility rate.
Mobility scooters for sale in a car showroom in Akita City. The number of Japanese people aged 100 or over is expected to rise to 565,000 by 2067, surpassing the annual number of births for the first time. Such a steep decline in the birth rate and such a dramatic rise in the elderly population are unprecedented in world history.
Old men relaxing in a park in Tokushima. By 2070, over-65s are expected to make up 38 per cent of the population.
Cars left to rust in Tono, Iwate prefecture. Japan's national debt has grown, not because the government spends too much, but because tax revenues have halved since 1990. This is extraordinary, but hardly surprising: after three decades of economic stagnation, the pay of many workers has fallen below the income tax threshold, corporate tax revenues have dropped and the slump in land prices has hit revenue from inheritance tax.
Abandoned golf carts in Miyakicho, Saga prefecture. If a third of the population stops working and draws a pension from the age of 65, and then goes on to live to 85, their pensions are going to be prohibitively expensive for the government. If they spend the last 20 years of their lives in poor health, their medical bills will be prohibitively expensive too.
An old man killing time in Shinjuku station. 'It's not just that the elderly cost a lot of money once they start getting ill and need to be looked after,' my friend Atsushi said. 'The real problem is the terrible loneliness that many elderly people live with.
Poster warning the elderly to beware of phone scams. While Japan's reputation for having a low crime rate is well deserved, when it comes to offences like fraud and cyber-crime, it is something of a villains' playground.
An empty house in Hane, Shikoku. In 2024, Japan's Housing and Land Survey logged a record 9 million akiya (empty houses), meaning that, nationwide, 14 per cent of houses are unoccupied. That is enough to accommodate the entire population of Australia at three people per dwelling. Some forecasts predict that by 2040 the vacancy rate could be as high as 40 per cent.
A neglected road sign in the mountains of Nagano prefecture. As of 2022, 85 per cent of Japan's municipalities have a shrinking population, and the Japan Policy Council says that nearly half of them are 'at risk of extinction' by 2040.
Two chihuahuas. Given the dearth of children and the love of all things kawaii (cute), it should come as no surprise to find that Japan is the only country in the world in which pets outnumber children. In 2021, 886,000 new furry and/or fluffy family members were born in Japan, surpassing the number of babies born for the first time.
Doggie clothing in a shop window in Komazawa, Tokyo. While the countryside struggles not to be overrun by wild animals, in the cities, domestic animals are displacing infants in the nation's affections. The affection that people feel for their pets has only been amplified by the wasting away of the family, the dearth of children and the chronic loneliness that many Japanese people feel
Ishihara Foods, Miyakonojo, Miyazaki prefecture. Faced with chronic labour shortages, all kinds of businesses are counting on robots and AI to act as stand-ins for absent workers. This might look like an ordinary tractor, but it is a driverless, fully automated 'robot' tractor that uses satellite GPS to navigate its way around the fields
The hand of an early karakuriningyo, or mechanical doll. Care homes are particularly excited by advances in robotics. While they may look exciting, many robotics researchers admit that they are 50–100 years away from developing a robot with the intelligence and sensitivity required to be called 'caring'
Japanese-Bangladeshi model Rola. Foreign observers say that, by failing to embrace mass immigration, the Japanese government has brought its demographic crisis upon itself. But an embryonic multicultural society is taking shape in post-growth Japan. As of 2024, there were 3.7 million resident foreigners, comprising just over 3 per cent of the total population – small potatoes in the eyes of most Europeans, but a game-changer in a country where the population is shrinking by upwards of 700,000 people every year.
A jar of Hokkaido-made ghee. Japanese demographers estimate that by 2070 11 per cent of the Japanese population will be foreign nationals.
