The darker side of that heartening picture of longevity is Japan's shrinking birth rate, which at 1.4 per woman is the second-lowest in the rich world, after South Korea's. From the start of the Meiji period in 1868 Japan's population rose for about 70 years. During that time Japan cast off its isolationist feudal system, opened its borders and started its headlong rush to industrialisation. Then, in the 1950s, fertility started to plummet. Since the 1980s, when the birth rate fell below 1.5 children per woman, Japan has, in effect, had a one-child policy—though, unlike in China, it was self-imposed.

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