(FINANCIAL TIMES) Sometime later this month, Japan will release the first estimate of births and deaths for this year - an annual gift from the Health Ministry that arrives around Dec 25 with all the seasonal joy of a broken boiler.
For the past 13 years, this release has delivered evidence of Japan's shrinking indigenous population and its darkening demographic shadow via a series of bleak milestones. These seem all the starker for their stubborn resistance to remedy and for the cautionary road map they provide the outside world.
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