Watching Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s public address last week, when he raised the alarm over Japan’s low birth rate, I was struck by his blunt forecast for the country.

If Japan is to save its society from the brink of social dysfunction over its falling birth rate, it would have to aggressively encourage its citizens to have children, Mr Kishida said, announcing that it was “now or never” for the country to correct the population decline.