Letters to the Editor,
The Daily Yomiuri,
1-7-1 Otemachi,
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8055
I understand that Japanese politicians, bureaucrats, and statistics wonks gnash their teeth and pull out their hair about the low birthrate and the declining population. Even so, it is easily arguable that population decline is markedly beneficial, and in any event we have seen the current demographic situation coming for a long, long time - time enough for effective, smooth transition policies to be thought up and put into practice. Maybe because I am male I have a thing for size and I like numbers, especially big ones. I like to check the internet population clock daily to watch and track my country’s population growth (by 1,000 people/day, which is small but makes me feel good). But here the January 3, 2010 article “Population drops for 3rd year,” left me wondering what the current Japanese population is - the single most important piece of information in any story about the nation’s numbers and it was absent from the story. It was a significant omission in a story about population. It only spoke about the birthrate and gross numbers of births and deaths. I had to check the internet to learn the information, which is not what the newspaper wants to force me to do in this day when the print media is under threat for its survival. No need to worry about Japan’s population. It’s still plenty big, one of the largest populations in the world.