Speaker: Akihiko Matsutani Japanese have been largely oblivious to these impending changes, even though the demographic writing has been on Japan's walls for decades. Japan's government, business, academia, and media are rushing to grasp the implications of the country's shrinking and aging population. Their haste is all too evident in a flurry of unfounded pronouncements and half-baked theories about Japan's social and economic prospects. The tone of public and private discourse on the subject is distinctly gloomy. In Shrinking Population Economics: Lessons from Japan (International House of Japan, 2006), author Matsutani Akihiko offers a refreshingly informed and far-reaching account of the economic and social implications of the demographic change under way in Japan. He demonstrates convincingly that demographic trends will occasion socioeconomic changes more sweeping than most pundits have predicted. Matsutani exposes the futility of widely proposed measures for forestalling population and economic shrinkage, such as encouraging Japanese families to have more children and encouraging increased immigration. He urges Japanese to instead learn to live with a smaller, older population. Most strikingly, he argues persuasively that population shrinking and aging promise to redress the great tragedy of Japan's postwar economic surge: the failure of Japan's economic growth to deliver commensurate improvement in Japan's quality of life. Matsutani joined Japan's Ministry of Finance immediately after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1970. He worked mainly in the Ministry's Budget and Securities Bureaus, where he helped to coordinate fiscal and monetary policies. He moved to academia in 1997 and earned a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2004. He is currently a professor at Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. His academic work has centered on macroeconomics, public finance, infrastructure engineering, and the economic and social implications of demographic change. Your ticket for admission to Akihiko Matsutani's BOOKNOTES presentation will be a copy of Shrinking-Population Economics: Lessons from Japan (International House of Japan, 2006) bought from Good Day Books. Paperback copies of Shrinking-Population Economics may be purchased at Good Day Books for one thousand five hundred yen (¥1500) each, tax included. |
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