Mark Steyn minces no words.

Mark Steyn presents a grim picture of Japan’s and Europe’s future in Hello Dolly, Sayonara, Japan. In his acerbic usual self, he is blunt in his assessment:

The most geriatric jurisdiction on the planet, Nippon’s rising sun has now passed into the next phase of its long sunset: net population loss. 2005 was the first year since records began with more deaths than births. The world’s other elderly societies have complicating factors: In Europe, the successor population is already in place – Islam – and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be. But Japan offers the chance to observe the demographic death spiral in its purest form. It’s a country with no immigration, no significant minorities and no desire for any: just Japs, aging and dwindling.

Unlike the Europeans, many of whom will flee their continent as Eutopia evolves into Eurabia, the Japanese are not facing ethnic strife and civil war. They could simply start breeding again. But will they? What’s easier for the governing class? Weaning a pampered population off the good life and re-teaching them the lost biological impulse or giving the Sony Corporation a license to become the Cloney Corporation?
Reporting the latest grim demographics, The Japan Times observed, almost en passant, “Japan joins Germany and Italy in the ranks of countries where a decline in population has already set in.”

Japan, Germany and Italy, eh? If the Versailles Treaty was too hard on our enemies, the World War Two settlement was kinder but lethal.