Desperately seeking young people

MIEKO TERADA moved to Tama in 1976, at about the same time as everyone else there. Back then, the fast-growing city in Tokyo’s suburban fringe was busy with young married couples and children. These days, however, the strip of shops where Ms Terada runs a café is deathly quiet, her clientele elderly. The people of Tama and their apartments are all growing old and decrepit at the same time, she says.

In the mid-1990s Japan had a smaller proportion of over-65s than Britain or Germany. Thanks to an ultra-low birth rate, admirable longevity and a stingy immigration policy, it is now by far the oldest country in the OECD. And senescence is spreading to new areas. Many rural Japanese villages have been old for years, because young people have left them for cities. Now the suburbs are greying, too.