AP Photo

As the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings got under way in Tokyo last week, Japanese leaders had to confront an unfolding demographic disaster. Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research recently forecast that by 2060, the country will have lost nearly one-third of its 2010 population of 128 million, and just half of this smaller population will be between 15 and 65 years old, the most productive age group in any economy. These are the kinds of numbers usually produced by wars and epidemics, and they imply both a dramatic drop in the number of young people able to provide for their elders and a much greater debt burden for a country that is already carrying one of the world’s heaviest.