The Demographic Challenge

Seventy international academics, researchers, historians, business professionals, and consultants contribute 63 chapters offering documentation and analysis on the impact of population developments on contemporary Japan, and the various ways in which the Japanese as a nation are responding to the challenges of population aging. The text is the first English-language publication to provide a broad coverage of the issues pertaining to Japan's demographic change. Coverage includes the fundamentals of Japanese demographics, for the non-specialist; issues of conceptualizing aging and age, both in scholarly and popular discourse; ways that cultural institutions, activities and productions are transformed by demographic change; how political actors address Japan's population aging, the structures of the policy-making process, and specific challenges in certain policy areas; and macro- and microeconomic implications, business and management aspects, and the impact of aging on the social security system. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Florian Coulmas, Ph.D. (1978), is Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo. He has published widely about Japanese society and culture. His latest monograph is Population Decline and Ageing in Japan – TheSocial Consequences (2007). He is co-author of the Trilingual Glossary of Demographic Terminology, English-Japanese-German (Brill 2007). Harald Conrad, Dr. rer. pol. (2000) is Associate Professor of Management, Faculty of Asia Pacific Management, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Oita, Japan. His research interests include economics and management with a focus on social security systems and human resource management. One of his ageing-related monographs is The Japanese Social Security System in Transition - An Evaluation of Current Pension Reforms (2001).Annette Schad-Seifert, Dr. phil. (1997) is Professor of Japanese Studies, Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Germany. Her fields of research are social change, family and gender issues.Gabriele Vogt, Dr. phil. (2002) is trained as a political scientist. She is a research fellow and deputy director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo. Her main areas of research are multi-level politics and civil society.