> Japan is doing better than most developed societies
As far as I know no country including the depopulating Western European countries face the demographic crisis that Japan faces. Its a crisis at a totally different level.
Nah. If you subtract out the effects of immigration the likes of e.g. France are doing worse, and even if you don't believe that, South Korea is doing worse than Japan even in raw numbers.
Why would you subtract the effects of immigration. Immigration is how a lot of countries are getting out of the stranglehold in the first place.
And Japan cant even do immigration. That's the problem. Within at most 2 generations, those European immigrants' descendants will become integrated enough to their European countries - as it happened in countries that started getting immigrants much before others. For Spanish speaking countries, its much better - immigrants just fit into the society immediately - partly because a precedent/format already pre-existing, partly because Latin countries are pretty social and swiftly integrate anyone.
Compared to those, Japan is in an extremely worse position not only due to the lingering presence of the feudal society, but also xenophobia, overwork culture and various other factors
Japan is, however, unique simply in being at least 10 years ahead on the demographic curve compared to any other aging country, so they're a crystal ball of where we're all going.
Also, it's not meaningful to say "France is doing worse except for the immigrants", because the immigrants are there for good and they're having children, taking jobs, paying taxes, etc, which changes the equation for everybody else as well.
As far as I know no country including the depopulating Western European countries face the demographic crisis that Japan faces. Its a crisis at a totally different level.