As the global fertility crisis deepens, the world keeps looking for a convenient explanation. Housing prices, perhaps. Feckless millennials, the Peter Pan generation that never grew up. Too few rights for women or, depending on who you ask, too many. Everyone seems to have a take.

There may be lessons to be learned from the first nation to tackle this crisis. Yet we often seem determined not to learn them. That was my takeaway from "Alone in Japan," a new book by British author Tom Feiling that seeks to examine and explain why it is the poster child for declining births.

Feiling, who lived in Japan for a few years in the early 1990s and then returned in the late 2010s, travels the country observing its aging society. It may no longer be unique but it’s worthy of examination, with over twice as many deaths as births.

© The Japan Times