‘Alone in Japan’ travels towns in decline, talks to the people left

While Japan’s depopulation is a much discussed issue, with no shortage of statistics and analytics, journalist Tom Feiling’s book, “Alone in Japan: A Journey to the Future,” tackles the topic face to face as he returns to the country he once lived in and travels to remote parts of it. He talks to experts, recluses, singletons and other people not just in Tokyo and Osaka but also across the depopulated hinterlands across the nation.

Alone in Japan: A Journey to the Future, by Tom Feiling. 272 pages. PENGUIN, nonfiction.

In one part of the book, he is in Susaki, a town on Shikoku Island, where he finds himself being served by a robot in a family restaurant. The only other customer is a single Japanese man eager to practice English with Feiling. He laments that Japan’s economy is stagnant and its children are disappearing. Asked why he himself is single, he confesses that “life was easier that way.”