In 2022, Elon Musk posted on X: "At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist. This would be a great loss for the world."
The first person to agree on disappearance of Japan would be the Japanese philosophers. The Japanese have this centuries-old notion of "mujo" (無常), meaning "nothing is forever".
From your loved ones to your wealth to your own being, everything will eventually be gone.
Sad it may sound, "mujo" is actually not a pessimistic notion. Quite contrary, it is a positive method with which you appreciate all things and live to the fullest extent possible.
With mujo underscoring the fleetingness of life since pre-modern time, it is no coincidence that the practice of seppuku - stabbing your own belly deep into your guts to commit suicide - permeated Japan through the mid 20th century. The logic goes: "If my being is finite, why not make the most elegant use of my life by dying the most honorable death in lieu of forced capitulation to the enemy, or by surrendering it to pay for my misdeed."
These ethos continue to resurface in the modern settings today, where the corporate executives and the TV stars alike regard "immediate resignation" as their most natural way to take responsibility over a scandal.
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