Japan - one of my favourite countries - is a land of contradictions. Its cultural soft power is unparalleled, and its image abroad is of a technologically futuristic utopia, but real wages have been stagnant for two decades and, outside of the major conurbations, its population is dwindling and the average age of the Japanese citizen is rapidly increasing. Its popularity as a tourism destination is exploding, but its resistance to immigration remains one of the highest in the world despite its huge labour shortage. The problems Japan faces are shared by many other countries, especially in Europe, but nowhere else in the world are these issues more pressing and acute. Tom Feiling lived in Japan as a student in the early 1990s just after the Japanese stock market bubble burst, and returned at the end of the 2010s, a quarter of the century later. This fascinating, surprising and minatory book explores the changes this quarter-century wrought, and what they mean not just for the country but for the planet. Why has the Japanese birth rate declined so precipitously? Is the reluctance of Japanese people to get married due to the lack of economic support for childcare, or cultural reasons dating back to the Edo-period shogunate? Are the government initiatives to encourage salarymen and salarywomen to exchange the overcrowded capital for small-town rural living going to make any difference? Feiling uses both his personal experience of Japan and wider research and travel across the country to try to answer these questions, and what he discovers will broaden and temper your understanding of Japan's present, and especially, its future. Thanks to Penguin for an advance reading copy of this book.

Alone in Japan is a sharp, compassionate look at a country facing profound social change. Through travel and interviews, Tom Feiling explores Japan’s shrinking population, rising loneliness, and shifting attitudes toward relationships, offering a clear, grounded portrait of how these forces shape everyday lives. It’s serious in tone but never sensational, blending reportage and observation into a thoughtful, accessible read. For anyone interested in modern Japan or the future of aging societies, it’s concise, insightful, and quietly impactful.