THAT India is about to overtake China as the world's most populous nation is the biggest demographic story of 2023. But there is a close second to the story of India's demographic ascendancy and China's population woes. This is the struggle of many nations, in Asia and Europe and elsewhere, in preventing the hollowing out of their rural areas. In the Asian region, Japan is now the epicenter of dying rural communities due to the toxic combination of its graying population and declining birth rates.

The problems of rural Japan can be summed up in one word — 'akiya,' the Japanese word for abandoned homes.