Despite a slight uptick in the fertility rate in 2010, Japan's population just keeps on falling. The country's population decline last year was the worst since the government started keeping records in 1899.

The number of deaths minus births came to 125,700, surpassing the 100,000 threshold for the first time, according to Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. There have been more deaths than births in Japan for four years in a row now, making the country a demographic time bomb and a laboratory for the rest of the...