Birth rate and fertility rate are not the same, so of course I distinguish. Though to be fair I think the correct term is total fertility rate, as sometimes fertility rate is defined as birth rate.

Birth rate (technically, births/population rate) is the total number of live births per 1,000 of a population in a year. It is abysmal in Japan because the population is very old, so not many people are in age of making children.

Total fertility rate represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with current age-specific fertility rates. This rate is going up as Japan is slowly making it easier for couples to have children: more day-care facilities, and most importantly Japanese society is (slowly) becoming more tolerant to mothers going back to work.

> and most importantly Japanese society is (slowly) becoming more tolerant to mothers going back to work.

Yup, but that won't prevent Japan from going right into the demography wall within a decade or two (with serious consequences on its economy, since current workers have to pay for retired ones, in a growing deficit and a climate of increasing taxes).

Japan has a lot of overseas assets, so to some extent foreign workers will pay for Japanese retirees. It may not be enough though.

The debt of Japan is so huge (to put it in relative terms, Greece's debt is nothing compared to it) that they would need half of the developed world to cater to it.

Japanese debt is mostly to its own population, while that of Greece is foreign owned. That's a huge difference.

Not really. In the end Japanese will have to pay, in one way or another, and that will be either with huge taxation, or dramatic inflation. Or Default. No good options out there, really.

The Japanese can themselves decide which option to take, rather than being forced into one from the outside. The current elected government seems to have taken the route of inflating away the debt.

> The current elected government seems to have taken the route of inflating away the debt.

Yeah, and it's not a pretty way to go with solving the debt problem. This will result in higher prices for everyone, destroying savings and hurting in result the private sector. "Just" to save the government.

It is not to save the government, it is to save the money from the people who own the government bonds, who are mainly Japanese. It is a redistribution issue.