It’s not defeatist, it’s demography. The replacement rate for a country is 2.1. Japan’s birth rate is 1.3. Japan fell below replacement rate in
1975. Their economy faltered in the 90s and has never recovered. Add in massive urbanization and a work culture that literally has a word for “death from overwork”… yeah, a country doesn’t bounce back from that.
Oh, but buckle up my friend, because Japan isn’t an outlier. It’s ahead of the curve for a majority of the world’s societies.