Grantee | Shizuoka University (Awarded in January 2025)
Project | Solutions for Shrinking Populations in Japan and the US
The world is getting older—and emptier. In 2024, 63 countries are now experiencing national population decline. Japan, already facing one of the steepest demographic collapses globally, is projected to shrink from 127 million in 2015 to just 88 million by 2065. Across the Pacific, rural towns in the United States are also hollowing out, with declining birthrates and an aging workforce stretching school budgets, hospital staff, and public services to their limits. For the team behind Beyond Borders: Creating Sustainable Solutions for Shrinking Populations in Japan and the US, this is more than a policy trend. It’s personal.
Led by researchers at Shizuoka University in Japan and the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, and supported by the United States-Japan Foundation (USJF), the project tackles the demographic crisis not only through data or policy papers, but through stories. Stories of communities struggling and adapting, stories of aging and resilience, stories told by those who live with the consequences of demographic decline every day.
A Cross-Border Team with Deep Personal Ties to the Issue
The project’s lead investigators each bring deep professional expertise and a profound personal connection to the work.
Kay Shimizu (USJLP 2011, 2022), a political scientist from Japan specializing in political economy, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, is part of what’s often called the “sandwich generation”: caring for both aging parents and young children. “My mom is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s... My dad just had bladder and prostate removal,” she shared. Many of Shimizu’s cohorts, more often women, are similarly “sandwiched” between these two generations, both of whom need their care and support, while they are working full-time in a job that the whole family depends on. This is not just a personal or family issue, but one of policy and implementation.
Hisayo Murakoshi (USJLP 2022, 2023), a civil law expert at Shizuoka University, also works as a grievance resolution committee member for the Shizuoka Prefectural Social Welfare Council. In her legal consultations, she has seen firsthand the unintended consequences of good intentions. She points to the growing number of facilities designed to address demographic issues, but without the necessary professional expertise to run effectively. “It is easy for new facilities to get a permit to operate,” she explains, allowing people without specialized training to run them. The result, she says, has been “communication problems where mutual understanding is difficult, and in the worst cases, even abuse.”
Masahiko Haraguchi (USJLP 2022, 2023), originally from Fukuoka and now in Boston at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, researches disaster response and has volunteered in post-earthquake recovery zones. While professionally grounded in emergency resilience, he speaks candidly about his own family’s fragility. “I’m overseas, so I’m worried about what to do when my parents’ health declines in the future.”
From left: Kay, Hisayo, and Masa
And then there’s Sarah Sieloff (USJLP 2022, 2023), an urban planner in Seattle, who brings an architectural and spatial perspective to the issue. She asks: How can neighborhoods adapt to shrinking populations and reduced tax bases while remaining livable?
These researchers, all Fellows of the United States-Japan Leadership Program (USJLP), represent diverse academic fields—political science, law, public health, and urban planning. They share a profound sense of urgency, stemming from both their personal experiences with demographic issues and the connections forged through their shared backgrounds and professional insights. Explains Masa, through USJLP, “we are connected with various people across different fields, and we share the same concerns. From this vantage point, we can approach a single issue from various perspectives. The ability to tackle such a significant issue from the perspective of a wide range of professions is a major strength, and the fact that USJLP brings together specialists from both Japan and the U.S. is a huge advantage that sets it apart from others."
Why Shizuoka and Pittsburgh?
While Tokyo and Washington, D.C. may dominate headlines, the demographic crisis is unfolding most intensely at the regional level. That’s why this collaboration between Shizuoka University and the University of Pittsburgh is so vital.
Shizuoka’s Department of Law is known in Japan for its practical engagement with local communities and for adopting interdisciplinary approaches. Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets offers robust experience and expertise in public policy, particularly around local governance and inequality. These two institutions are not only strategically located; they reflect the project’s emphasis on bridging global insight with local knowledge.
From Problem to Approach
Like many engaged scholars, the Beyond Borders team is seeking not just to do research, but to ensure that its results reach a wide range of stakeholders: policymakers, practitioners, and the public. At the core of Beyond Borders is a belief that storytelling is strategy. The project is producing a podcast series and YouTube video interviews with community leaders, researchers, and policymakers from both countries: narrative bridges meant to reach across geography, language, and political systems. Particularly featured in this series are USJLP Fellows, some of the brightest young leaders in both Japan and the U.S.
To bring these stories to life, the team knew they had to move beyond academic conferences and white papers. One way to do that, through video, was a new challenge. “Frankly, we are all very amateurs when it comes to videography,” Kay noted about their entry into the world of media production. “When we started, we were well versed in the key issues, but we were not equally skilled at videography.” But what they lacked in technical training, they made up for in clarity of purpose.
What the Grant Made Possible
The USJF grant gave the team the flexibility to experiment with this approach. It allowed them to film interviews with U.S.-Japan Leadership Program (USJLP) members, conduct podcasts with policymakers, and share these stories widely. It also covered technical costs like hiring a videographer, renting equipment, and travel expenses to record together in person at events like the USJLP retreat in Kyoto.
They also emphasized the grant’s rare bilateral scope. “There are not so many funding schemes that financially support collaboration between Japan and the U.S., supporting both sides. It’s a great thing,” said Masa.
Innovation Through Media—and a Network of Changemakers
“The near-term hope,” Kay explained, “is that we get to tell as many stories as possible, especially from those who are doing great work within the USJLP community.” By using the USJLP network, now over 550 members strong, including individuals in the U.S. Congress and the Japanese Diet, the team hopes to influence policy “in a more intimate way.”
Each recording is a snapshot of how aging and depopulation are affecting communities across both nations, from rural Japan to midwestern America, and how people are trying to respond, whether through legal reform, nonprofit work, or urban revitalization. As Masa explains, the goal is “not just to promote the voices of academics or policymakers, but also those actually trying to make change on the ground—if we can capture those, and view them from a perspective that speaks across cultures and countries, that would be ideal.”
It’s here that Hisayo sees another major challenge: though good practices are identified locally, they rarely translate upward. “Even if we identify one municipality that is doing a great job, it's not reflected in national policy,” she notes. While there are strong horizontal connections among local governments, she believes “a different approach is needed to bridge the national and local levels.” Without that bridge, she warns, “frontline workers are exhausted and keep quitting,” jeopardizing even well-designed national initiatives. These are exactly the kinds of local realities the Beyond Borders team aims to document and share.
To reach broad audiences, the team is designing a digital dissemination strategy that includes a public website with embedded media and interviews, a four-episode podcast series on major platforms, social media promotion, and integration with the USJLP network and two in-person workshops: one in Tokyo (Spring 2026), one in Pittsburgh (Spring 2027).
A New Narrative for a Shrinking Future
The team is clear: this project is only the beginning. “Mutual learning from both countries” is one of their aims, Masa explains, especially when it comes to lessons from the more active U.S. nonprofit sector. He adds that it’s not just about aging and birthrates—it’s about “how to take care of diverse populations in the community.” Kay, too, sees the long-term potential: “Our moonshot is to ignite ideas among people who otherwise would not have gotten up to do something to also forge collaborations.”
The challenges of depopulation are daunting. But the Beyond Borders team is showing that the solutions don’t have to be. When storytelling meets strategy, and collaboration crosses borders, decline doesn’t have to mean collapse. It can be the start of something new.
