Deadline: Sept. 15, 2012

1. Essay Topic
The population of Japan peaked at 127.79 million people in 2004. According to the medium-variant projection of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, by 2030 it will decrease to 115.22 million and continue falling below the 100 million level to 95.15 million by 2050. A drastic decline of a population like this in a rapid aging society is expected to have negative impact in various areas of people’s lives: Slowing the economic growth, draining the national revenue, and threatening the quality of social security systems. It can even cause a serious concern over the national security.

Moreover, population decline due to a low birth rate in an aging society is not a unique problem to Japan. It represents a concern that is coming up globally in many countries including China and European nations. Thus, the rest of the world is watching closely how Japan will effectively and appropriately cope with this issue.

We have seen a variety of proposals to keep our society of a dwindling population running: Measures to encourage people to have larger families, new business models that focus on enhancing the standards of living for aging population, reforms to the political and social security systems, and efforts to bring in manpower from overseas. However, none has proven remarkable effectiveness. Japan is facing this difficulty ahead of any other country in the world. What kind of country we should create in the future? And how can we achieve it? We solicit your suggestions and proposals that are unhampered by conventional ideas from all over the world without boundaries of age, gender or nationality.

2. Prize
One Grand Prize of 1,000,000yen
Three Prizes for Excellence of 200,000yen each

The award winners from abroad will be provided with a round trip air ticket to Tokyo, Japan to attend the award ceremony to be held on January 8, 2013.
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4. Qualification
Anyone can apply for the Essay Competition, regardless of nationality or age.

5. Language
English (4,000words) or Japanese (10,000characters). Each essay MUST BE accompanied by an essay summary of no more than 400words in English/ 1,000 Japanese characters.
6. Deadline
September 15, 2012 at 24:00 (JST)
We CANNOT accept any essays after this time. The entry page will be really congested at around the deadline time. It is recommended to apply earlier to avoid technical difficulty accessing the page.

For full details, see original post on Japan Foreign Trade Council.