The Demographic Challenge: A Handbook about Japan

Florian Coulmas, Ph.D. (1978), is Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo. He has published widely about Japanese society and culture. His latest monograph is Population Decline and Ageing in Japan - The Social Consequences (2007). He is co-author of the Trilingual Glossary of Demographic Terminology, English-Japanese-German (Brill 2007).
Harald Conrad, Dr. rer. pol. (2000) is Associate Professor of Management, Faculty of Asia Pacific Management, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Oita, Japan. His research interests include economics and management with a focus on social security systems and human resource management. One of his ageing-related monographs is The Japanese Social Security System in Transition - An Evaluation of Current Pension Reforms (2001).
Annette Schad-Seifert, Dr. phil. (1997) is Professor of Japanese Studies, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. Her fields of research are social change, family and gender issues.
Gabriele Vogt, Dr. phil. (2002) is trained as a political scientist. She is a research fellow and deputy director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo. Her main areas of research are multi-level politics and civil society.