Can Shrinking Be Good for Japan? A Marxist Best Seller Makes the Case.

When Kohei Saito decided to write about “degrowth communism,” his editor was understandably skeptical. Communism is unpopular in Japan. Economic growth is gospel.

So a book arguing that Japan should view its current condition of population decline and economic stagnation not as a crisis, but as an opportunity for Marxist reinvention, sounded like a tough sell.

But sell it has. Since its release in 2020, Mr. Saito’s book “Capital in the…