Alone in Japan

A Journey to the Future

By: Tom Feiling

Narrated by: Tom Feiling

Brought to you by Penguin.

No sex. No kids. No future?

When Tom Feiling moved to Tokyo as a student in the early nineties, Japan was a beacon of the future: a rising superpower, a technology giant, and a global symbol of prosperity, civility and success. When he returned twenty-four years later, the country was still a sign of things to come—but, he began to realize, it was no longer a beacon. It was a warning.

This book offers a unique portrait of life in contemporary Japan, from the quiet of its furthest flung villages to the dynamism of its megacities. It tells the story of how, from the mid-seventies onwards, Japanese society unknowingly embarked on a vast, silent process of transformation that is still unfolding today. The country is still peaceful; it is still prosperous. But the population is shrinking. As things stand, it will fall by a third with each new generation.

Travelling through shrines and bars, rice fields and mango farms, coffee shops and old peoples’ homes, Feiling meets those affected by, and driving, this transformation. Through countless interviews and extensive research, he weaves together a powerful account of how and why men and women are ceasing to pair off and have kids. He reveals how sexual appetites and behaviours are both shaped by, and reshaping the evolving economy, and considers the risks – and the opportunities – of the rise in solo living in Japan, and beyond.

Clear-sighted and surprising, Alone in Japan is a portrait of love, sex and death in contemporary Japan that should provoke and engage us all. It is an electrifying portrait of a nation on the brink by one of the most original reporters working today.

© Tom Feiling 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critic reviews

A beautiful, measured meditation … This, Feiling points out, is our future too … All the more reason or us to take a close interest in what works – and doesn’t in Japan (Christopher Harding)

Alone in Japan is an excellent and humane piece of reporting … [it] gives a compelling sense of Japan today. Feiling is a sympathetic, fair-minded interviewer, and his descriptions of urban and rural Japanese life are atmospheric and evocative … A sensitive and thoughtful book