There is no use trying to hide it: the great inflection point has finally arrived. Japan’s population of traffic lights, in lagging correlation with its human population, has flipped from expansion to contraction.

Many lights, creaking and in disrepair, are now approaching the upper limits of life expectancy. Roads, especially in the countryside where population decline is more starkly visible, are emptying of traffic. So from this year, police recently told local media, more traffic lights will be decommissioned than newly installed or replaced.

Demographic forces, as we know, stop at nothing. Japan, in increasing alarm over their long-term consequences, no longer has to look far for these jabbing reminders of life-as-we-know-it change. But the timing of the traffic light inflection is significant.