(Editorial) Why should we care about school closures and the housing market in Japan? Because what Japan is going through is exactly what most localities in Southside and Southwest Virginia are going through. They’re losing population. A few years ago we consulted Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. He computed that over the next decade, the number of people dying each year in the coalfields should rise to between 3,000 and 3,500— while the number of babies born will fall to about 1,700 per year.