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I really don't see a way out for Japan that's not immigration. It might lead to social upheaval, but it sounds like that kind of change is sorely needed. A well

• Leavethebugin 10y ago
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Japan could simply incentivize its population to marry, have kids, etc. Why is your first thought "necessary societal upheaval" through immigration? Reminds me of a Karl I read about.
• thevardanian 10y ago
  Until at what point? Eventually the entire world is going to have to face a demographic change in the form of population reduction considering the whole 9 billion+ thing. You can't just continue to import more people from abroad and believe that it's a long term solution. There's also a case to be made for culture, and preservation of unique ethnicity.
  • omegaworks 10y ago
    >There's also a case to be made for culture, and preservation of unique ethnicity. These are two different things. Make the case for the latter.
    • drdeca 10y ago
      I'm not making the claim in question, but I thought it might be interesting to try to give a not-obviously-completely-wrong line of reasoning for why a /variation/ of the claim could be plausible. Could there be some advantage in having multiple populations with some positive and non-negligible but still not super high amount of mixing, over having a single population which, uh, mixes with itself "uniformly" ? Like, what if random genetic variation over time in the different groups going in "different directions" but always mixing with the others a bit might allow for more diversity of things being "tried" than in the single group, and maybe this would result in "good ideas" being "tried"/"discovered" more often, and which could then spread to the other groups. The "good ideas" would of course spread to the other groups more slowly than if it was all in one group, but maybe there could be some level of mixing where an improvement in the rate of "good ideas" being "found" was enough to outweigh the cost of "good ideas" taking longer to spread to different groups, so that all the groups benefit? HOWEVER: note that I am not advocating making any decisions based on this argument. Even if such a level of mixing/not-mixing exists which would be better than having it all be one group, that doesn't mean that that level of mixing is less mixing than would happen if this argument were not considered, so this argument does not mean decreasing mixing would be good. If the level of (genetic) mixing has an impact at all (I don't know if it does), it seems equally possible that the optimal level is greater than the current level. (Maybe if the level of mixing were "too low", then the mixing would become less effective? In the extreme (unrealistic) case, if the different groups became almost unable to mix, as a result of mixing too rarely, that might be very bad, because then "good ideas" couldn't spread from group to group?) And even if some levels of mixing would result in better results (e.g. in health) over time than others, and even if a different level were better than the level that would be the result if no one tried to influence this level, that doesn't mean it would be good to try to influence the level towards that "better" level. Attempting to influence that level might be e.g. dehumanizing or un-virtuous, or bad for other reasons. I want to make it very clear that I'm just talking about this as an intellectual exercise, and am not advocating any actions based on this argument. These lines of reasoning were ignoring the fact that the groups being considered are people, and really, the fact that these people are /people/ makes things relating to that much more important than any of the other considerations, and when they conflict, the fact that these are /people/ takes priority over any concerns about like, "gene flow" or whatever. If you are concerned that the ideas in this comment might be repeated in harmful ways I am willing to delete this comment upon request, as long as this website lets me do that.
      • hx87 10y ago
        Nation-states, at least large ones such as Japan and the United States, might not be the best level to apply a "diversity without, uniformity within" policy though. It probably makes more sense to control mixing at the city or county/prefecture level.
  • mkaziz 10y ago
    Addressing your first point: the problem is that they're stagnating /now/. They don't have the means or will or resources to deal with their problems. There's not enough labour to support the elderly population. I'm sure they can decrease inflow at an appropriate time, but for now, they need fresh blood and fresh ideas.
    • thevardanian 10y ago
      They are "stagnating now" but the long term problem isn't solved even with immigrants. So the point is that humanity itself needs to find a sustainable solution. They definitely have the resources to deal with their problems, they just don't have the labour to utilize those resources. For example migrant labor is definitely a solution that Japan is working on.
• gozur88 10y ago
  A way out of what?
  • ProfessorLayton 10y ago
    The collapse of the Japanese population, and with it, its economy, education system, and way of life?
    • grillvogel 10y ago
      if you want to collapse the japanese way of life then opening up immigration is probably the fastest way to do that.
      • mkaziz 10y ago
        Immigration is not all or nothing. You can allow in a set number of immigrants a year - enough to inject new ideas but not enough to drown out Japanese culture. They're your borders, no one's stopping you.
    • gozur88 10y ago
      Japan's GDP per capita, which is IMO the only real measure of wealth, ranks the country at 37, above Finland and France. The education system, as the article points out, is underfunded not because they don't have the money, but because they're spending it on other things. And one sure method to destroying your way of life is to let a bunch of people in who are there for the money and aren't particularly interested in your way of life. If you're a Japanese person in Japan and you don't want to live in another country, why would you want other countries to live with you? Japan is a resource-poor country without much arable land. They could stand to have a smaller population. From what I can see the only real downside to a smaller population is military power, and in the age of nuclear weapons I'm not sure how much it matters, particularly for an island nation.
      • csa 10y ago
        Hmmmm.... you make a prima facie good argument, but I'm not really convinced. While Japan may not presently be gutted in terms of GDP, I wonder if we are witnessing the slow rotting from inside right now. The older generations are demanding to be supported by the younger generation in a number of ways, but they are not giving the younger folks the means to do so via decent-paying jobs and jobs that are stable enough to encourage the start of a family (i.e., future generations). Right now Japan is printing money hand over fist to try to make something -- anything -- happen economically. I don't see that it's working, and I wonder how long they can keep doing this before they take a hit on the economic side (GDP or otherwise). If Japan can make it 25-30 years with something like their current GDP, then they will be fine -- their population will have shrunk, and there will be no big bubble on the top of their population by age pyramid. That said, think their economy will take a huge hit a some point in that timeframe. Do you see much positive hope on the economic side moving forward?
• csa 10y ago
  I believe your hypothesis is correct, but I think the likelihood of significant levels of immigration is very low. The reason is that while Japan tends to treat "westerners" quite favorably, it does not treat folks from developing countries nearly as well. Japan is inviting many immigrants from developing counties -- ethnic Japanese from Brazil, undergrad and grad students from a variety of countries, laborers from a few low-cost Asian countries -- but this hasn't really had any positive long-term effects that I could see in terms of immigration. One problem is that these folks are treated like third-class citizens in their day-to-day lives (pay, prestige, news coverage, social treatment, etc.). This makes them feel not terribly welcome and sometimes a little bit scared (e.g., of being blamed with little recourse for a wrongdoing that a fellow countryman committed). As a result of this treatment, many of the folks from these developing countries just aim for a money grab before they return to their country with a decent pile of f u money. While many Japanese people I know and have known are interested in different cultures, they do not seem terribly interested in folding these cultures into Japanese culture melting pot-style. As such, I doubt that immigration will move the needle in terms of being a source of change in Japanese. My only hope is that the youth of Japan get frustrated enough to have a 1960s-style social revolution that the US experienced (although focusing on slightly different vectors). Source: Me. I was a professor in Japan in the past. I left because I witnessed the beginning of the universities failing (largely due to a massive lack of leadership), and I wanted to get out while the getting was good.
  • flamedoge 10y ago
    yes, and maybe immigration could actually be a good thing by creating problems to solve... a circular logic, but it may help unravel centuries of mono-culture and its idiosyncrasies such as mistrust and racism.
    • grillvogel 10y ago
      so all japan needs to do is completely destroy their own culture, its so simple now
      • ue_ 10y ago
• hkmurakami 10y ago
  They have a massive untapped reserve workforce in women that they're completely inept at incentivizing and mobilizing.
• DashRattlesnake 10y ago
  > I really don't see a way out for Japan that's not immigration. That's a pretty small-minded and dogmatic statement; it basically amounts to "copy US policy, it's the only way." At some point, someone in the world is going to actually have to solve the problem of stagnant or declining populations, without copping out and just importing new populations from elsewhere.
  • akhilcacharya 10y ago
    Well, that "US way" has worked better than every other developed country in that respect, why not adopt it?
    • bionsuba 10y ago
      We do not live in a one variable world. You can't ascribe the position of the US solely to its immigration policies. Especially since it's impossible to correlate immigration trends in recent years in the US to economic trends.
    • grillvogel 10y ago
      japanese culture predates "the US way" by thousands of years.
      • astrange 10y ago
        Modern Japan was founded in 1868 and then destroyed and rebuilt again in WW2. The people have been there that long, but the country and culture haven't.
        • grillvogel 10y ago
          i dont even know where to begin with how wrong this is. what culture is something like Todai-Ji a part of? since japan was apparently invented in 1868
          • 10y ago
• pottersbasilisk 10y ago
  No, it seems they have decided they prefer robots to immigrants. It actually makes more sense with all the talk about the ai revolution.
  • astrange 10y ago
    It is much easier to immigrate into Japan than the US. Well, only if you can take a pay cut.
• deleted 10y ago
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• hx87 10y ago
  Finishing the gender role revolution (i.e. men also take care of home and the kids, not getting drunk with coworkers every night) and ensuring that income security for the younger generations is at least as good as for the older generations would go a long way even without immigration.
  • csa 10y ago
    I think most people who do not live in Japan would be very surprised at how far this "revolution" has progressed. The problem is that Japan's older generations, Japan Inc in particular, have given these folks the collective middle finger (e.g., no stable and/or prestigious jobs for these folks). You're right that income security (and status security, imho) would go a long way towards addressing the problem. That said, that digs much deeper into Japanese social issues -- for example, small business owners (e.g., small restaurant/bar owners, consultants, tech entrepreneurs, etc.) are often perceived as having lower social status than salarymen even though they sometimes make bucket loads more money. Folks in lower prestige careers have a harder time getting married, getting loans, moving into good neighborhoods, etc. As such, the men who embrace the revolution are ipso facto marginalized in society. Once Japan can embrace more individualistic careers more favorably, then I think their economy will be able to move forward more aggressively, and the "revolution" folks will have a more prominent and visible role in society.
• edblarney 10y ago
  'The only way for Japan to progress is to abolish Japanese culture in favour of multiculturalism'. ... is how many people in the other parts of the world would view that position. Maybe it's hard to understand for 'New World' people, who don't really have a sense of their own ethnicity, but it's very different elsewhere. 'Japan' is not so much a 'nationality' in the modern, Western sense. 'Japan' is the place where the 'Japanese' live. The 'nation' of Japan is a legal construct around an ethnic group. While I agree some degree of openness will definitely help the 'GDP' and on some other measures, it's important to grasp that other people will see it differently. In new 'New World' - we generally focus on culturally secular measures, such as 'the GDP' i.e. a benchmark for the economy, which 'helps everyone' - and it avoids difficult socio-cultural arguments. But almost everywhere else it's not like that. I live in Quebec - and the Quebecois are an 'ethnic group' - and so politics here is totally different. We have state-sponsored child care for example - partly due to the very socialist political perspective, but partly because of the coherence of the community: it's really easy to get others to grasp the social benefits. They naturally seem themselves as part of a community, at least more so than the Anglo universe.
  • rtpg 10y ago
    No culture has escaped appropriation and mixing, especially not Japan. So much of modern Japanese life has been molded by the American occupation. Why do you think more non-Japanese people in the country means the end of Japanese culture? I know many foreigners who live long-term in Japan and have absorbed many ways of working in the society. Why do you think they stay? Ultimiately, the base belief behind the anti-multicuturalism position is that culture cannot/will not be learned. Think about the trope of all the people moving to the US for the American Dream. Have they not accepted American culture? People move place for reasons beyond economics. I think your example is more a case of the Protestant work ethic coming into play (people should help themselves)
    • edblarney 10y ago
      " So much of modern Japanese life has been molded by the American occupation." Very true. But it's also fundamentally different than if the American influence were to have come from 10 or 20 million actual Americans living in Japan. "Have they not accepted American culture?" America does not have a culture in the classical sense of the term, or to be more fair - it's a new kind of culture. Ergo - there is a 'lot less to accept'. In America, you can 'do as you please' so long as you're not out go hurt anyone. In Japan, there are a myriad of rules, spoken and unspoken, that one must adhere to. It's easy for immigrants to 'get along' in the New World. It'd be exceedingly hard to do so in places with more established classical culture. This can be seen in Europe: they are very much intellectually and political open to newcomers, and yet have a really, really hard time integrating them. There are dangerous, 'no go' zones in Sweden. There are zero 'no go' or dangerous places here in Canada (or at least not based on migrant residence), where we have a lot more immigrants than Sweden. In Canada we don't have our own language, customs, no cuisine, few social expectations other than fairly secular ones: go to school, get a job, be good, pay your taxes.
• codedokode 10y ago
  Is immigration related to education quality? And people with good skills would rather immigrate to places like California because the salaries are higher there. Also japanese language (writing and reading) is very difficult for foreigners because one has to learn thousands of kanji characters.
• solidsnack9000 10y ago
  Japan's policy problems seem to be (a) underinvestment in people, (b) poor labor policy leading to over work and (c) population decline due to people's difficulties facing such an environment. How does immigration help? Say some people immigrate next year. They stick around. They become Japanese. Their children are (a) trained in the Japanese way and (b) find themselves subject to the same labor policy as other Japanese. What has changed?
• michaelbuddy 10y ago
  it WILL lead to social upheaval. People calling for massive immigration to Japan to "change things" is ludicrous. "oh you aren't good enough, we need to flood your land with unfamiliar people" so you can change to fit x standard. Absurd and racist.