Low Birthrate in Japan threatens country’s future? Oh please…
A recent government symposium on Japan’s Falling Birth rate has concluded that job flexibility and increased public financial support may assist couples in deciding to have kids.
Business people, government officials and industry experts took part in the two-day meeting where many facets of this continuing problem were discussed in great detail. While contemplating the multitude of ideas of how to get Japanese couples to have babies, the meetings though fruitful in some aspects seemed to have ignored the obvious and simplistic way of helping to put a halt to a declining birthrate. Immigration!
Many of us gaijin who are married or have a child with a Japanese woman have had a hell of a time getting our proverbial feet in the door for permanent residence in the country. But further to that and perhaps worst of all, the children of these parents are often denied full Japanese citizenship even though they have a Japanese passport and live in Japan with their Japanese mother and gaijin fathers. Everyone I’ve spoken to seems to have a different experience in this regard so it’s really difficult to say for sure.
Nevertheless, the symposium deducted that the coming five years would be crucial to Japan’s efforts to halt the fall in birthrate because the baby boomer generation are starting to retire from public work.
Japan’s birthrate has declined and hit a record low of 1.25 in 2005, well below the 2.08 that is needed to maintain the population. In 2005, the 1.06 million babies born in the year were outnumbered by 1.08 million deaths.
In 2005, 47.7 percent of men and 32.6 percent of women in their early 30s were not married — compared with 37.3 percent and 19.7 percent, respectively, a decade earlier.
Of course opening the country up to immigration would help in this but so far Japanese representatives such as the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) have been looking at all other possibilities before discussing the possibility of opening its doors to even children to are haafu (50% Japanese). And so the question I would like to ask is.. Why not?
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that in ancient china if you were REALLY fat that meant you were...
omg i feel so bad for a that monkey help it some one plzzzz
A couple of comments:
November 10th, 2006 at 3:03 pm1.Having met many studious Chinese and Vietnamese students studying in Japan (and whose home countries will be the probable sources of immigrants) who genuinely want to work and live there; I’m a supporter of immigration. Immigration however, while offsetting population decline is not the solution to the low birthrate. Japan’s birthrate is simply not sustainable at its current levels, and is a problem that still needs to be addressed.
2. Japan’s METI (Ministry of Economic Trade and Industry) has been advocating immigration for sometime; Japan’s working population has been in decline since the late 1990’s and there are many sectors of the economy, namely agriculture and construction that simply don’t have enough workers. I wonder however, if Japan as a whole is truely ready for multiculturalism. Japan is still a country with a very closed mentality and can’t be expected to change overnight.
An immigrant and multiculturalistic society is an inevitable future of Japan.
In my personal opinion, it is not about whether you like it or not. It’s a problem of how you adapt and prepare for this inevitable future of the Japanese society.
There is no use in discussing whether you like this future or not. It is better to prepare as soon as possible before it is too late.
November 10th, 2006 at 3:48 pm[...] Alexpappas in Japundit discusses about the situation of falling birthrate in Japan, a simple solution is to open up immigration. Oiwan Lam [...]
November 10th, 2006 at 5:02 pmI am fascinated by the plight of Haafu, if anyone has links to stories about these people I’d really like to see ‘em.
November 10th, 2006 at 8:09 pmI know that in Tohoku (the north area of honshu) that there are many rice growers/ farmers who have a desperate need for people that they are training young gaijin who want to live in Japan.
There is a short documentary on this topic here:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/11/japan_the_slow.html
(PBS Frontline does really wicked stuff…) Anyways it talks about a little bit anyways, about the slow life and features what is becoming more and more common: Gaijin rice farmers…
November 10th, 2006 at 10:52 pmBut further to that and perhaps worst of all, the children of these parents are often denied full Japanese citizenship even though they have a Japanese passport and live in Japan with their Japanese mother and gaijin fathers.
All halfs (since 199-something?) get dual citizenship until they are 20 or so, then have to choose one or the other. There used to be a law that only if the man was Japanese was this guaranteed, though.
November 10th, 2006 at 11:24 pmThere are two options: Robots or low-skilled immigrants.
Since the problem is here now, and robots would take too long to be of an acceptable level of technology – the only option left is immigration.
Giving halfs citizenship probably wouldn’t help much would it? I’ve heard numbers of people needed everywhere from 4 million to 40. How many halfs etc. are in Japan?
Anyway…. this whole thing doesn’t really make much sense to me. It seems like low birthrates aren’t the major problem. You can’t just fix it by bringing more people into your country. Won’t that just lead to higher population densities? Isn’t Tokyo already crowded enough?
It’s too expensive to have too many kids in Japan now that there’s so many dependents (mainly old people) to look after. Maybe a whole lot of old people need to just need to eat mochi, and everyone else needs to hide the vacuum cleaners. (I’m joking!) (Well, maybe half joking…)
November 11th, 2006 at 2:05 pmWhy not?
Take a look at Europe today and ask that question again.
They decided to solve their low birthrate problem by immigration, and the result is an unassimilated, angry, and rapidly growing Muslim minority.
It is just as likely that people from Muslim east Asia would come here than Chinese–especially to do the 3K types of jobs. That’s if they wound up working at all–the rate of Muslim immigrants on welfare in some European countries is astonishingly high.
The most popular name for newborn babies in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the entire country of Belgium, and Malmo, Sweden, is Mohammed. It is #5 in England.
Check out While Europe Slept by Bruce Bower and America Alone by Mark Steyn, among some other books.
Low birthrate threatens Japan’s future. Oh please! you say? Why exactly?
It most definitely does. No country in history has ever had a birthrate as low as Japan’s (or Spain’s, Italy’s, etc…) and recovered. It’s simple arithmetic.
You might wind up with some geographical entity named Japan, but it would be questionable how Japanese it was.
November 13th, 2006 at 4:39 pmThe author of this comment failed to consider the numerous drawbacks of multiculturalism that occur today.
“ignored the obvious and simplistic way of helping to put a halt to a declining birthrate. Immigration!”
Maybe you have ignored the obvious and simplistic fact that multiculturalism damages the collective soceity as a whole because ethnic pluralism always provdes a breeding ground for inequality and conflict. Prove that multiculturalism will benefit Japan as a culture and as a soceity better than homogeneity and innovation has in previous centuries.
The majority of comments in this blog are based off of western liberal thought and are completely illogical. Ampontan’s comment was the only sensible and considerate one posted.
“An immigrant and multiculturalistic society is an inevitable future of Japan.
In my personal opinion, it is not about whether you like it or not. It’s a problem of how you adapt and prepare for this inevitable future of the Japanese society.
There is no use in discussing whether you like this future or not. It is better to prepare as soon as possible before it is too late.”
How is this inevitable? You like many others fail to put into consideration the many factors and trends that go against the future of multiculturalism in Japan. Racism, right-wing retaliation, poverty and crime in existing multicultural soceities will discourage Japan to take this path. Robotics and automation are purely beneficial and offer no cultural reprocussions.
“Since the problem is here now, and robots would take too long to be of an acceptable level of technology – the only option left is immigration.”
Logical fallacy based more off opinion than fact. robotics are and have already replaced low and high skilled tasks that humans once did. Japan’s robotic technology has already begun to advance faster due to growing demand thanks to labor shortages. The robotics industry is already being propelled and inventors in Japan will benefit greatly by thier contributions. Robotics are superior to third world labor because robotic technology can advance infinitely, impovershed immigrants can not.
Read the news.
“I wonder however, if Japan as a whole is truely ready for multiculturalism. Japan is still a country with a very closed mentality and can’t be expected to change overnight. “
Japan obviously does not have a “closed mentality” as it has been open to western ideas, movies, and inventions more many years and its citizens enjoy studying abroad and attracting tourists. Multiculturalism is not a necessity for a soceity to be open. Saying that a nation needs to be “ready for multicultralism” is a very one sided argument, because not all cultures benefit from ethnic pluralism.
Only the future will decide which soceity, pluralistic or monolithic, will remain stable in the 21st century, and so far basic logic always goes in favor of ethnic homogeneity.
January 16th, 2007 at 3:48 pmPerhaps collecting tax on employment and consumption causes low birth rate. Loan sharks too.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:21 am