“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.

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.

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.

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…)

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.

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…

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.