Rise of the Machines

~Hakuo Yanagisawa, Japan's Health Minister, recently got into some hot water during a speech given on January 27. In a speech to members of his political party, he called on the women of Japan to perform a public service by raising the nation's birth rate. Here's where he got into trouble:

"The number of women aged between 15 and 50 is fixed," he said, "Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can do is ask them to do their best per head ... although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines."

You think?!? Although Mr. Yanagisawa was scolded by the Prime Minister, he does have a point. Japan faces a severe population crisis that is a ticking time bomb of demographic destruction. Last year, Japan reached its highest level of population (about 126 million), and this year, for the first time ever, the population has been projected to fall. In fact, barring any upheavals, it's going to continue falling for the foreseeable future.


While Japan is expecting a 30% drop in population over the next 50 years, that's not the bad part. The problem is that the proportion of elderly citizens will continue to increase. By 2050, over 1/3 of the people in Japan will be retired...and collecting their state pensions (the Japanese equivalent of Social Security). Where exactly is this money going to come from?

The problem with Mr. Yanagisawa's remark, aside from its obvious lack of political correctness, is that it deliberately ignores a very obvious solution to the population problem: immigration. The Japanese government is extremely xenophobic when it comes to the issue of immigrants. They'll gladly let you come to Japan and work temporarily (as I am), but actually staying here on a long-term basis is extremely difficult.

For example, in the early 1990s, factories in Japan faced a shortage of manpower (this was just before their economy went under for a decade). To ameliorate this, the government instituted a program to allow Brazilians of Japanese decent to work in Japan. Some 230,000 Brazilians immigrated to Japan. The idea was that they'd move here, work in the factories, and then leave when they were no longer needed. The last part was critical: the foreigners were never expected to stay.

Many here say that granting them residency visas was a mistake, as many Brazilians (currently 180,000+) have indeed decided to stay and have not meshed well with the rigorous social system here. Foreign children, for example, are not required to attend public schools, and sometimes don't. The Japanese language skills of many Brazilians are said to be low (understandable, from my point of view). They play loud music and have raucous parties. They don't separate their trash properly...the list of complaints from the Japanese goes on and on.

The upshot of all this is that the Japanese government is desperate for any solution to the population crisis, provided that it does not involve a loosening of immigration restrictions. Currently, less than 2% of Japan's population consists of foreigners, and the Japanese want to keep it that way. But it's just not going to work. Sooner or later, they're going to have to open up, as they did in response to Commodore Perry's fleet in 1854 after centuries of deliberate isolation. Perhaps Japanese society will have to undergo radical changes. People fear change...but they'll have to deal with it, or settle for being considerably poorer than they are now.

On the other hand, there's always cloning. ~Oyasumi!