Japan is slowing heading into a demographic crisis. Within 100 years 2/3 of the nations population will disappear. Meaning the population could drop from 127 million to 44 million, the steepest drop in modern civilization. Meanwhile Japan is aging rapidly with the highest proportion of senior citizens in the world. reshape the world’s second largest economy and Japan as we know could seize to exist.

Why? For one birth rates are anemic. Japan's birth rate is falling faster then any other country in the world. Japan’s 12-hour workday is one factor blamed for the low birth rate, in addition to the country’s high cost of living and social rigidity towards women and parenting. Japan spends less than two percent of its GDP on support for child-rearing compared, for example, to US that has a figure of more than 2.5 percent. Its hard to be a working mother in Japan. The birth rates are shirking and population is rapidly ageing. This means the country is on track to see its much needed work force shrink 70% by 2050. 

     Another factor is the lack of immigration. Japan is an ethnically homogeneous country and immigration is almost non-existent. Japan’s migration policy is based on two pillars: “labor migration exclusively of the highly skilled” and “labor migration on a temporary basis only.” As a result, Japan’s foreign population amounts to a mere 1.7 percent of the population— an extraordinarily low percentage compared to other developed nations. The largest groups of foreign residents in Japan are Koreans and Chinese. Both groups have about 600,000 registered residents in Japan. Most Koreans are decedents of workers who came to Japan as forced labor during World War II. Most Chinese are newcomer migrants. They come as students, or as holders of the highly contentious trainee visa. Japan has a long history of keeping a tight lid on immigration. In Japanese society, the subject is almost taboo.

What is being done?  The Japanese Diet (parliament) passed a revised Equal Employment Opportunity Law, in April of 2007, that baned, among other issues, giving disadvantageous treatment to employees who become pregnant or who give birth. Currently, Japan provides child-care leave with reduced salaries for one year.  "Mother's Hello Work", geared to help mothers find jobs, provide job skill seminars for women who have temporarily left work and also instruct small and medium companies to draft action plans to help working parents such as encouraging fathers to take child-care leave. Other attempts to raise the fertility rate have been increasing the number of available daycare centers, reducing child-care costs of families consisting of a couple and two children so that their household costs go down to the level of childless couples by use of such measures as tax breaks and child-support allowances.

                                          

On the immigration front In the 1990's  Japan issued  thousands of work visas to Brazilian emigrants. Brazilian because many families parents and grandparents emigrated to Brazil and neighboring countries a century ago to work on coffee plantations and sugar cane fields. So in some places in Japan there are thriving Brazilian communities. But very recently the Japanese government has been paying Brazilian and other Latin American guest workers to leave the country and never come back. Offers of $3,000 toward air fare, plus $2,000 for each dependent have been given. Workers who leave have been told they can pocket any amount left over. But those who travel home on Japan’s dime will not be allowed to reapply for a work visa ever again. Many see this as short sighted and another blow to the shirking, much needed work force. 

 

While efforts to secure Japan's future work force have been overall ineffective, one very real and viable option is the creation of advanced and human like Robots.

 

 

 

       

     

                             

 

         

         

  

                          

 

Robots as functioning members of society is on the rise. While it may seem like something out of science fiction movie it actually makes sense. Japan has the highest number of industrial robots per capita in the world. Combine Japans love of technology with Animism, the belief that nonliving things can posses a spirit, you have a society that is posed to accept the company of robots. Also Japan's stunning number of vending machines is another sign Japan is ready for this brave new world. For every23 people there is one vending machine (according to the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association).

 

 

 

 

Here is a great video on Robots as a solution for Japan's much needed future work force.