Hiragana Times Archive
This month Selection 2
Is Immigration the Solution to Japan's Ageing Society?
Japan's population looks like it is about to go into freefall. The country's fertility rate - defined as the average number of children born to a woman aged between 15 and 49- stood at an estimated 1.2 in 2008. That is substantially less than the 2.1 needed to sustain a population in a developed country and a far cry from the 4.5 of 1947 that heralded the start of Japan's brief but spectacular baby boom.
If such a trend were to continue, Japan's Business Federation (Keidanren), the nation's largest business lobby, has warned that over the next 50 years Japan's total population could shrink by 30 percent, falling from the current 128 million to roughly 90 million. Over the same period, the working-age population will plummet by 46 percent to approximately 46 million. That would leave just 1.3 workers to support each senior citizen.
In its October 2008 paper, "An Economy and Society That Responds to the Challenges of a Declining Population," the Keidanren cautions that such a rapid drop-off would not only slow the economic growth rate and make it difficult to sustain government finances and the public pension scheme, but would also create problems for maintaining a viable social system. With the ratio of those aged 65 and over already at 22 percent, and the population continuing to age, the health care and senior care industries will require a massive injection of labor.
A myriad of solutions to the labor shortage have at one time or another been put forward; from former Health Minister YANAGISAWA Hakuo's suggestion that the country needed its "baby-making machines" (women) to have more children to discussions on making up the labor shortfall through automation and expanded employment opportunities for women and the elderly.
None of these, however, has the potential to change the Japanese landscape quite as much as the option of large-scale immigration, which has been proposed by not only the Keidanren, but also a group of politicians and the former head of Tokyo's Immigration Bureau.
In June 2008, 80 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers, led by the former secretary-general of the LDP, NAKAGAWA Hidenao, submitted a document, titled "Japanese-Model Immigration Policy," to the then prime minister, FUKUDA Yasuo. In it, they urged Japan to "open its doors as an international state to the world and shift toward establishing an 'immigrant nation' by accepting immigrants and revitalizing Japan."
Their plan recommends raising the percentage of immigrants in Japan to about 10 percent of the population (10 million) by 2050 and increasing the number of foreign students from the present 130,000 to 1 million by 2025. The group is also calling for the establishment of an immigration agency within three years to unify the management of foreign-resident affairs and wants the enactment of a law that would specify the country's basic immigration principles and policy.
Citizenship requirements, too, would be affected under the plan, with a recommendation that permanent residents and any foreign resident who has lived in the country for at least 10 years should be granted the right to Japanese citizenship.
For the author of the plan, SAKANAKA Hidenori, the former chief of Tokyo's Immigration Bureau and the current head of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, the pros of mass immigration are simple: an influx of foreigners would make up for the labor force shortfall and ensure Japan remained a leading global economy and maintained its current standard of living.
Similarly, the Keidanren has urged the government to increase immigration to strengthen industries as far ranging as construction, manufacturing, welfare, transport, fisheries and agriculture. While the federation has long accepted the need for highly skilled foreign workers in such fields as IT, it is now urging the government to open up the economy to less-skilled workers and create a social infrastructure to encourage immigrants to commit to Japan for the long term.
Is Japan Ready?
The most recent data from the Ministry of Justice's Immigration Bureau has the number of registered non-Japanese residents at 2.2 million, a figure that represents 1.7 percent of the population and includes approximately 400,000 second- and third-generation Koreans who retain their Korean nationality.
By comparison with other developed nations the ratio is low, despite the past decade having seen the non-Japanese population rise steadily from a figure of 1.5 million in 1998. In stark contrast to this modest growth, the Nakagawa-Sakanaka plan would require an influx in the region of 400,000 immigrants a year for the next half century. In short, the current immigration trickle would need to become a flood.
To make such an intake feasible, Sakanaka believes the government would need to emphasize greater interaction between Japanese and other nationalities and provide better support for foreigners, guaranteeing them the same rights as the native population. In addition, he says there should be a focus on the smooth integration of newcomers into society through employment assistance and language learning. Sakanaka sees the proposed national immigration agency as playing a crucial role here, overseeing immigration policy, monitoring and preventing discrimination and promoting social integration.
The challenges before Sakanaka's proposal would be great, yet without a concerted plan Japan has been successful in absorbing the relatively small numbers of immigrants arriving on its shores to date. The problem, according to Sakanaka, is that while the country has a history of assimilating culture from abroad and an ingrained tendency to accept different values and practices, those qualities will not be enough without a well thought-out immigration policy.
The Situation for Foreign Workers Now
According to statistics for foreign employment compiled by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the number of foreign workers at the end of October 2008 was 486,398. By nationality, the Chinese come first with 43 percent, followed by Brazilians with 20.4 percent and Filipinos with 8.3 percent. 34 percent of foreign laborers are dispatched or contract
workers.
By industry, the manufacturing industry occupies 40 percent, the clothing industry 20 percent and hotel & restaurant industry 10 percent. By region, Tokyo Prefecture has the most foreign workers with 118,488, followed by Aichi Prefecture, home of Toyota Automobiles with 60,326. In third place is Shizuoka Prefecture and fourth is Kanagawa Prefecture.
However, due to the global depression, the number of redundancies is rapidly rising in the manufacturing industry. While job offers are drastically decreasing, new job seekers at Hello Work (national job agency) in the nine areas where the ratio of foreign workers is high are rapidly increasing. In the period of October - December, 2008, the number was 5,330, which is six times higher than the same period of the previous year.
(From April Issue 2009)
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