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Japan’s Demographic Challenges

JAPAN’S POPULATION DILEMMA, IN A SINGLE-OCCUPANCY NUTSHELL

by Reiji Yoshida, Staff Writer, Dec 31, 2015

This is the first of a five-part series on the population woes caused by Japan’s graying society and low birthrate.

It’s not your typical futuristic city. But if you want to see what Tokyo and the rest of Japan will soon look like, the Takashimadaira housing complex in northern Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward may be the place to visit.

It’s a massive, 43-year-old residential complex of 29 buildings, each 14 stories high.

At a glance, it may look like just another quiet danchi (public condominium), but inside, the population changes of the past few decades have wrought change unimaginable when it was built.

When the Takashimadaira complex opened in 1972, the community was full of hopeful young couples. The average age of its 20,000 residents was 25.5.

The population surged to about 30,000 within a few years, of whom about 10,000 were children 14 or younger.

Today, the population stands at about 15,000, of whom 50.2 percent are 65 or older, and there are only 644 children in the vast complex, a survey taken in October said.

“About half of the elderly people are living alone. Many unmarried people are living (there), too, so about 40 percent of the total 15,000 population are living on their own,” said Yoshio Muranaka, founder of the community newspaper Takashimadaira Shimbun, in a recent interview.

“Takashimadaira symbolizes the near future of Japan,” he said.

The rapid and drastic demographic changes experienced by Takashimadaira may reflect what is underway in society as a whole.

The nation’s total fertility rate (the number of children a woman bears in her lifetime if she bore children according to the age-specific birth rate of each generation of a given year ), stood at a record low of 1.42 in 2014. A population usually shrinks if its TFR is lower than 2.1.

According to a simulation by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan will lose one-third of its 128 million people by 2060, and the ratio of elderly, defined as those 65 or older, will surge to 39.9 percent from the current 24.1 percent during the same period.

“No country in world history has seen such a rapid decrease of its population in an age of a peaceful and rich society,” said Noriko Tsuya, a professor at Keio University who studies demographics.

If the population crisis is left unattended it will shatter the national goal embraced since Japan’s late 19th century modernization: to become a global economic powerhouse and a leading player on the world stage.

Japan’s gross national income accounted for 15 percent of the world’s total in 1995. It will fall to 5.2 percent in 2050 and a mere 1.7 percent in 2100 if the current trend continues, according to a simulation by the Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER), a Tokyo-based think tank affiliated with the Nikkei business daily.

The economic impact of the nation’s rapid graying has been keenly felt at Takashimadaira.

Muranaka ran a children’s clothes shop for 22 years, only to close it in 1996 as the number of children drastically fell.

Other child-related businesses shut down, too, ranging from toy shops, photo shops, a swimming school and cram schools to clothing shops for young mothers, Muranaka recalled.

“Fewer children means less consumption. A shortage of children has ruined the town,” he said.

Demographers say the biggest factor in the low fertility rate is the high numbers of single people, followed by a decrease in the number of children married couples have.

This might mean Japan will see a drastic increase in lifelong singles, as is the case with Takashimadaira. The nuclear family concept is collapsing and will force an eventual redesign of the tax and social security systems.

According to the welfare ministry, as of 2010, 20.1 percent of men aged 50 and 10.6 percent of women the same age have never married and are unlikely to do so.

The welfare ministry’s white paper for 2015 predicted those ratios will be 29 and 19.2 percent, respectively, in 2035, as more people choose not to get married.

“From now on, we will have more and more unmarried elderly people, in particular men. But all the social systems of this country, including the tax, public pension and public nursing systems, are based on the assumption that everyone will have a family,” said Tsuya of Keio University. “This tradition is now collapsing in Japan.”

For example, the public nursing system for the elderly is designed to support family members who are looking after an elderly person at home. It has not yet addressed single-person households.

A rapidly aging society with fewer children will also make it much more costly to support the elderly, sapping the disposable income of the working generation. This means Japan will be far poorer than now, said Sumio Saruyama, lead economist at JCER.

“Japan has spent too much of its social security budget on the elderly rather than on the child-raising generation,” Saruyama said. “We need to fix this. Otherwise, the tax and social security systems won’t be sustainable.”

Is there any way to save Japan from this population crisis?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has recently started advocating a higher national birth rate of 1.8, instead of the current 1.42, to ensure the populace will be at least 100 million in fifty years’ time – the government’s first population target.

Abe has also pledged to create 500,000 new slots at day care centers by early next decade.

Many economists and demographers welcomed Abe’s efforts to put more emphasis on the child-raising generation, but they doubt it will work.

JCER conducted research on 32 developed countries and found that those providing more public benefits to child-raising households, particularly in-kind benefits, such as those for day care services, tend to have higher birth rates.

If a country raises the in-kind benefits for a child-raising household by 1 percentage point of its gross domestic product, it raises the birthrate by 0.5 point, JCER claimed.

Thus JCER said Japan would need to spend 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product, a sum of ¥8 trillion for now, on child-raising households to boost the TFR to 1.8 from the current 1.42.

If Japan accepts 200,000 immigrants a year on top of that, the population would stabilize at around 90 million in 2100, according to the simulation by JCER.

Abe’s government adopted the target of 1.8 after examining policy proposals from JCER. But it has ruled out the second proposal – throwing open the doors to immigrants – in a reflection of Abe’s conservative support base.

Instead, Abe’s government has only eased visa regulations for skilled professionals and for temporary workers needed in specific understaffed manufacturing industries.

Tsuya of Keio University, too, remains highly skeptical about the effectiveness of Abe’s pledge and measures to boost the TFR to 1.8.

The population will keep aging faster than that of any other major nation, making it extremely difficult to prevent shrinkage, she said.

“It took 126 years for France to see the ratio of the elderly aged 65 or older increase from 7 to 14 percent. In Japan, it took just 24 years,” Tsuya pointed out.

So far, no major country has succeeded in rebooting its TFR from below 1.5, Tsuya said.

Moreover, most developed countries that do succeed, including France and the nations of northern Europe, have tangibly greater gender equality and family-friendly legal regulations than Japan, Tsuya said.

This means the government should not set unrealistic targets for TFR. Rather, it should implement long-term measures to improve the quality of life for individual families, even if they may have little impact on helping the country achieve its macro-economic goals, she argued.

OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO MITIGATE DANGERS OF LIVING ALONE WITH DEMENTIA

by Tomoko Otake, Staff Writer, Jan 3, 2016

This is the second of a five-part series on population woes caused by Japan’s graying society and low birthrate.

At first glance, it’s hard to tell what’s wrong with Keiko Sawada.

“I don’t hate being alone, but I do feel lonely at times,” Sawada, a sociable and talkative woman, said during a recent visit to her one-room apartment in Nakano Ward, Tokyo. “Of course I’m worried about what will happen to me in the future. I’m 85, after all.”

As casual exchanges continue, however, it becomes increasingly clear the former bar hostess has serious memory problems.

She keeps referring to her age as 85, even though she is 78. She keeps asking about a male friend who used to drop by, unable to accept that he died last year. Her monthly mobile phone bills ran up to ¥20,000 recently, but she doesn’t know why. She misses appointments with her doctor by showing up on the wrong day, and often takes more sleeping pills than prescribed because she can’t remember when she took them last.

Sawada, who lives alone, has dementia. In this rapidly aging country, the number of dementia patients living alone, either by choice or due to a lack of options, is expected to rise.

While the health ministry has no data on how many of the nation’s 4.62 million dementia patients live alone, or future projections for such people, their number is bound to surge, given that the general ratio of single-person households is on the rise and the number of patients is expected to top 7 million in 2025.

Experts say Japan should come up with a way to better deal with these people because they have a unique set of health risks. As they have problems with short-term memory, they might keep water running or cause a fire by forgetting to turn off the stove when cooking. Some lose their sense of smell and awareness of temperature, which means they risk eating rotten food or keeping the air conditioner off in sweltering summers or freezing winters.

Sawada’s quality of life improved significantly after she started receiving health services under the nursing insurance program about a year ago. The nationwide program allows needy seniors, including those with dementia, to access a range of state-subsidized services according to level of impediment.

Before that, she hadn’t bathed for months, and at one time had her electricity cut off because she had failed to pay the bills, according to her younger brother, who now comes to see her once a week, and a care manager dispatched by Nakano Ward’s long-term care center for the elderly.

Sawada, who is on welfare, now receives weekly visits from a domestic helper who cleans her room and a pharmacist who puts her medicine tablets in a calendar-like organizer hung on the wall so she won’t misplace or overdose on them. Sawada also has weekly trips to a nearby day care facility arranged so she can take a bath once a week.

So while Sawada lives by herself, she is technically not alone. Others are not as lucky.

“Dementia patients who live alone but come to our hospital regularly are relatively OK,” said Dr. Yuichi Sugai, a psychiatrist and dementia specialist at Yokufukai Hospital in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward. “The bigger problem is, there are a sizable number of suspected cases whose problems are harder to grasp, like those who are not cared for by anybody and refuse visits from public health officials. Some of them end up having kodokushi (solitary deaths) at home. Their cases come to light only after their deaths.”

Sugai said that to care for the swelling ranks of solitary dementia patients, it is important for every municipality to have an “early response team” of specialists to seek out high-risk people and determine what kind of help they need, especially in cities, where community ties are weak and people often don’t know who lives next door.

Securing enough caregivers is also key, he added, noting the government should have a detailed plan in place so the nation can maintain their quality and quantity.

“The government has plans for securing enough doctors and nurses in the future,” Sugai said. “What about caregivers? We have seen many vocational schools for caregivers shut down recently because student enrollment fell far short of the target.”

Meanwhile, Masahiko Sato, who has dementia, says policymakers should incorporate the voices of dementia patients further.

Sato is a living example of how people with dementia can live actively and independently – with help and understanding from others.

Sato, 61, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in 2005, has made full use of digital tools to make up for his memory lapses. Creative use of such tools allowed the Gifu Prefecture native to live on his own for 10 years before moving to a care facility in June 2015, he said.

Sato, who lives in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, has made it a habit to turn his computer on and check his Google calendar when he gets up every morning. While dementia patients are known to lose track of time, the calendar shows which day of the month it is, a convenient feature not available in a handwritten organizer.

Before he goes out, he sets several timers on his mobile phone around the scheduled appointment. Using a train timetable and route finder software, he makes sure he gets an alert on his phone while on the train so he won’t forget where to get off.

Sato published a book in 2014 on his experiences as a dementia patient: “Ninchisho ni natta watashi ga tsutaetaikoto” (“The Message I, as a Dementia Sufferer, Want to Tell”). The book, which won an award last year from the Medical Journalist Association of Japan, is most likely the first book in Japan written entirely by someone with dementia, according to the book’s publisher, Otsuki Shoten.

Though Sato used to work as a systems engineer for a computer company before his diagnosis, he said he started using social media and an iPad only years after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He recommends that other patients start using such tools in the early stages of their illness.

Sato, who now has more than 1,300 friends on Facebook, makes frequent public speeches around the country, spreading the message that life with dementia comes with many inconveniences, but not necessarily unhappiness.

For people with dementia to live a fulfilling life, however, the widespread prejudice that they are helpless and powerless, and that they can only be burdens to society, needs to be eradicated, he said.

“I want to participate in society,” he said emphatically during a recent interview. “In the future, I would like to organize a group of volunteers who clean the park and around the stations in the Kawaguchi area.”

Sato acknowledges that his health condition fluctuates and sometimes deteriorates to a point he has to cancel an important appointment at the last minute. Still, he keeps a positive outlook on life, and that seems to have made a big difference in slowing the progress of his Alzheimer’s.

“When you get dementia, it’s not the end of the world,” he said. “Be grateful for whatever abilities you still have – and go on believing that you have a wonderful life to lead.”

ISOLATION A REAL DANGER FOR MEN CARING FOR AN ELDERLY RELATIVE

by Mizuho Aoki, Staff Writer, Jan 4, 2016

This is the third in a five-part series on Japan’s population woes caused by its graying society and low birthrate.

Like many people who care for elderly family members at home, Norio Watanabe, 51, struggled to deal with the physical and mental burdens of looking after his father, who had dementia.

For about four years until his father’s death in 2014, everyday life for the single Watanabe was packed with care and work. He woke up at 3 a.m. to prepare a special meal for his father, who had a kidney disease, and changed his diaper before heading for work at a food catering company.

When he went to bed at night, he always left the door to his room open so he would not miss the sound of his father moving or calling for help. The only enjoyment he had to himself was to drop by at a local ramen shop on his way home from the grocery store.

“It was tough. I knew it was my responsibility to take care of my father, but it got me down. Sometimes, I was barely able to sleep,” said Watanabe, who lives in Katsushika Ward, Tokyo. “There was no escape from reality. . . . When I was driving my car to work, the thought of driving on the wrong side of the road crossed my mind, so that I could be released from everything.”

In desperate need of help, Watanabe joined a support group for people who care for family members with dementia, but he said it was difficult for him to speak up in a group composed mostly of women.

He only found relief after joining Oyaji no Kai (Association of Old Men), a group based in Arakawa Ward, Tokyo, of men who take care of aging family members at home.

“It was an enormous help. By finding out about other men in similar situations, and by talking about what I was going through, I felt at ease,” Watanabe said.

As Japan’s population continues to shrink and age, more men are finding themselves in a similar plight. And the number is expected to keep rising, given that in 2025 the postwar baby boomers – born between 1947 and 1949 – will be aged over 75 and account for nearly 20 percent of the population.

With the rise in single-person households and women keeping their jobs after marriage, taking care of ailing family members – once seen as a woman’s job – is becoming a man’s responsibility as well.

According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, men made up 31.3 percent of the main care givers for aging family members at home in 2013, up from 23.6 in 2001. The total number of such men exceeded 1.3 million, the ministry said.

Observers say male carers tend to face difficulties in areas different from women, such as cooking and purchasing women’s underwear. But as many men tend to shy away from joining get-togethers and try to solve everything on their own, they are often isolated, with their suffering little noticed by others. Sometimes such isolation pushes them to the point of abusing their elderly family members, experts say.

Given the rise in the number of male carers, support groups like Oyaji no Kai are increasingly important, analysts say, as men tend to find it more easy to participate in and speak up about their true feelings at male-only gatherings.

“I’ve seen many men dedicated to (caring) for their family members who were isolated without a connection to society,” said Masatoshi Tsudome, a professor of sociology at Ritsumeikan University who serves as secretary-general of the National Network for Male Carers and Supporters.

Tsudome, who previously worked for the Kyoto branch of the Social Welfare Council, a government-funded liaison group that promotes community and volunteer activities, said most of the people who join support groups are women, even though over a quarter of the people who take care of ailing family members are men.

On those rare occasions when men have shown up for a gathering held by the council, they generally don’t say a single word and just sit there with a grim expression, he said.

Unlike women who enjoy chatting with fellow members, these men obviously lack social skills and are unable to release their burdens, Tsudome said. By speaking to them individually later, he has learned they have enormous difficulties with tasks like cooking, doing laundry and purchasing underwear for their ailing wives or mothers. Some have even found it problematic to shop in grocery stores along with swarms of housewives.

“They were struggling with things that I’ve never heard from female carers,” Tsudome said.

Unfortunately, many men keep such struggles to themselves do not seek help, he said.

At men-only gatherings, they are more able to voice their honest sentiments without feeling embarrassed, and for many, like Watanabe, the meetings have become places to reveal their mental burden, Tsudome said.

“These are the places where they can whine about their situations and where they can listen to what others are feeling,” he said. “They realize that they are not alone, that there are many others who are in similar situations.”

Tsudome also said the government-run nursing care insurance system for the elderly introduced in 2000 should be changed to assist aging people as well as lessen the burden on family members who look after them.

Under the system, elderly people in need of nursing care who have a family member living with them are, in principle, denied access to domestic helpers. This means that even if the family member has a full-time job, they need to shoulder the entire household burden, whereas elderly people who live apart from family members qualify for services such as cooking, cleaning and laundry.

The system was apparently created based on an outdated household model centering around a full-time housewife young enough and with sufficient physical strength to do everything by herself, Tsudome said.

The reality is that more people today work full time while taking care of aging family members, and many are in desperate need of help, he said. If men with no housekeeping experience could get such assistance, their burdens would be significantly lighter, he said.

“Some people may choose to move their elderly relative into a nursing care facility, while others may attempt to juggle their job and nursing care, or quit their job to take care of their family full time.” Support must be provided for all care receivers and caregivers regardless of the choices they make, he said.

FOR MANY YOUNG JAPANESE, MARRIAGE – AND SEX – ARE LOW PRIORITIES

by Tomohiro Osaki, Staff Writer, Jan 5, 2016

This is the fourth in a five-part series on Japan’s population woes caused by its graying society and low birthrate.

Nakamura, an 18-year-old university student, winces whenever he imagines himself dating a girl.

“I mean, I would have to pay attention to what I wear and rack my brains to figure out where I should take her for a date. . . . It’s just too much of a hassle,” he says.

Nakamura, who asked to be identified only by his surname, is happy to remain single. He says it’s much more fun playing video games and chatting via texts all night with his male friends than going on a date.

The economics major at a school in Tokyo has never had sex, but he says he is OK with that. A part of him does fantasize about getting married by the age of 30, but he hastens to add: “I don’t think that’s possible.”

Nakamura is among the young people in Japan that studies show have become increasingly pessimistic toward, or even averse to, romance, sex and marriage – a demographic that, if left unattended, could further accelerate Japan’s population slide.

Experts point to a variety of factors contributing to this mindset, from the advent of the Internet to financial insecurity to improving career opportunities for women.

A survey released last January by O-net, a marriage counseling firm, found that 74.3 percent of the nation’s 20-year-olds were not in a relationship, compared with 50.0 percent in 1996, when the company launched the annual poll. A separate 2015 survey by the Cabinet Office covering 7,000 people in their 20s and 30s found that about 40 percent of singles in their 20s were “not looking for a relationship” to begin with, thinking “romance is a hassle” or that “they would rather prioritize enjoying their hobbies.”

Going without sex seems to be on the rise as well, especially among men.

A biennial study by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) Inc. shows that the percentage of men in their late 20s who “have no interest in” or “despise” sex stood at 8.3 percent in 2008 before climbing steadily to reach 21.6 percent in 2014. To top it off, a survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry revealed that the percentage of unmarried 20-somethings who do not wish to have children surged to 15.8 percent in 2012 from 8.6 percent in 2002 for men, and to 11.6 percent from 7.2 percent for women.

Unlike a few decades ago, youths today have grown “disenchanted” with the idea of romance, experts say, due largely to what they see as the not-so-successful wedlock of their parents.

“It’s not that their parents are overtly at loggerheads with each other and their marriage is disintegrating. But they don’t look super happy being together, either,” says marketing writer Megumi Ushikubo, author of “Renai Shinai Wakamonotachi” (“Youths Who Aren’t Into Relationships”). The JFPA survey in 2014 found 44.6 percent of married couples in Japan were not engaging in sex for an extended period.

Their parents’ lackluster marriages, coupled with the phaseout of what were called “trendy” TV dramas that inspired many youths into romance during the economic boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, have resulted in today’s youngsters having no “role model” in relationships, according to Ushikubo.

What little interest they have in relationships, then, finds its outlet in digital communities, where they fall in love with anime and manga characters, and become addicted to an array of dating simulation games, says Masahiro Yamada, a professor of sociology at Chuo University.

In addition, Yamada says, Japan’s birds-and-bees education has overly emphasized on “negative” aspects of sex, such as the risks related to rape and teenage abortion. That has helped students develop an almost instinctive aversion to real-life physical relations, he says.

Nakamura, the university student, knows all about infatuation with the unreal.

“In anime, everything is perfect. Girls are all cute and guys are handsome and strong. I wish my real life were like that,” Nakamura says, adding his gaze has grown so accustomed to the otherworldly prettiness of anime characters that he sometimes feels disappointed by the appearance of the female students at his university.

In those rare moments when his libido gets the better of him, Nakamura turns to his smartphone in search of an online porn video for quick masturbation.

“I’m not interested in real-life sex. Just watching those videos is enough,” he says.

Another reason for young people’s avoidance of romance and sex has to do with Japan’s prolonged economic downturn and insecure financial prospects, says Dr. Kunio Kitamura, chairman of the JFPA. The lack of financial security makes the young, particularly men, balk at approaching members of the opposite sex, he says.

Yosuke Hiwatashi, a 23-year-old Kagoshima resident, is a case in point.

Hiwatashi, single and living with his parents, makes money as a dispatch worker to run optical fiber lines to households.

His monthly take-home salary averages ¥150,000, which shrinks to between ¥20,000 and ¥50,000 after buying necessities and paying off the debt to his parents for his university days. If he wants to go out for a drink or two with his friends, Hiwatashi must ask his parents for permission.

But the uncertain nature of his job, such as erratic days off and unusual working hours, makes it difficult for him to hang out with friends in the first place. As such, he says, he winds up spending most of his days off surfing the Internet and watching anime on TV.

“With the kind of money I earn, I can barely scrape by,” Hiwatashi says. “I’m far from fit because I’ve stopped working out after taking up this job. But I can’t afford to buy myself nice clothes, either. Why would women feel attracted to a guy like me?”

Meanwhile, women have their own reasons of not being married, writer Ushikubo says.

Although still far from being satisfactory, Japan’s corporate culture has made significant headway over the years in embracing the female workforce, she says.

In traditional Japanese companies, “it used to be that, as a female employee, you were pressured by your boss to get married and quit by the age of 30. But such treatment would be recognized as harassment in today’s society, and at least women are not forced to quit their jobs,” Ushikubo says.

But this freedom to pursue a career has resulted in women delaying getting married. Some, she adds, postpone it until they meet what they believe to be the most perfect bachelor possible, blissfully unaware such an opportunity rarely arises.

Rika, a 21-year-old university student, says she isn’t into relationships. Hanging out with friends and hunting for a job are far more important priorities for her at the moment.

An aspiring TV anchorwoman, she is also adamant that she will live her life as a dedicated businesswoman.

“Who decided I should be a wife or mother in (the) future just because I was born a girl?” asks Rika, who declined to give her family name.

Now that the Supreme Court has recently upheld the constitutionality of a Civil Code provision forcing married couples to adopt a single surname, Rika says that even if she did find the right partner, she might choose not to register her marriage to avoid complicating her career development. She doesn’t want to have a child, either.

Not all youths, however, are as pessimistic toward, or indifferent to, romance and marriage as Nakamura, Hiwatashi and Rika. Some youngsters are merely too shy to approach the opposite sex, despite their inner desire to start a relationship.

Akira, who plays guitar in a band at his university, says he hopes to get married by the time he turns 40, but marriage is low on his wish list. Waiting for his friends one November evening in front of Shibuya Station, he says he wants to pursue his music activities as much as possible while he’s still young and “just try whatever catches my interest.”

That is not to say, though, that he is uninterested in romance. Akira says he wants to have a girlfriend – it’s just he is not desperate to get one.

“I don’t think I would go out of my way to approach girls. I would just wait until the right girl shows up.”

GOVERNMENT WEIGHS IMMIGRATION TO MAINTAIN POPULATION, BOOST WORKFORCE

by Shusuke Murai, Staff Writer, Jan 6, 2016

This is the last of a five-part series on Japan’s population woes caused by its graying society and low birthrate.

A shrinking population has long been an issue for an increasingly graying Japan.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September announced administrative measures seeking to maintain a population of at least 100 million people over the next 50 years with a target of significantly raising the fertility rate to 1.8 – a figure the government says is reachable if people today marry and have as many children as they wish.

The government worries that if the fertility rate – 1.42 in 2014 – continues to remain low, the population will dip to about 80 million by 2065 and even 40 million by 2115, causing a significant labor shortage and decline in people’s standard of living due to reduced economies of scale.

However, considering the difficulty of meeting the population target by only raising the fertility rate, the government has also been discussing accepting more immigrants. In February 2014, the Cabinet Office revealed that Japan will likely only be able to maintain a population of more than 100 million if it accepts 200,000 immigrants annually from 2015 and the total fertility rate recovers to 2.07 by 2030.

But accepting such massive numbers of immigrants is currently unrealistic given Abe’s reluctance to open the doors to immigrants to stay permanently, except for those the government regards as skilled professionals.

Instead, Abe is planning to expand the foreign trainee program to solve labor shortages in industries such as construction, which faces increased demand for labor ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Some of Abe’s aides, including Shigeru Ishiba, minister in charge of reinvigorating regions, and Taro Kono, minister in charge of administrative reforms, have recently claimed Japan should accept more immigrants to counter its dwindling workforce.

According to the labor ministry, there were about 790,000 registered foreign workers as of the end of October 2014, with the largest number – 39.6 percent – coming from China. Among them, some 145,000 people – about 18.5 percent – are working as foreign trainees.

Amid continuing debate over the country’s immigration policy, The Japan Times has interviewed two experts – Eriko Suzuki, a professor at Tokyo’s Kokushikan University specializing in foreign labor issues, and Yoichi Kaneko, an Upper House member of the Democratic Party of Japan – to examine the pros and cons of accepting immigrants as a measure to overcome the nation’s shrinking population.

Eriko Suzuki : Japan needs immigration overhaul to better accommodate non-Japanese

As a researcher who studies demography, Eriko Suzuki says the government will not be able to meet its population goal of 100 million people in 2065 without depending on immigrants.

Eriko Suzuki says she hopes discussions on accepting immigrants helps change the poor working conditions of foreign workers in Japan. | YOSHIAKI MIURA

But she also pointed out that accepting them should not be considered as merely a way to fill the labor shortage, as strongly pushed by various industries.

“Given the seriousness of the situation with the dwindling population, it’s clear that accepting immigrants is unavoidable. But to do that, we would have to clear problems in the current immigration system,” Suzuki said.

Suzuki said she hoped such discussions over conditions to accept immigrants would help change poor working conditions for many foreign workers currently living and working in Japan.

She said their problems would continue if the country failed to address the issue.

“Many foreign people are working in this country as de facto immigrants,” she said.

Suzuki said the foreign trainee program was a prime example of the problems faced by foreign workers.

The program started in 1993 as an “international contribution” to transfer skills and knowledge to workers from developing countries by letting them work at Japanese firms in such industries as textiles, farming and construction for up to three years.

But Suzuki pointed out the “international contribution” was a mere facade to use trainees for a fixed term with far lower wages than the minimum set by municipalities.

She said the system was also problematic because hiring foreign trainees, who will go back home after a few years, discouraged employers from improving their working conditions.

This eventually made those workplaces unattractive for Japanese workers as well, she said.

“Many of these companies are located in rural areas, and I believe this has been one of the factors that causes the outflow of the rural population,” as many young Japanese leave to look for better job opportunities in cities, she said.

Rather, Suzuki said Japan should widen the scope of employment-based visas to accept more foreign laborers officially as immigrants and offer them options to stay longer in the country by inviting their families.

She said she believed the government was hesitant to ease visa regulations because it was afraid of the immigration problems experienced in Europe after World War II, when many people lost their jobs after the economy took a downward turn.

To keep Japan from experiencing the same mistake, Suzuki stressed three “barriers” need to be removed: a “systemic barrier” that hindered immigrants from receiving the same social services as Japanese, a “sentimental barrier” – prejudice against foreign nationals as typified in hate speech, and the “language barrier” that needed to be addressed to improve the lives of immigrant families.

Measures should be taken soon, Suzuki said, before the economic gap between Japan and some immigrants’ home countries narrows and it becomes harder to attract them here.

“Japan today surely is not as economically attractive as before, but many foreign people living here praise this country’s safety, saying women can walk around at night and property left on streets at night rarely gets stolen. They also praise Japanese people’s kindness,” she said.

“The population of this country will eventually increase if we could make these people want to stay for a long term.”

Yoichi Kaneko: Immigration comes at cost to society, technology development

A self-professed conservative in the left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan, Yoichi Kaneko said he opposed the idea of opening Japan’s doors to more immigrants as it could result in higher costs for the rest of society.

Yoichi Kaneko says accepting more immigrants could bring about a large financial and social burden on Japan. | YOSHIAKI MIURA

A former economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Kaneko said the most active advocate of welcoming immigrants was the corporate world, which wanted to use foreign workers on low wages. But he said this overlooked the broader costs of housing immigrants, such as education and health care.

“The only cost companies will pay by accepting immigrants is just their salaries,” he said. But if the nation is accepting immigrants as long-term workers, “we have to think of managing their pensions and their unemployment insurance, as well as giving them a chance to learn Japanese,” he said.

Many immigrants are likely to bring families with them, and Japan will have to shoulder the expenses of providing proper social and educational support for them as well, he added.

Rather than relying on immigrants, Kaneko said Japan should overcome its labor shortages by developing “labor-saving technologies” that allow people to work with less manpower, which he believed will underpin the future of Japan’s economy.

“Take the nursing care industry, for instance. We can develop something like nursing robots or wearable robotics” to reduce the burden on caregivers who performed such tasks as lifting people up, he said.

If the nation depended on immigrants to solve the labor shortage immediately, “we would cease efforts to develop these kind of technologies,” Kaneko said, adding that Japan might also lose the chance to become a leading exporter of such technologies.

However, Kaneko said he believed the foreign trainee program was a good one for both the worker source countries looking to improve their industries and for Japan as it sought to fill labor shortages and make global contributions.

But the reality of the program didn’t reflect its designated purpose, he said, adding that Japan’s international reputation would be seriously damaged if the current situation continued, where many trainees are confined in dirty rooms and forced to work at below minimum wage.

“Most of the trainees are people who come to Japan with high expectations for working in our country. If we can treat them properly, they would become fond of Japan,” Kaneko said. “But some companies treat them badly and make them dislike Japan.”

In order to accomplish the aim of the program, trainees’ human rights should be respected, he added.

Kaneko said Japan currently was not the most appealing choice for immigrants to come and work, with better salaries offered in other places, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, due to the weaker yen.

He said these locations also had a language advantage over Japan, because many immigrants from Asia today spoke either Chinese or English.

Instead of pursuing immigrants to support Japan’s economy as a labor force, Kaneko said Japan should continue efforts to attract more foreign visitors, such as Chinese on their bakugai shopping spree, to prop up consumption.

“To be honest, I can’t imagine how Japan will be” if it accepted more immigrants, Kaneko said, adding that it had not openly done this to date and lacked knowledge on how to make the country livable for both Japanese and foreign residents.

Linked from 9/1/2016 Journal