The author lived in Japan from 1970 to 1973. During that time, Japanese business practices and their extreme work ethic were predicted to be the wave of the future that would lead to economic world dominance by Japan. The U.S. GDP per capita in 1970 was $5,234 compared to a level of $2,038 for Japan. Over the ensuing years, the Japanese economy spiked in 1987 to become $25,051 per capita relative to $21, 417 for the U.S. The Japanese fell behind in 2000 and in 2018 the Japan GDP per capita was $39,289 relative to $62,795 for the U.S.
For a young man moving from the diversity of Thailand, Laos and even New York and Texas before then, it was kind of strange that everyone looked pretty much the same, dressed the same and ate the same food. Yes, there were subtle differences, but they were lost on the eye of the westerner. As most “salarymen” lived outside of Tokyo and commuted to work, many times the men stayed over as the trains stopped running at 10:00 pm which would be the customary time for some to stop work. This practice led to late night bar visits and “sleepovers” in Tokyo. Therefore, the standard Japanese home life with a wife and one child was imperfect. In fact, the sexuality of single Japanese women was awakened when a popular series on Japan TV began with the premise that every young Japanese girl needed to have an affair with an eligible westerner upon completion of the obligatory flower arranging ceremony course.
Accordingly, it is commonly understood that Japan has an aging society, declining population and have had a great reluctance to increase immigration to incorporate youthful immigrants into their work force and society. It should come as no surprise that they are the leaders in the use of robots to replace a human work force. Further, remote villages are disappearing as the younger folk vanish into the cities seeking employment. The New York Times recently published an article entitled There Are No Children Here. Just Life-Size Dolls. The last children born in the village of Nagoro, Japan on the island of Shikoku was 18 years ago. Hence, there is no active school system in the village of some two dozen people. However, Tsukimi Ayano, 70, made the majority of over 300 life-size dolls to repopulate the school and village. The lady shown sitting with them below receives some measure of nostalgic solace by being with the dolls.
The Nikkei Asian Review published an article entitled Japan Should Take Lessons on Immigration From Brave Blossoms. The recent Rugby World Cup resulted in an astonishing result for the Japan team as they made their way through to the final eight to the amazement of most everyone except the players. The “Sakura Warriors,” representing the national flower of the cherry blossom, were composed of a squad with one-half of the team born outside of Japan.
If it works in fielding a rugby team, it should equally work offsetting the accelerating domestic population decline which dropped a record 450,000 people last year. A new visa program for specified skilled workers in 14 sectors was launched in April 2019 but only 376 people received the visa in the first six months. In reality, foreigners are not rushing to fill the void which the government must address as to why non-Japanese would want to work there and how they can be successfully integrated.
Simple steps like opening a bank account and even finding housing, as many landlords will not accept foreign tenants, are major hurdles. In fact, fitting into the system is very difficult without a Japanese spouse. The author had two daughters born in Yokohama and faced a very difficult time frame to get their photos, obtain a US passport in Tokyo and get back to Yokohama to be issued alien registration cards. Crowds would gather around as the registration clerk read the application questions in Japanese to which I responded in Japanese given my illiterate status. For the second child, it was far simpler just to use one of her older sister’s spare photos and save one day in the very difficult process. Further, the responsibilities for providing care for foreigners generally falls on local municipalities which, shown below, do not look overly inviting.
The Economist published an article entitled Japanese Schools are Struggling with Foreign Students. First of all, Japanese is a very difficult language to learn as it is based upon “kanji” ideograms that were derived from Chinese and are interspersed with Japanese alphabetic scripts which are necessary to incorporate modern words into a written form. Accordingly, there are very few westerners who can read the simplest written form of Japanese. Most foreign adults study Japanese in a phonetic form in order to be able to express themselves. However, if you are a young student attempting to integrate into the Japanese society, it is a herculean task.
Locations in Japan which have a history of incorporating immigrants are far better equipped to handle the challenge than others. In can be done, as Toyohashi, Japan has had a substantial Brazilian community since the early 1990’s. Therefore, this community has a long history of welcoming immigrants and a quarter of the Iwata elementary school students are immigrants. Strangely, parts of Japan have a long-standing connection to the Portuguese language given their trading and missionary history in this part of the world. Therefore, the system can work if the community is so inclined.
The highest level goal for immigration attraction centers on highly-skilled professionals-consultants, researchers and IT engineers. However, this level of recruitment has not been overly successful though 70% of the engineers at Mujin, a robotics startup, are non-Japanese as shown below with the apparent Indian national operating a robot. As India flirts with denying citizenship to Muslims in search of a pure Hindu state, perhaps the India tech industry could be a lucrative source of highly skilled talent. Moreover, Japan is revamping its blue-collar work visa program after only issuing 1,000 visas compared to their target of 40,000.
It is clear that more dramatic steps are needed to arrest the population declines in Japan coupled with a need to maintain the economic competitiveness of the country. A more radical approach would be to consider some of the remote areas of Japan and create tech centers and structure the environment to conform to the needs of immigrants.
In fact, Japan has built a network of international airports bypassing the country’s six major airports which now account for approximately 25% of international air travel. Obviously, the airports were constructed for tourists and not to support industry. Nonetheless, they would eliminate the isolation of many of the rural villages in Japan. Who knows, maybe it is time for Japan to abandon its xenophobic past in favor of immigration-fueled economic growth to support the aging work force. Japan’s efforts could be quite successful as other countries turn inward providing an unwelcomed, trained group of future contributors.
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