Future imperfect: Japan's immigration policies and the winds of change: for too long Japan has dodged the immigration debate. But its population is now dwindling and complacency is not an option. Can integration work? Take Toyohashi—please - Cover Story

Japan, Inc., Oct, 2003 by Tony McNicol

To come to Japan, job-seekers need high-level university qualifications from their own country or 10 years of experience in their field. Pasona-Tech's Chinese job-seekers are all graduates from universities in their own country, but this is very much the exception among highly skilled Chinese employees in Japan. Most have graduated from Japanese universities, many with scholarships from the Japanese government. According to the Ministry of Education, about a third of all foreign students in Japanese universities are Chinese.

Significantly, Japan is not attracting significant numbers of highly skilled graduates from Chinese universities themselves--or from universities from anywhere else in the world, for that matter. Instead, Japan is largely drawing from a small pool of foreign students committed to Japan because of their time spent in Japanese universities.

Komai sees this as a sad sign of Japan's failure to attract international talent. Unfamiliar management techniques and pay scales based on seniority put off potential immigrants. Highly skilled workers with families worry whether the Japanese school system will be able to teach their children English. Will their children be able to compete in the international job market when they grow up?

If Japan can't absorb unskilled immigrants and can't attract highly skilled immigrants, what can be done to fill the gap in the working age population?

One suggestion is to encourage people to work longer. Already one in five Japanese are over the age of 65. Aside from the drastic drop in overall population, Japan faces a potentially crushing burden on its pension system. At the moment, every retiree is supported by approximately five working age adults. By 2050, the ratio is expected to be barely one to two.

According to the UN population division, in order to redress the balance completely, Japan could raise the retirement age to 77 years. Even now, senior citizens have an average 15 to 20 mostly healthy years left after they retire. Many are already turning to part-time or full-time work to supplement their income. Anyone wondering what a Japan full of senior citizen workers will look like should just flag down a taxi in Tokyo. According to Tokyo's largest private taxi drivers union, more than half of their members are over 60, and 10 percent are in their 70s.

Obviously, the most direct way to address falling population would be to try to raise the birthrate. A present, Japan's fertility rate is about 1.5 children per woman in Japan. Most of the world's developed countries are facing a similar problem. Italy, for instance, has an even more acute problem, with a birthrate of 1.2 children per woman.

Komai points out that Japan also has the lowest rate of extra-marital birth in the developed world. Women who want children, but who don't want to get married, have no choice but to stay childless. Countries like Canada and some of the Northern European states have tried to break the link between marriage and childbirth in an attempt to raise fertility rates. But in Japan, the mostly married men in suits in the Diet seem unwilling to explore this option. At least, not yet.