Yesterday was Coming of Age Day, a national holiday in Japan during which everyone who will reach majority (20 years old in Japan) during the year celebrates their new status.
This year’s festivities, however, were a bit dampened by the news that new adults in Japan last year numbered only 1.35 million (690,000 men and 660,000 women), the lowest number on record.
Of course, the big question facing Japan right now is how is a dwindling pool of workers going to be able to pay for the care of a rapidly expanding population of retirees.
[…] to Edward Chmura, again at Japundit, for bringing that article to my attention. Finally, here is some still […]
That final question is not one concerning the japanese only. In my own liliputian scandian homecountry we face the same question. It started entering public debate and politics some five years ago. I wrote a Social Science paper on that future challenge when I was in highschool back in ‘94.
It seems that our countries politicians answer is to try and force youngsters to get through the educationsystem faster and become productive taxpayers, mostly with stick not very much carrot. They are also raising the age of retirement, but that is done with much more care since old people can vote and young people can’t.
In the 20/20 vision of a young highschool student, my solution was much different. It included raising the age of retirement considerabely and trying to get industry to make more flexible shorter hour positions, while at the same time revamping the entire educational system with a lengthening of mandatory education by 3 years. It also included a loosening of immigration policy and greencard programs. Of course this has the danger of leading to first and second class citizens in the country, but if one is pragmatic about it, is it really that bad to have a care sector staffed by mostly immigrants and greencard workers if these immigrants or greencard workers make a better living here than at home? If they stay permanently, their children will benefit from the souped up educational system as well. But this will not be considered here anytime soon. xenophobia and a geriatocratic representative ‘democracy’ sees to that.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings and a happy tuesday to every one of you. Remember, a tuesday is always worth celebrating.
1.35 million of girls like the one in the picture is still enough for me
I like your ramblings Rune; it’s interesting to hear how this problem affects other countries as well. As we’ve said on Japundit in the past, it seems to be a wealthy-nations problem in general.
It’ll be interesting to see how Japan resolves the issue, if at all.
Eventually Japan will have several options:
1) accept that your economy will either shrink or not grow as quickly as some other places, so your economic ranking (and global influence, to a certain degree) will decline. Call it the Switzerland or Scandinavian option.
2) incorporate more of your workers (women, elderly, freeters, NEETs) into your regular work force. This will take restructuring employment and work patterns (more flexibility, less structure, etc.). I’d argue this will also take societal/cultural changes as well. Japan has started to try some of these, particularly by raising the mandatory retirement age in some fields. Those were useful when you had a growing population, but are counterproductive with a falling population.
3) increase the birthrate through incentives and support for childbearing and raising. Although even European countries that have better incentives and support don’t seem to be seeing a big jump in the birthrate. This would also take cultural/societal restructuring to give better support for mothers.
4) open immigration and bring in more foreigners. They’ve tinkered with this with nikkei foreigners in some fields, but there’s always a fairly strong backlash.
5) increase productivity through other means (robots, high tech, etc.). Japan has long pursued this, but dropping education scores and increasing numbers of freeters, etc. has them very worried (even with increased productivity, robots don’t pay taxes).
To be honest, option number 1 is the easiest choice in practical terms, but what politician wants to put forward that we have to accept that our power and influence will decline?
On a side note, the Guardian recently had an article on what the population drop means for Japanese universities. The article had someone as saying 40% of them could go under in the next decade–ironically (tragically?) just as the number of graduate students in the humanities have skyrocketed in the last decade (science and engineering grad students have industry opportunities, humanities grad students usually head into academia). Will this mean that the universities’ tough entrance exams will drop their standards as they compete for students? I’ve been told anecdotally that this is already happening for non-top tier schools.
You know if the Japanese government would like to
send me a round trip ticket and provide lodging and
a small stipend I would be very happy to come to
Japan and do my very best to help increase the
population. Just out of international cooperation
mind you.
As for Coming of Age day. I love seeing pictures of
the ladies. I think they look so beautiful in their
Kimonos. I think kimonos are a national treasure.
@marie hmmm, as for observations, ‘enough of my ramblings’ I guess I mostly added because we in my country have a tendency towards self-deprecation, much like the japanese. Saying joozujearimasen or making light of my own opinion comes easily to me for that reason. Cultural baggage, ain’t it wonderful?
SERVICE ZANGYO!!