Japan must hoist the 'Immigrants Welcome" flag

[Takechanpoo]

on the basis of their Japanese ancestry

most of them are not descendants of japanese. they payed money and got adopted with family resister brokers in their home country.

[Samurai_Jerk]

on the basis of their Japanese ancestry

most of them are not descendants of japanese. they payed money and got adopted with family resister brokers in their home country.

Bullshit. Some of them did that but most are Nikkei.

[Mike Oxlong]

Japan population shrinks by one million census confirms

New census figures in Japan show the population has shrunk by nearly one million in the past five years, in the first decline registered since 1920.
As of October last year the country has 127.1 million people, 0.7% fewer than in the last census.

Demographers have long predicted a drop, citing Japan's falling birth rate and a lack of immigration.

The rapidly ageing population has contributed to a stagnating economy and worries of increasing health costs.

Sharp drop-offs

Japan now has 947,000 fewer people than when the last census was conducted in 2010, figures released by the internal affairs ministry show.

Only eight prefectures, including the capital Tokyo, saw a population increase, national broadcaster NHK. reported.

The remaining 39 all saw declines, including Fukushima which saw the largest drop of 115,000 people.

Fukushima, site of the doomed nuclear power station, was hit especially badly by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Japan has seen population growth for much of the past century, but this has been slowing rapidly in recent decades. The last census showed the population had completely stopped growing.

Friday's numbers mark the first time a decline has been recorded in the census.

Researchers are predicting a sharp drop-off in the working population and a simultaneous rise in the number of elderly in coming decades.

According to government projections, by 2060 about 40% of its citizens will be sixty-five or older, and the general population will be one-third smaller than it is now.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made it a priority to boost the birthrate from 1.4 children to 1.8 children per woman, including improving childcare and tax incentives. Advanced economies usually require a rate of at least 2.1 for a stable population.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35666274

[Russell]

Japan population shrinks by one million census confirms

New census figures in Japan show the population has shrunk by nearly one million in the past five years, in the first decline registered since 1920.
As of October last year the country has 127.1 million people, 0.7% fewer than in the last census.

Demographers have long predicted a drop, citing Japan's falling birth rate and a lack of immigration.

The rapidly ageing population has contributed to a stagnating economy and worries of increasing health costs.

Sharp drop-offs

Japan now has 947,000 fewer people than when the last census was conducted in 2010, figures released by the internal affairs ministry show.

Only eight prefectures, including the capital Tokyo, saw a population increase, national broadcaster NHK. reported.

The remaining 39 all saw declines, including Fukushima which saw the largest drop of 115,000 people.

Fukushima, site of the doomed nuclear power station, was hit especially badly by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Japan has seen population growth for much of the past century, but this has been slowing rapidly in recent decades. The last census showed the population had completely stopped growing.

Friday's numbers mark the first time a decline has been recorded in the census.

Researchers are predicting a sharp drop-off in the working population and a simultaneous rise in the number of elderly in coming decades.

According to government projections, by 2060 about 40% of its citizens will be sixty-five or older, and the general population will be one-third smaller than it is now.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made it a priority to boost the birthrate from 1.4 children to 1.8 children per woman, including improving childcare and tax incentives. Advanced economies usually require a rate of at least 2.1 for a stable population.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35666274

Let's hope Japan doesn't hold a census every week, because then they wouldn't have left any population within the next 2 years...

[kurogane]

I get that at least part of the point of most such articles is to punish Japan for not doing as Whitey says and allowing the mass immigration that has been such an unqualified boon to so many Western societies (esp. this past summer), but I find it amazing there is such little discussion of controlled or strategic shrinkage. I am wearing a merino wool cardigan I bought at The Gap 4 or 5 years ago from the Seconds rack for about $9 Cdn. It's sized as an XXL but some hot water washes and a clothes dryer have made it a comfortable L size. It also tightened up the knit to make it softer and more durable. It probably looks a bit ratty, but it fits fine and serves its purpose.

[Grumpy Gramps]

Japan population shrinks by one million census confirms

in the first decline registered since 1920.

So during WWII, when they were culled like sick chicken, thay still kept a growth rate going? The grand parents of today's generation must have been busy like rabbits; respect

But I think that a population of 10 to 15 million would be fine for Japan and left everyone with enough space and food for a comfy life. So nothing to worry, really.

[Coligny]

I get that at least part of the point of most such articles is to punish Japan for not doing as Whitey says and allowing the mass immigration that has been such an unqualified boon to so many Western societies (esp. this past summer), but I find it amazing there is such little discussion of controlled or strategic shrinkage. I am wearing a merino wool cardigan I bought at The Gap 4 or 5 years ago from the Seconds rack for about $9 Cdn. It's sized as an XXL but some hot water washes and a clothes dryer have made it a comfortable L size. It also tightened up the knit to make it softer and more durable. It probably looks a bit ratty, but it fits fine and serves its purpose.

Autumn was also a bit eventfull...

[Samurai_Jerk]

I find it amazing there is such little discussion of controlled or strategic shrinkage.

That would go against the success necessarily equals growth meme that everyone has been programmed to believe so no politician wants to have that discussion. It's one that's going to have to be had at some point though.

[kurogane]

Good point. That would be the other silent elephant in the room. It does make for great discussions amongst the postwar Oyaji's. I sincerely adore how they can maintain 2 mutually contradictory propositions and still smile so smugly. Culture is wunderbah. I would mention that a lot of under 40s types seem to get the no or low growth model, if only by lived experience, but of course, they don't vote. Or discuss shit other than what's new in Akihabara or at manga cafes. At any rate, the latest round of immigration proposals seem dead in the water from what I read and heard. Which is a lot smarter than the European fuckfest.

[yanpa]

Japan population shrinks by one million census confirms

in the first decline registered since 1920.

So during WWII, when they were culled like sick chicken, thay still kept a growth rate going? The grand parents of today's generation must have been busy like rabbits; respect

Net growth of 12 million between 1940 and 1950:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Japan

which is still 10 million up over 1945. There's a net growth of 5 million between the 1940 and the 1947 census: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%BD ... 6%9C%AC%29

So yes, until now there's always been a population increase from one census to the next. Also: WWII failed as a population control measure.

[dimwit]

WWII did reduce the population of Japan, but the return of thousands of Japanese colonists from Taiwan, China, Korea, Manchuria resulted in an population increase. The same thing happened in Germany. Western Germany saw a huge increase in their post war population due to the ethnic cleansing in Poland, the Czech Rerpublic and elsewhere.

[Mike Oxlong]

The gubbermint acts as though it thinks being just in the top 10 in world pop is somehow important.

[Russell]

Japan population shrinks by one million census confirms

in the first decline registered since 1920.

So during WWII, when they were culled like sick chicken, thay still kept a growth rate going? The grand parents of today's generation must have been busy like rabbits; respect

Net growth of 12 million between 1945 and 1950:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Japan

which is still 10 million up over 1945. There's a net growth of 5 million between the 1940 and the 1947 census: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%BD ... 6%9C%AC%29

So yes, until now there's always been a population increase from one census to the next. Also: WWII failed as a population control measure.

And don't discount all those Merican soldiers in Japan after the war contributing to the birth rate...

[Samurai_Jerk]

These are the 20 countries about to grow bigger than a shrinking Japan

Japan is good at making lots of things—except more Japanese. In its latest census, Japan’s population shrank by one million people.

The decline is expected to continue indefinitely. Having topped out at around 128 million, by the end of the century only around 80 million Japanese will remain, according to the UN. Of course, forecasting anything that far into the future is an inexact science. But nobody doubts Japan’s daunting demographics, with an aging, shrinking population making it harder to grow the economy, balance the government’s books, and replace retired workers.

To put Japan’s dwindling population in perspective, consider its steady slide in the rankings: from the fifth-largest country in 1950 to 10th today and 30th in 2100. Its financial might won’t fall as fast as that, but its current struggles to revive a moribund economy presage the struggles ahead.

During the lifetime of kids born today, the distribution of the world’s population will change markedly—the charts below show the 20 countries that will grow larger than Japan between now and 2100; 15 of them are in Africa.

[Russell]

Could Japan become a future cultural melting pot?

Human brotherhood is a beautiful ideal. We’re all human. Differences of skin color, body odor, facial features, language, culture, religion, citizenship and so on veil — but only lightly — our shared humanity. They have fueled hatred, and continue to, perhaps more so of late; but they need not, and one day will not. Japan can point the way.

Among the more eloquent spokesmen for that ideal is Hidenori Sakanaka, former director of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau and current executive director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, which he founded in 2005. Why not, he has been saying since then, welcome 10 million immigrants to Japan by 2050?

It’s a hard sell. Japan hypes its warmhearted omotenashi (hospitality) toward foreign visitors. Foreign residents are another matter. No Japanese government has ever been voted out of office for strictly limiting their numbers. Human brotherhood does not, on the surface, seem a Japanese forte.

Sakanaka, writing in the weekly Shukan Kinyobi, argues otherwise. For him it’s a question of national survival. One possible interpretation of figures released earlier this month by the government’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research is that Japan is dying of demographic anemia.

More

There he's again...

[Taka-Okami]

Sorry, multiculturalism doesn't work. All you get is a cesspit of every group trying to get advantage over the other.
I predict many civil wars developing in the future and countries breaking up along ethnic lines. It's only logical. The trigger will be mass economic collapse.

[Wage Slave]

Sorry, multiculturalism doesn't work. All you get is a cesspit of every group trying to get advantage over the other.

London, New York,Singapore don't work? Seems to me what doesn't work are monocultural backwater cities/areas with little education, vitality and dynamism. What's noticeable in the UK is that the areas with the strongest UKIP support have no or very very few immigrants to go with their economic decline.

[Taka-Okami]

Rawanda, Yugoslavia and a host of other multicultural shitholes worked well didn't it. Mark my words. When the economies properly collapse there WILL be hell to pay.

I recently had a few trips to Malaysia (not tourist) and that joint is a powder keg. Chinese hate the Malay's and vice versa. Same around Southern thailand. You've got your head so far up your arse Wageslave, you have no clue how the world really works.

[Wage Slave]

Up yours too you halfwit.

[Tsuru]

The real reason population growth is an absolute must for the economy is that without it, the debt-based fractional reserve banking system comes crashing down and the exponential growth demanded by shareholders is definitely no longer possible. More people means more ability to create and sustain debt and thereby grow the economy for the minority who currently accumulate the wealth. Managed population decline should be a serious option instead of simply telling people they should sell their souls just to "save the economy", whatever the hell that actually means. Besides, most western nations are already eating themselves at top speed to satisfy shareholder greed, by stagnating wages and reducing employee protection even with mass immigration in play.

So no.

[Grumpy Gramps]

without it, the debt-based fractional reserve banking system comes crashing down

Happens to every ponzi scheme sooner or later.

[Coligny]

London

ehmmmm

New York

Say what ?

Singapore

aww boy...

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

The real reason population growth is an absolute must for the economy is that without it, the debt-based fractional reserve banking system comes crashing down and the exponential growth demanded by shareholders is definitely no longer possible. More people means more ability to create and sustain debt and thereby grow the economy for the minority who currently accumulate the wealth. Managed population decline should be a serious option instead of simply telling people they should sell their souls just to "save the economy", whatever the hell that actually means. Besides, most western nations are already eating themselves at top speed to satisfy shareholder greed, by stagnating wages and reducing employee protection even with mass immigration in play.

So no.

[Wage Slave]

the debt-based fractional reserve banking system comes crashing down and the exponential growth demanded by shareholders is definitely no longer possible.

You a commie?

Haven't banks always been debt-based fractional reserve. Is there any other way to run a bank? I'm not sure shareholders are in much of a position to demand anything as the board always has proxy voting on their side. And anyway shareholders don't demand exponential returns - they might dream of them but anyone who knows what the word exponential means knows it's almost always impossible. Shareholders take risk and hope to get a return commensurate with that risk.

I'm more worried by the way that the people who run big companies are free of any control, including shareholders, to take risk, to enrich themselves, to tax dodge and get bailouts when they need them.

[Wage Slave]

I get it. People feel poorer and people feel humiliated so they blame foreign people for taking all those low paid jobs as care workers, bus drivers, nurses, waiting staff, cleaners, farm labourers and such. And they blame foreign people in China and Mexico working away for low wages to produce cheap smartphones, car parts and all the rest of it leaving the local factories closed and shuttered for good. It's competitive as hell, they are more and more ill equipped to compete and the pay rates/terms of employment get worse and worse. But here's an interesting take - Perhaps the real problem is the broadly meritocratic nature of our countries leading to a deeply entrenched elite and a very angry rest of.

Until that time status was generally ascribed by birth. But irrespective of people's birth, status has gradually become more achievable.

It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others. Ability of a conventional kind, which used to be distributed between the classes more or less at random, has become much more highly concentrated by the engine of education. A social revolution has been accomplished by harnessing schools and universities to the task of sieving people according to education's narrow band of values. With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before.

The new class has the means at hand, and largely under its control, by which it reproduces itself. The more controversial prediction and the warning followed from the historical analysis. I expected that the poor and the disadvantaged would be done down, and in fact they have been. If branded at school they are more vulnerable for later unemployment. They can easily become demoralised by being looked down on so woundingly by people who have done well for themselves. It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that.

They have been deprived by educational selection of many of those who would have been their natural leaders, the able spokesmen and spokeswomen from the working class who continued to identify with the class from which they came. Their leaders were a standing opposition to the rich and the powerful in the never-ending competition in parliament and industry between the haves and the have-nots. With the coming of the meritocracy, the now leaderless masses were partially disfranchised; as time has gone by, more and more of them have been disengaged, and disaffected to the extent of not even bothering to vote. They no longer have their own people to represent them.

{snip}

In the new social environment, the rich and the powerful have been doing mighty well for themselves. They have been freed from the old kinds of criticism from people who had to be listened to. This once helped keep them in check - it has been the opposite under the Blair government. The business meritocracy is in vogue. If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side.

So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited. Salaries and fees have shot up. Generous share option schemes have proliferated. Top bonuses and golden handshakes have multiplied. As a result, general inequality has been becoming more grievous with every year that passes, and without a bleat from the leaders of the party who once spoke up so trenchantly and characteristically for greater equality.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

[matsuki]

Tokyo Metropolitan University professor Kiyoto Tanno. “I think, the current environment being what it is,” he argues in a separate Shukan Kinyobi piece, “that immigrants are best advised not to come here.” Circumstances are such, he says, that “if they do come, they won’t be happy.”

That is unfortunate, in his view, because Tanno, like Sakanaka, believes Japan would be the better for a foreign infusion. He doubts it’s equipped to receive one, however. He sees the foreign workers here — numbering 1.08 million as of October 2016 — being treated more as commodities than as human beings. Legal restrictions of their length of stay and occupational mobility constitute, in effect, a cynical invitation to meet Japan’s temporary labor needs and then go home. The U.S. and the EU, he says, are more flexible in that regard.

Tanno "gets it"

Sakanaka suggests reasons. Europe generated ideals but Christian monotheism — “only my religion is right, all others are wrong” — hindered their flowering. The U.S., historically “an immigration society,” was built partly on slavery, “the New World’s original sin.” Japan has its faults, but religious exclusivism and mass enslavement are not among them.

Hard to take anyone seriously when they refer to the Americas as "the New World" but last I checked, "Mass Enslavement" was not a current issue in the US nor does Japan have a past free of "Mass Enslavement."

Religious exclusivity is definitely present in certain areas but religious tolerance is still held as an ideal, is protected by law, and if the growth of atheism is any indicator, is likely to be less of an issue in the future.

A less tainted past can, Sakanaka hopes, make for a more humane future.

SDH, care to comment on Japan's "less tainted past?"

Rawanda, Yugoslavia and a host of other multicultural shitholes worked well didn't it. Mark my words. When the economies properly collapse there WILL be hell to pay.

I recently had a few trips to Malaysia (not tourist) and that joint is a powder keg. Chinese hate the Malay's and vice versa. Same around Southern thailand. You've got your head so far up your arse Wageslave, you have no clue how the world really works.

I just came back from Johor yesterday. Felt no hate no matter where I was and most everyone was friendly. The people I spent the most time with were quite proud of the multicultural society and were far from self-segregating....though you can't become/stay Malaysian citizen if you're not a registered follow of Islam. On the other hand, besides the censorship and taxes on non-islamic goods like alcohol, it seemed to work pretty well for foreigners.

[wagyl]

last I checked, "Mass Enslavement" was not a current issue in the US

A little bit of Devil's advocacy here, but I don't think anyone can deny lingering racial issues in the US, and I don't think anyone can deny that they are as a result of a past history of slavery.

[matsuki]

last I checked, "Mass Enslavement" was not a current issue in the US

A little bit of Devil's advocacy here, but I don't think anyone can deny lingering racial issues in the US, and I don't think anyone can deny that they are as a result of a past history of slavery.

Indeed, no denying either of those but the way the article presents "Mass Enslavement" as there is still mass slavery in the US....and tries to claim Japan doesn't have the same fault.

[Coligny]

[Tsuru]

the debt-based fractional reserve banking system comes crashing down and the exponential growth demanded by shareholders is definitely no longer possible.

You a commie?

Haven't banks always been debt-based fractional reserve. Is there any other way to run a bank? I'm not sure shareholders are in much of a position to demand anything as the board always has proxy voting on their side. And anyway shareholders don't demand exponential returns - they might dream of them but anyone who knows what the word exponential means knows it's almost always impossible. Shareholders take risk and hope to get a return commensurate with that risk.

I'm more worried by the way that the people who run big companies are free of any control, including shareholders, to take risk, to enrich themselves, to tax dodge and get bailouts when they need them.

I don't know, lots of younger people in the states are currently moving away from the too-big-to-fail commercial banks and into local credit unions for their savings, checking and even mortgages and car loans. Increased ATM access and internet banking has opened up a lot of new possibilities.

Re shareholders, someone please tell them.

https://twitter.com/latimes/status/8577 ... 90/photo/1