[DashRattlesnake]

> I really don't see a way out for Japan that's not immigration.

That's a pretty small-minded and dogmatic statement; it basically amounts to "copy US policy, it's the only way." At some point, someone in the world is going to actually have to solve the problem of stagnant or declining populations, without copping out and just importing new populations from elsewhere.

[mkaziz]

I mean, the US way works. Immigration, especially of skilled labour, lends real tangible benefits to the US, its growth, and its culture.

[pdx]

Immigration of skilled labor is always valuable. Japan, the US, France, Germany, etc should always welcome it, and should have policies that allow people with verified and needed skills to immigrate.

However, drowning your citizens in a sea of immigrants is cultural suicide. If your culture is such that it has allowed your ancestors to build a country that immigrants want to flee their own countries to live in, then your culture is worth preserving, rather than allowing it to be replaced by the culture of those who would happily flood into it.

That means, you can't solve your demographic problems by opening the floodgates. Instead, you need to fix the economic problems that are making people hesitant to have children in the first place.

[mkaziz]

It's not a floodgates vs nothing situation. You can certainly decide on an appropriate rate that you're comfortable with - enough to jumpstart the economy but not enough to completely drown out the host culture.

[ng12]

Hasn't Japan already done that? Secondly, I think it's very Western-centric viewpoint that your country's economy comes before everything else.

[BoysenberryPi]

I mean without a strong economy everything else around it kinda goes to shit.

[ng12]

As an American I'm inclined to agree, but I still think that's for the Japanese to decide.

[akhilcacharya]

Well, that "US way" has worked better than every other developed country in that respect, why not adopt it?

[jimmywanger]

The US was amazingly gifted by geography and natural resources.

Trying to credit America's success on the "US Way" is fallacious - I don't think we'd be much worse off if we were ruled by a monarchy, or even an extremely ethnically homogenous culture, since we're protected by two oceans, have massive oil and mineral and forest reserves, and had the native population decimated by infectious diseases before we moved in.

[doall]

Because there are huge side effects by copying the "US way". If you want a much smaller scale and a weaker version of the US then adopt it. That is definitely not what the Japanese people want.

[mkaziz]

Right, and the current situation is one such consequence of that. Of course they could try something else - they've been trying since the 90's from what I understand, with mixed results at best.

[bionsuba]

We do not live in a one variable world.

You can't ascribe the position of the US solely to its immigration policies. Especially since it's impossible to correlate immigration trends in recent years in the US to economic trends.

[grillvogel]

japanese culture predates "the US way" by thousands of years.

[astrange]

Modern Japan was founded in 1868 and then destroyed and rebuilt again in WW2. The people have been there that long, but the country and culture haven't.

[grillvogel]

i dont even know where to begin with how wrong this is. what culture is something like Todai-Ji a part of? since japan was apparently invented in 1868

[astrange]

Modern Japan isn't building Shinto shrines, they're making ugly concrete towers and those houses that seem to be made out of bathroom tile.

[krapp]

>what culture is something like Todai-Ji a part of?

China.

[grillvogel]

whatever you say

[pottersbasilisk]

You are absolutely right. Korea and Japan are investing heavily into robots.

[muh_gradle]

Korea has a lot of immigrants.

[pcurve]

not as many as Japan. Korean is a lot more homogeneous than Japan.