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Comment by extant_lifeform | Hacker News Reader

@akmittal japan is a pretty small country but the third largest economy in the world. Have you considered japan does not need that many people? Just because a nation's population is declining does not mean it should start importing foreign nationals.

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Some people just want open space, but that is far from being the most important factor of determining where people want to live. Otherwise we'd expect Africa to be a popular place for immigrants, comparable to the US. And Russia would be far better than either. And Singapore would be utter nonsense.

Actually, the very existence of cities and countrysides goes against this idea (and there is indeed open space in Japan.)

> japan is a pretty small country

It's not. It has the 11th most populous country in the world. Sure, it ranks lower in terms of area but it's still much larger than a median nation state. Japan is actually slightly larger than Germany. Nobody ever says Germany is a pretty small country.

There's massive labour shortage in JP. There's more foreign workers from Asia than ever. But I wager JP will adopt foreign worker model like ME petro states versus immigration model.

I agree with the sentiment, but it’s not small in the sense of population. It has twice as many people as France or UK.

Japan's population is actually relatively small for it's size, especially when you consider how densely populated it is.

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