Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottlawson | Hacker News Reader

They are referring to:

a) the fact that Japan's birthrate is below the number needed to sustain the current population

b) the fact that Japan is ethnically homogenous (98.5% ethnically Japanese), and has very limited channels for immigration, meaning that japan, with the policies that exist today, will not be able to significantly mitigate the population decline by accepting immigrants.

Japan takes a very different approach compared to countries like Canada, which is a melting pot of cultures and which has an increasing population largely due to immigration

View on HN

Japan has a way to go, but gradually they're thinking more about immigration as a necessity, which was pretty much never an issue before. In those Japanese newspapers I read there are more and more articles about how local governments and also the national government are (economically) supporting companies giving language training to immigrant workers, with the idea that they want them to stay. Similarly, some cities are setting up programs which try to get foreign students to stay after graduation. There's still much which has to change (see comments by others). But it's still a bit behind and the population will almost certainly continue to decline for some years, as it has for a decade now.

Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration. Japan is going to have to be more welcoming of non-Japanese people.

None of the countries you mention have ages old strong own culture to preserve really (except first nations but for various reasons their culture is not US or Canada culture).

So Japan's policy is not unreasonable. You can become a proper Japanese if you want to (are willing to culturally integrate), it's just that not many people do. Without it you'd be trading off death of country for death of culture. Contrast to China or Thailand where AFAIK you are always second class citizen legally if you are "wrong" ethnicity.

this isnt true at all, in practice. there’s so much onerous bureacracy, kafkaesque visa policies, and the fact that even naturalised individuals will still be othered.

japanese nationality is tied to ethnicity so much due to how homogenous the society is

"othering" at social level probably exists, but you are mixing up culture and ethnicity, there is division and kind of caste system within "homogenous" Japan too, see burakumin issue for eg.

so legally for a foreigner the policy seems reasonable, just there is a lot of FUD spread by people who felt entitled to become Japanese with little effort and suffered reality check, see eg. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj855k5066o

> have ages old strong own culture

Modern Japanese culture has its roots almost entirely in the 19th century and the post WW2 era.

This is nonsense. "Post WW2" describes current modern Japanese culture, not its root. The root goes way back to hundreds/thousands of years BC, they continuously lived on those exact islands and spoke a similar language all that time. Unlike US or Canada which are a new amalgamation of English/French/Spanish/German/Jewish/AA/Native/whatever cultures without any single root. Not to say US or Canadian culture is worse or better, just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique.

> not its root

You might as well say that US culture has its roots in ancient Greece or Rome, or Reformation age Europe and claim it’s hundreds or even thousands years old. It would be worth about as much.

But yeah I agree with you in the sense that US/Canada are constantly affected by a constant influx of people belonging to different cultures.

Had there been barely any immigration after ~1800 American culture would be effectively as old and unique as the Japanese one. Quebec for instance is kind of (but not quite) like that.

> just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique.

Well they already did during the Meiji period and subsequently, what remains is not that significant.

Also what are your thoughts on Britain, Scandinavian and some other European countries? They would be effectively no different to Japan in this sense besides the fact that they have very large numbers immigrants.

> You might as well say that US culture has its roots in ancient Greece or Rome, or Reformation age Europe and claim it’s hundreds or even thousands years old.

No. Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Slavs, Turks, Arabs, Mongols etc, different peoples have their respective roots for sure, but those roots are elsewhere. Once you move across the ocean and mingle with a bunch of others coming from radically different backgrounds and histories, different mutually unintelligible languages and incompatible religions it's a completely different story than if you live at the same locality, speak the same language and carry broadly similar values and beliefs as N generations and thousands of years back. Except for first nations, people of US and Canada are still very much guests on their soil if you compare those timescales (actually even first nations may have settled Canada a bit later than Japanese settled Japan by skimming Wikipedia but that I'm not sure). From inside one of those new cultures (who are cool and unique in their own ways, sure) it can be easy to miss the significance.

One might argue that Christian European culture is a thing and that US was/is part of it.

> From inside one of those new cultures (who are cool and unique in their own ways, sure) it can be easy to miss the significance.

A lot of assumptions.. I live in Europe and belong to supposedly one of the fairly ancient cultures according to this definition. It doesn’t seem any less silly to me because of that.

Unless Japan is supposedly exceptionally special somehow in that regard? I don’t think it is, most unique things about its culture have their roots in the 19th or 20th century (just like European countries or the US).

> Japanese settled Japan by skimming Wikipedia but that I'm not sure

The Ainu might have. The settlers/invaders from China or Korea whose culture later developed into what we know as Japan only began arriving in the archipelago around 300 BC (so less ancient than the Greeks or Romans). Also much closer to the establishment of US than to first nation people migrating into the Americas.

Good point, it's special due to isolation, many countries in Europe do have traditions but no such policies like Japan's, to integrate migrants from wherever (slavic, middle eastern, african asian, other european countries etc.), so those cultures are now quite diluted.

> You can become a proper Japanese if you want to

I'm really not sure about that. I'm a white man with red hair, I'm pretty sure I'd always be "otherized" in Japan, as would most westerners.

Check out the video linked. That guy is similar.

The question is legal equality, which seems possible and not depend on color of your hair.

Of course some Japanese will treat you differently. They will also otherize and treat differently even their fellow ethnic Japanese of other social classes. But I think this is not really different from British, Russian or many other cultures (maybe except US or Canada which are more melting pot like). It's just harder to notice from inside the culture.

> Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration.

Australia's immigration rate, on a per capita basis, is more than double that of the US, and somewhat ahead of Canada's. [0] It has a lower total fertility rate [1] than the US (1.73 for Australia vs 1.84 for US), but still a higher TFR than Canada (1.57), and I suspect having double the immigration rate is probably going to make up for the somewhat lower fertility. And I think you are missing more countries than just Australia.

While in absolute terms, the US accepts more immigrants than any other country in the world, on a per capita basis, its net immigration rate isn't particularly high, and is below that of many Western European countries.

Likewise, US total fertility, while high by Western standards, is not the highest in the Western world; France is significantly higher at 2.02; Ireland and Iceland also beat the US at fertility, and Norway is only just behind the US.

[0] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/net-migration-r...

[1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...

And yet, Australia's population is slated to decline, while the US is not.

> And yet, Australia's population is slated to decline, while the US is not.

Slated to decline according to whom? According to the most recent projections published by Australia's national statistics agency, [0] Australia's population is projected to continuously increase through 2066, ending up at somewhere between 37 and 49 million (compared to around 26 million today). The only projection of theirs according to which it will decline is the highly unrealistic "zero net migration" scenario.

[0] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/populati...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com