Tomorrow World in Japan?

After yesterday's entry I got to thinking about how Japan and Korea are suffering from decreasing birth rates. There's all this hubbub about what's going to happen when the current generation retires, like how there won't be enough people putting money into the pension system to support all the retirees (it's already running out of money so pension checks are being reduced and cut).

America's birthrate is decreasing too, but there isn't much of a labor shortage thanks to the influx of immigrants. Japan is pretty xenophobic that way. People who aren't racially Japanese can't become citizens even if they were born and raised here, which seems so weird to me. There are tons of Koreans in this situation - they've spent their entire lives in Japan but aren't recognized as Japanese, and neither are their children nor grandchildren because they're racially Korean. I think the mindset of the people is changing and people are becoming more open to the idea of interracial marriages and having foreigners in their midst, but there's still a long way to go.

So how do you increase the population without accepting immigrants? The government gives monetary bonuses to families when a child is born, and a while back there was a mayor who suggested increasing taxes for single women as a penalty for not having children, which would be completely unthinkable in America (I picture rioting women burning the guy's house down). Call me crazy but I don't think that's going to solve the decreasing population problem. As if people are going to have children for a tax break, especially when educational fees and the cost of living totally outweigh whatever monetary bonus you'd receive.

The population decrease is easy to see in this area . . . schools are closing every year because there aren't enough children to justify a full staff of teachers, and some towns don't even have high schools anymore (the kids commute to neighboring towns). Take the school I work at for instance: ten years ago there were 400 students per grade. Since then the school has had to substantially relax its admission standards (there are some real lugnuts in class) while having a student body of only 160. There's talk about merging with another school across town that's having the same problem. If the two decide to merge there'll be 320 students per grade, but it would only be a temporary solution seeing as the population is steadily decreasing.

How can there be half the number of students in only ten years? It seems this area is additionally suffering from the emigration of people who move to big cities like Tokyo and Osaka to find better jobs, then stay there to raise families. From a teacher's point of view I'd have to support that move; children who live in bigger cities seem to get a better education. I know that sounds like a terrible stereotype, but it seems to be true - almost all of my top students are those that were raised in big cities like Fukuoka or Tokyo, then moved here recently. On the other hand my students on the lower end were all born and raised here. Could just be a coincidence though.

Anyhow I'm curious to see how things turn out. Forty years from now Japan might implode in upon itself from labor shortage. Actually if the ocean levels keep rising there might not even be a Japan in forty years, like the situation with Palau now.