As most Japanese know, a high proportion of the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami were elderly. This reflected the particular demography of the destroyed districts and the greater vulnerability of slow-moving senior citizens to an advancing ocean wave.
As most Japanese know, a high proportion of the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami were elderly. This reflected the particular demography of the destroyed districts and the greater vulnerability of slow-moving senior citizens to an advancing ocean wave.
But the underlying cause for this statistic is that Japan is an aged society that is quickly growing even older. Many of the fatalities were elderly. To put it simply, there are not that many youngsters left in Japan, so the tsunami claimed fewer young lives.
One solution to Japan's demographic predicament is immigration. It is not the only one, but it is part of the equation. Bringing in new blood from overseas can make a contribution to overcoming population decline.
Additionally, but of equal importance, newcomers could help make Japan more dynamic. Research and first-hand evidence demonstrate how immigrants energize a society. This includes highly skilled workers, for example, those who have made it possible for California to lead the world in information technology and for London to establish itself as a global financial center.
But less well-educated foreigners, frequently even more motivated and hard-working than those with advanced degrees, also play an important role in making their new homelands richer.
Small shops are an obvious example, as anybody who travels in Europe (and even more in North America) is aware. These workers also provide much-needed assistance in the labor-intensive areas of elderly care and child care. This, in turn, helps free adults from some of their family chores, allowing both parents to work, particularly arduous in Japan where day care and other support systems are insufficient.
Fortunately for the country, opportunities to attract foreigners have seldom been better. Populist politics have poisoned the climate in much of the West, as we have seen with the rise of the Tea Party in the United States, the success of extremist politicians in Europe and the growing acceptance of immigrant-bashing in "respectable" political parties in the West.
In the United States, several legislatures have engaged in what amounts to a contest to demonstrate who is the most self-destructively anti-immigrant. In Europe, both the British and French governments want to cut down on legal immigration (though Britain's resurgence since the 1980s owes much to immigration, and the French president's father was Hungarian while his maternal grandfather came from the Turkish Empire). One side effect of the Eurozone sovereign debts crises has been to lift the fortunes of movements such as the True Finns populist political party in Finland, who are part of this anti-globalization wave.
These developments offer Japan an opportunity to take advantage of the Western impulse to return to an idealized form of "sakoku," in which the world is kept at bay as it was in Japan in the Edo Period (1603-1867). In the market for immigrants, Japan finds it difficult to compete with the Western world.
Most non-Japanese view Japan as a closed society that offers them fewer opportunities than do the New World and Europe. This is particularly the case when it comes those with the most education and talent, who can, as the American expression goes, "write their own ticket." But if these dynamic foreigners find it too hard or impossible to settle in the West, they could take another look at Japan.
Obviously, this would require radical changes to Japanese immigration policy. Achieving them would not be easy. Though the socioeconomic and demographic factors that have fueled populism in the West are less powerful in Japan, they are not totally absent.
To most voters, it is counterintuitive to think that in a period of un- and underemployment, immigration would be good for the nation and for them. Yet the earthquake and the ensuing Fukushima nuclear disaster and electricity shortage might be put to use to justify a radical departure from traditional policy. It may be that the damage caused by the 3/11 tremor and its aftermath will not be sufficient to generate enough sense of urgency.
But it would appear logical for the Cabinet to at least try to do so.
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Robert Dujarric is director at Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University, Japan Campus, Tokyo.