Japan Is Bringing in More Foreigners Than You Think
The declining population gets all the headlines, but the country is quietly preparing for a future with much greater immigration.
Pedestrians crossing a street in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district during the heat wave.
Photographer: Soichiro Koriyama/BloombergNew statistics regularly pop up to illustrate the accelerating decline of Japan’s population. Last week, the first-ever drop of locals in all 47 prefectures made headlines. Numbers even began to decline in Okinawa, which has the country’s highest birthrate.
At this stage, it’s common knowledge that Japan isn’t an outlier when it comes to low fertility rates, merely a frontrunner. The same demographic crunch is starting to hit other nations, notably South Korea and China. Fertility in every European Union country is below replacement level. When the debate quickly turns to the benefits of immigration, Japan is often painted as hostile, if not downright xenophobic, and rejecting the choice of foreign workers.