Japan, the world’s second largest economy, is facing a demographic crisis that will shrink the population dramatically. The Japanese aren’t having babies, and the country won’t accept immigrants to help bolster the population. But Japan may have a unique solution — Robots! (Via current.com)
This 30 minutes documentary discusses several social problems modern Japanese society is facing. Japan’s low birthrate is caused by several factors. One being the recent tendency of Japanese women to postpone their motherhood to pursue career. Over 50% of Japanese women in their 30s are still singles. According to interview with the former chief of Tokyo’s Immigration Bureau, Hidenori Sakanaka, the population decrease will still proceed even though the future married couples give birth to 2 children.
Second, the video shows Lucia, a Japan resident of Korean ethnicity. Lucia was born and raised in Japan and has to pay taxes like any ethnic Japanese. However, she is still considered as foreigner, thus has to register for alien registration ID and does not possess the right to vote. In order to get the right to vote and same civil rights as ethnic Japanese, she has to give up her Korean name and adopt Japanese one.
Next, the reporter interviews a representative from a labor union, Nakajima Hiroshi. Hiroshi says that without immigrant workers, Japanese auto industry would not be able to produce even a single car, but many Japanese do not realize what immigrants contribute to the country.
The documentary shows interview video with some people on the street where they think the increase of foreigner population in Japan will only worsen the country criminal rate. Saitama University professor, Ohno Goro, an author of a book titled “Accepting Foreigner Will Only Worsen Japan”, said that the working condition for immigrant workers are terrible because Japanese corporations just want cheap labors. That results in worsening labor conditions and higher crime rates. Ohno Goro also said that Japan actually has big population and is not in shortage of workers. Some surplus worker from one place just need to be moved to another place and replace human workers with robots.
The former chief of Tokyo’s Immigration Bureau, Hidenori Sakanaka, said that Japanese people are relatively open and not outwardly racist, however, he questions whether Japanese society would fully embrace foreigners or be willing to learn from other cultures.
In the end, the documentary shows some cool home robots.