It is very sobering to consider the demographic cliff that Japan faces combined with the barriers the government puts up to immigration and naturalization.
I sincerely wonder what kind of country Japan will be in 50 years.
I sincerely wonder what kind of country Japan will be in 50 years.
If they just started allowing large numbers of people to become citizens, their culture, people, and society would rapidly shift in a way that their historical roots would have little place other than in the footnotes of history textbooks. Even their language itself could die.
I think the big take-away when both sides are saying the same thing, even if on a sort of horse-shoe of logic, is that the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
You've inadvertently described the US. A lot of our culture and traditions are a mismash of the immigrants who came before.
As for Japan being "pure" culturally, that's a fantasy conjured up by "nationalists" if you're generous or xenophobic racists when we're not.
The historical lineage of the Japanese includes continuous mixing with the Chinese and Koreans, alongside the Ainu and Ryukyuan. Elements considered central to traditional Japanese life were borrowed from neighboring civilizations like China, with Buddhism and rice cultivation being the most well known. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, and we haven't even gotten to the modern era.
That graph is by decade; the actual valley was probably more around 1965 because That's when a new immigration act was passed that greatly loosened the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent. Note that 14.8% includes all groups, including illegal aliens. The number of foreign born residents in Japan is, and has been, much lower.
[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/07/foreign-born-...
> It previously peaked at around 14.8% in the late 19th century. This started causing substantial anti-immigrant sentiment to emerge as it was felt to be having an overall negative affect on culture, society, labor, etc.
Yes, in the 19th century there was a lot of racism and prejudice directed towards the Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. Not surprisingly, they did not destroy US society or culture. Instead, the US absorbed respective parts of their cultures and assimulated all of their populations over decades. now they are an integral part of America
Why is it critically important to maintain a particular culture at a cost that is not sustainable? Why is allowing creation of a new culture, a mixture of multiple cultures, such a bad that thing? Particularly when a country is facing serious popular decline.
> the only really good solution is for the people within countries to actually start having a sustainable number of children again.
Never mind. I did not realize the solution was so simple. And I am surprised it did not occur to anybody else.
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
And yes, every country on earth has another culture/country they absolutely hate and consider them the villain. America included.
It seems to me like the conservatives change the targets of their culture wars often enough that I’m honestly not sure what your answer is going to be.
Because all evidence points to mixing cultures resulting in (extremely) low trust societies.
I mean no offense but both the US and Europe's demographic 'issues' probably don't look very attractive from a Japanese perspective.
Moved to Canada, heavy culture mix yet that "scam feeling" is gone, trust feels higher across the board.
But I'm sure you'd agree that if a culture changes 'quickly enough', it's not really changing it but basically deleting it. For instance I'm sure if you squint hard enough today, maybe there's some Native American influence on American culture, but for the most part we just destroyed it. And I don't think it was the violence, so much as the raw numbers. Something similar happened to the Maori in New Zealand without anywhere near the scale of violence, just lots of immigration and lots of babies.
So how fast will fertility change things? A fertility rate of 1 means each generation decreases in size by about 50%, but that's compounding. The length of a generation is proportional to the window of human fertility, which is about 20 years. So in an average human lifetime we'll each get to see around 4 generations play out. With a 50% compounding decline that means a generational decline in size of 94% in a human lifetime.
So if you want to try to deal with fertility declines with immigration, you're basically going to be replacing the entire population in extremely rapid order. So I don't think we really need to debate what 'quickly enough' means because it's way slower than what fertility collapse is going to do. And this is all far more true in places like Japan where you, out of necessity, are speaking of bringing in immigrants who the locals can't comfortably communicate with and who come from radically different cultures. So basically, from my perspective, I think you're speaking of having your cake and eating it too.
Are you basing this on history and data because America is country of immigrants and its culture has survived for hundreds of years now by absorbing the cultures of immigrants and assimilating them within 1 generation. I haven’t looked at the numbers as closely but I feel that Canada and Australia have largely done the same. The countries with major issues are the ones with little to no experience with assimilation like France, Germany, or the UK
Also Japan and South Korea have tried nearly everything sans immigration like media (shows promoting Natalism), monetary incentives and other benefits, and so on, but nothing even made a dent except for immigration. Why do you think there are so many foreign workers in Japan now? For show?
Fertility imo is an even harder problem to solve than immigration issues because it’s not just a socioeconomic issue. Pollution with endocrine disrupters like BPA and PFAS are the likely culprits but they’re too embedded in our supply chain and there’s even less incentive to fix them
That sentiment gradually led to various restrictions on immigration sending it to a valley of 4.7% in 1970. In 1965 a new immigration act was passed that loosed the requirements and immigration rates began skyrocketing to where they are today at around 14.8%, with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent.
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I 100% agree that getting fertility rates back up will be much harder than it was to bring them down, but fortunately I don't think environmental or other issues are playing a significant role yet, at least not in terms of direct infertility. The vast majority of people that are not having enough children are (or were) still fertile.
But ultimately it's not even a choice. On top of the cultural issues, I think immigration is simply also unrealistic on a long-term scale. All you do is just kick the can, and not even especially far. And even in places like South America, they're also experiencing a fertility rate collapse. Humanity is simply going to have to change how we're doing things, in a rather dramatic way.
It's not existential because it is the most absurdly self-correcting problem imaginable, but I'd rather we all just start having more babies than ending up in a world dominated by the e.g. Amish and Haredim. Though it'd be pretty funny if we do finally meet an alien intelligence, it turns out they went through the same sort of crisis, and as a result these enlightened aliens everybody has attributed every positive characteristic to end up being Space Mormons. 'Ah Earthling, can I have a minute to talk to you about Gazurazu the Great?'
[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/07/foreign-born-...
This is flawed because you're not even bothering to count the 2nd generation or generations after. The effect of immigration doesn't go away after the 1st.
> with rising anti-immigrant sentiment emerging for the same reasons, at almost exactly the same percent.
Yes, you've repeated this from another one of your comments. You're still pretending that assimulation doesn't happen.
"Yes, in the 19th century there was a lot of racism and prejudice directed towards the Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. Not surprisingly, they did not destroy US society or culture. Instead, the US absorbed respective parts of their cultures and assimulated all of their populations over decades. now they are an integral part of America"
> fortunately I don't think environmental or other issues are playing a significant role yet, at least not in terms of direct infertility > It's not existential because it is the most absurdly self-correcting problem imaginable
Unfortunately, there is mounting evidence that the more industrialized a country becomes, the more its populuation becomes infertile. Related studies account for socioeconomic changes i.e. even without socioeconomic changes like the sexual revolution, fertility would still trend down. Air pollutants, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and heavy metals are linked to reduced sperm motility in men and accelerated ovarian aging in women globally, even in places that are more traditional culturally. The only region untouched now is Central Africa.
> But ultimately it's not even a choice. On top of the cultural issues, I think immigration is simply also unrealistic on a long-term scale.
America has relied on it since its inception. It has only reversed course recently. It's been proven to work for hundreds of years now. Canada has also relied on it since the 1970s since their birthrate was no longer sustainable. They also only reversed course recently.
Based on US history, the number seems to be around 15% of the population being foreign born at any given time. This ballpark also seems to be playing out throughout Europe as well. Germany's at 20.9%, Sweden ~20%, UK 19%, and so on. The exceptions that exist like in the Mideast are quite different. For instance Saudi Arabia has around 40% of their population foreign born, but those are all just temporary workers who will never be granted citizenship, and live under a very two-tier system. The temporary residents do not have anywhere near the social impact people who might eventually become citizens, or live in the country forever, do.
Now getting back to fertility collapse. A shared fertility rate of 1 will trend towards you losing approximately 2.5% of your population per year, compounding. So after 80 years, a single human lifetime, you'd have lost 87% of your population. If we're speaking of maintaining population levels with immigration, you'd need to have 87% foreign born at that point in time. So what I'm getting at with the 15% is we can argue whether it's 10%, 15%, 25% or whatever else. But whatever the exact number of 'good' immigration may be, it's much less than 87%.
And furthermore, when you start looking at the actual numbers involved here, it is literally impossible. If we say e.g. 60% of the world, by population, is losing 80% of their population of that timeframe, then there literally are not enough people to replace them in the rest of the world. That'd be a population decline of 48% (of the global population) and only 40% of people in the rest of the world. And that's if you're willing to just accept literally anybody, regardless of whether they have any skills, education, or can even speak your language. It's just not realistic at all.
The core of that in turn is that capitalism treats human beings as replaceable and disposable cogs in the "earn me enough money for another yacht" machine and nobody wants to reproduce when treated that way.
Don't you like cultural diversity? Would you prefer the whole world to be culturally the same? It will not be a mishmash as you think, the new culture would be the culture of people with most kids. I doubt you would like it.
Not entirely sure what you are saying here. Are you saying that people should have the right to keep outsiders out? If so, yeah. Totally. But, if you are rapidly losing population, and the young ones are refusing to make a lot more babies, then your options are rather limited.
I strongly believe that if people directly saw the money themselves that comes from not demographically declining (or other financial benefits from properly organized immigration), they would immediately abandon all this stuff. I dont think people actually care if money is on the table. Unfortunately its too vague a process currently.
It's not that distinct. Their language has heavy Chinese influence, their religion originated in India, their cuisine has heavy Portuguese influence, and that isn't even getting into the massive amount of influence that America has had on Japanese culture. Besides, cultures always change over time, with or without immigration.
Making citizenship as hard as possible for acculturated foreigners is a good way to guarantee the culture will collapse from the inside out.
Racism and nationalism are cultural monkey traps. Sometimes you have to let go of the thing you're holding on to to keep it alive.
yes, you certainly can continuously replace the natives with outsiders from around the world. a number of countries had chosen to do that rather than address the reasons why the natives are no longer able to even maintain their numbers. but I'm rather baffled that such atrocity is celebrated by the very same people who endlessly harp about the capital being the root of all evil, for it is the capital who doesn't give a shit about ethnicity and culture of its indebted laborers. it's the rich you claim to want to eat who benefit, who are removed from the negative consequences of the policies they promote, and who are free to leave on a whim.
In 50 years they'll probably have a population of 90mil or something, which'd still be top 20, and probably comparable to the current population density of the UK.
Is it really such a crisis? Especially when AI is going to automate a lot of things away. It'd probably be more worrying if the population was exploding.
You could wonder the same if they would accept a massive influx foreigners, like Europe did.