And he’s absolutely right.

Japan lacks any law which prohibits racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination. The country also has no national human rights institutions.[3] Non-Japanese individuals in Japan often face human rights violations that Japanese citizens may not.[4] In recent years, non-Japanese media has reported that Japanese firms frequently confiscate the passports of guest workers in Japan, particularly unskilled laborers.[5][6]

…

In July 2005, a United Nations special rapporteur on racism and xenophobia expressed concerns about deep and profound racism in Japan and the Japanese government’s insufficient recognition of the problem.[108][109][110]

Doudou Diène (Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights) concluded after an investigation and nine-day tour of Japan that racial discrimination and xenophobia in Japan primarily affect three groups: national minorities, the descendants of people from former Japanese colonies, and foreigners from other Asian countries.[110] John Lie, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, believes that the widespread belief that Japan is an ethnically homogeneous society is inaccurate because Japan is a multiethnic society.[111] Such claims have long been rejected by other sectors of Japanese society such as the former Japanese Prime Minister Tarō Asō, who once described Japan as a nation which is inhabited by people who are members of “one race, one civilization, one language and one culture”.[112]

While it expressed support for anti-discrimination efforts, Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese national newspaper, expressed doubt about the impartiality of the report, pointing out that Doudou Diène never visited Japan before and his short tour was arranged by a Japanese NGO, IMADR (International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination). The chairman of the organization is Professor Kinhide Mushakoji (武者小路公秀), who is a board member (and the former director of the board) of the International Institute of the Juche Idea (主体思想国際研究所), an organization whose stated purpose is the propagation of Juche, the official ideology of North Korea.[113]

In 2010, according to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Japan’s record on racism has improved, but there is still room for progress.[114] The committee was critical of the lack of anti-hate speech legislation in the country and the treatment of Japanese minorities and its large Korean and Chinese communities.[114] The Japan Times quoted committee member Regis de Gouttes as saying that there had been little progress since 2001 (when the last review was held) “There is no new legislation, even though in 2001 the committee said prohibiting hate speech is compatible with freedom of expression.”[114] Many members of the committee, however, praised the Japanese government’s recent recognition of the Ainu as an indigenous people.[114]

In February 2015, Ayako Sono, a former member of an educational reform panel, wrote a controversial column in Sankei Shimbun in which she suggested that more foreign workers should be imported in an attempt to alleviate labor shortages, but they should be separated from native Japanese with a system of apartheid.[115][116][117][118] She later stated “I have never commended apartheid, but I do think that the existence of a ‘Chinatown’ or ‘Little Tokyo’ is a good thing.”[119]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Japan

Probably not a good political move but he sure as hell is not wrong. Instead of allowing some immigration to help with their decreasing population, they chose robots.

Was playing the Yakuza games recently and was curious to the actual history of the organization. Learned some stuff about Japan in general along the way. Yikes. I wouldn’t say he is wrong on this one either.

I mean, that’s arguably a bad move in terms of international relations and maybe he shouldn’t have said that, but…he’s also not really wrong. Japan’s demographic situation is serious, and the Japanese government has been trying to get the public to accept more immigration for a while and been running into friction.

To some extent, they can help mitigate an aging society with relatively-many retired people relying on relatively-few working people by trying to increase labor force participation, and I know that they’ve done that too – trying to get more women working and pushing back the retirement age:

https://hrmasia.com/japan-approves-law-raising-retirement-age-to-70/

Japan approves law raising retirement age to 70

But that can only go so far; having the total fertility rate as low as it is in Japan creates pretty substantial issues.

And it might be better to lead by example here. In the last few years our own total fertility rate has fallen as well. We do better there than pretty much all developed countries, but in general, if you’re going to run a lower total fertility rate, you’re gonna have to make up for it somehow.

We’ve had a history of running very high immigration levels compared to most countries, but we’re currently at a comparatively low level relative to our own history:

In the decade ending in 2020, we saw a lower population growth than any other decade in the history of the country, at 7.4%. Until 1870, there wasn’t a decade where we didn’t grow less than 30% in a decade:

https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/us-population-grew-in-2021-slowest-rate-since-founding-of-the-nation.html

IIRC some countries, like Canada and Australia are running higher per-capita rates.

googles

Yeah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population

15.4% of the US population is immigrant.

21.3% of the Canadian population.

30% of the Australian population.

For 2023:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_net_migration_rate

United States: 3.0 people per 1000 population in 2023

Canada: 5.4 people per 1000 population in 2023

Australia: 6.4 people per 1000 population in 2023

Some EU member states are also up there, like Belgium, but that’s due in significant part to internal EU population movement; it doesn’t deal with EU demographic issues in aggregate, if one is to deal with them in aggregate, as there’s also outflow of people from member states with low fertility, like Bulgaria. I kind of wish that Eurostat would start aggregating statistics for the EU as a whole on things like immigration and import/export numbers. They could publish those alongside the individual member state numbers, could do both at once.

After many years of studying Japanese history, I’ve come to agree with the opinion that Japan has a culture of masochists ruled by sadists. Well, that’s pretty much the entire human species, but the Japanese especially so.