"Nippon Chinbotsu" -- Japan Sinks -- was the title of a 1980s best-selling novel that predicted how massive earthquakes would push the Japanese islands below the waters of the Pacific. The drenched survivors would head for Australia.
Japan today faces a very different kind of chinbotsu. With the birthrate at 1.29 and still falling, the Japanese nation will begin to disappear in another century or so. The economy is already suffering. But official Japan still seems unwilling to think about the immigration policies needed to counter population decline.
For the past two years a Justice Ministry committee (on which I am a member) has been considering this and other immigration questions. In the final report, released Dec. 14, there are a few changes for the better -- making it easier for foreigners here to gain permanent residence, clarifying Japan's asylum policies, and so on. But the bureaucrats still say no to any policy that would allow large numbers of suitable migrants to enter Japan.