What’s New
Japan needs to bring in more immigrants if it hopes to reclaim its lost economic prominence, a foreign-born CEO says.
Newsweek reached out to the Japanese Foreign Ministry by email with a request for comment.
Why It Matters
Accompanying Japan‘s economic malaise is the continuing decline of births and marriages in the country, despite a bevy of government policies. Meanwhile, people aged 65 and older now comprise nearly 30 percent of the population.
Many industries facing acute labor shortages—such as construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and elder care—are struggling to fill roles amid the demographic shift and lack of interest among younger Japanese.
What To Know
Lekh Juneja, who was born in India, helms Kameda Seika, one of Japan’s top snack companies.
Juneja, a biotech scientist, assessed that Japan’s success had made the country complacent and less outward-thinking.
“Forty years ago I came to Japan because it was close to number one in GDP… it was booming,” Juneja told Agence France-Presse.
“But at some point, Japan thought, ‘We have everything now.’ And I think that the hungry spirit to have the guts to go global started disappearing a bit,” he added.
What People Are Saying
Before Japan’s economic bubble burst and ushered in its so-called “lost decades,” the country’s postwar boom reached a crescendo in the late 1980s.
In 1989, six Japanese companies were among the world’s top 10 by market capitalization. Currently, only a single Japanese company—Toyota—remains in the top 50.
Sluggish growth and inflation continue to dog the world’s fourth-largest economy, which the IMF expects to have grown by just 0.3 percent this year.
“It’s not only the numbers. It’s also the mindset, the culture. We have to go global,” the snack mogul said, pointing out how rare both foreign-born and female CEOs are in Japan, where foreign nationals made up only around 3 percent of the population last year.
“I think Japan has to change… We are proud in Japan of our backgrounds. But I think flexibility and having people from overseas would be very critical for Japan,” he said.
He also called for more flexibility to accommodate workers who can’t speak or read Japanese.
What Happens Next
Accompanying economic malaise is the continuing decline in the number of births in the country, despite a slew of government policy changes and some of the world’s most generous parental leave entitlements. Meanwhile, people aged 65 and older now comprise nearly 30 percent of the population.
Many industries facing acute labor shortages—such as construction, manufacturing, agriculture and elder care—are struggling to fill roles amid the demographic shift and lack of interest among younger Japanese.
As a result, Tokyo has begun to loosen some of its foreign labor laws, expanding the number of job categories eligible for medium- and long-term visas, and even offering taxi driver license exams in multiple languages.
As of October, Japan hosted 2.05 million foreign workers, but the country must more than triple this number by 2040 to meet its economic growth targets, the government’s Japan International Cooperation Agency has projected.
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