[Sangetsu]

Japan's declining birth rate is an immense problem. Japan has a lot of social programs to fund, and these were over-optimistically planned with a growing population in mind. Apparently no one in the Japanese government figured out that the high taxation required to subsidize the government and these programs would 1, make it more difficult for families to afford children, and 2, lead to the wholesale outsourcing of labor to foreign countries. As a result, people are having fewer and fewer children, and there are less and less jobs for those whom remain.

Another problem is that Japan is quite a xenophobic country, and has far fewer foreigners in it's workforce than any other developed country. Even when Japan was allowing Brazilians to come to work in the auto factories, special preference was given to Brazilians with Japanese ancestry. The Japanese are a polite people, but this politeness masks a long-standing fear/dislike of foreigners. As the labor market continues to shrink, Japan will absolutely not import any foreign laborers into the country. In fact, those Brazilan auto workers who came during he boom times are being encouraged to leave. Since they were not Japanese, or fully Japanese, they were the first ones to lose their jobs when production slowed down. Rather than pay long-term unrpemployment benefits, the government prefers simply to send them back to Brazil.