children – Ari Sharp

What does it mean for a country to shed one-sixth of its population? Not through war or natural disaster, but from the impact of low birth rates and low migration, compounded over generations.

That’s the situation Japan faces now. As policy-makers are discovering, changing demographic patterns is incredibly hard to do, and nearly impossible to do quickly. So instead Japan is starting to adapt to its lower-population future. How is it doing it? And what can the rest of the world learn?

Japan’s population peaked in 2010 at 128 million, and since then it has declined 1.3 million. Now a government report found that the country is on track to shed a sixth of its population by 2045, when its population is forecast to hit just 106 million.

The population decline brings with it a shift in demographics, with the population growing greyer (so much so that Toshiba has launched a state-of-the-art audio cassette player to reach this market).

The causes for the population decline and demographic shift are well documented. The country has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, at 1.43, as people increasingly choose to stay single and couples opt for fewer children amid a high cost of living and eye-watering education expenses. And the country has one of the lowest immigration rates in the world – foreign residents make up about 2 per cent of the population – with cultural and economic factors leaving Japan reluctant to accept migrants.

The consequences are everywhere. There are 8 million unoccupied properties across Japan (forecast to rise to 21.7 million by 2033), towns and villages are shrivelling to extinction and national unemployment sits comfortably below 3 per cent.

So with the population decline entrenched, what is Japan doing to prepare itself for a smaller, older future? Here are some responses.

Working women. The successive waves of feminism that washed through the West since the 1960s have barely reached the shores of Japan. A quick glance at the national cabinet reveals just two women alongside 18 blokes. The country has a low rate of female workforce participation, with many women nudged out of the workforce when they have children and finding it difficult to return due to a scarcity of childcare. As academic Nobuko Nagase noted recently, “It is not unusual in Japan for women who graduate from excellent universities to end up in ordinary positions with mainly auxiliary duties, rather than promising career positions on the track to managerial posts.”

So it is no surprise that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made women’s participation part of his “Abenomics” revitalisation strategy. In practice it has been slow going (the government has cut its 2020 goal for female executives to 10 per cent, from 30 per cent), but the government is seeking to improve access to childcare and preschool places for young children. If that policy starts to take hold it will bring with it the twin benefits of encouraging families to have more children as well as helping parents get back into the workforce.

While maternity leave is finally embedded as a standard entitlement, use of paternity leave is still rare. Just 3 per cent of men take paternity leave after their partners give birth (though sometimes as few as just five days) and the government has set the target at 13 per cent by 2020. The government is also seeking to scrap a spousal tax break that critics say has long dissuaded wives from seeking full-time work

Japan workplaces are notoriously family-unfriendly, with an expectation of long hours coupled with a culture of dining and drinking that leave the country’s famed salarymen stumbling home late into the night. It is perhaps unsurprising that generations of Japanese children have grown up referring to their corporate ladder-climbing fathers as their “Sunday friend”, such was the frequency with which they saw him. But slowly that culture is changing, with the leading employer group agreeing to limit overtime to 100 hours a month and workplace socialising moving beyond the misogyny of hostess bars.

Golden oldies. With a life expectancy leading the world at 83.7 years, the cost of social security is set to balloon as baby boomers enter retirement. Social security already lays claim to one-third of the national budget, and with it comes a large politically potent constituency. The government has started nibbling around the edges, launching a review to seek to rein in growing medical fees. It is also gradually increasing the age at which people can get the pension, to 65 from 60.

It may need to go further, while also seeking to find ways to encourage older people to stay in the workforce longer. But influencing corporate Japan to take part is proving tricky. Pay in Japan is heavily linked to seniority, so companies are keen to shuffle their elder (and best remunerated staff) into retirement once they hit 60. Getting more older people working, perhaps part time, will involve breaking this nexus.

And with a shortfall of 380,000 nurses forecast for 2025, Japanese innovators are looking at ways to bridge the gap. One company, for example, has developed a thumb-sized portable electronic device that can be placed in a pocket, wallet or attached to a shoe to keep track of people with dementia. Another has come up with an ultra-thin device that can stick directly to the body, monitoring health data and sending and receiving messages.

Rise of the robots. Japan has always had a cultural openness to robots that the west has lacked, but now that openness is turning into a necessity. A hotel and café chain has started operating predominantly with robots, complete with Sawyer, a robot barista that (who?) will grind, brew and serve the café’s signature Authentic Drip Coffee for just a few hundred yen. (Oddly, the robots remain stubbornly anthropomorphic, even though many robots might be more useful taking other, less human, forms.)

Given the enthusiasm for robots it is no surprise that Japan is keen to take a leading role in driverless cars. In Yokohama, near Tokyo, self-driving taxis earlier this year were motoring along the streets as part of a trial involving carmarker Nissan and mobile app developer DeNA Co. The companies say they will launch a full service in the early 2020s. A shortage of taxi drivers is part of the motivation.

Foreign workers. While Japan remains squeamish about letting foreigners have access to citizenship, the country is becoming more open to an influx of workers to fill skill shortages. Last year the number of foreign workers grew 18 per cent, to 1.28 million, with Chinese and Vietnamese workers leading the charge.

Prime Minister Abe is mulling a plan to increase the number of foreign workers further by expanding the categories of jobs beyond the current 18, and his government just recently introduced Y320,000 (A$3900) a year in financial aid for foreign students seeking qualifications as nursing care workers. With several big events about to hit Japan – the Rugby World Cup next year and the Olympic Games in 2020 – the country will have little choice but to allow even more foreign workers.

But the barriers to migration and citizenship remain almost insurmountable. In 2016, despite a global surge in refugees, Japan’s parsimonious intake stood at just 28 people.

Rebooting government. Outside of Tokyo, populations for every part of the country are tipped to decline over the next three decades. In practice that means towns and villages disappearing and prefectures (the equivalent to states) losing the critical mass of population needed to achieve economies of scale. Some levels of government in some places are finding it tough to attract enough candidates to fill positions.

In response places are trying out different models of governance. The village of Okawa, in Kochi Prefecture, where the population had shrunk from 4000 in 1960 to just 400 today, sought to scrap its local assembly and instead have the entire population participate in decision making. Ironically, the idea was scrapped when it was apparent the largely elderly population of the town lacked the mobility to participate.

Still, proposals are on the table for moving from fully professional legislators to part-timers who would hold jobs elsewhere. A panel of experts recently proposed giving communities the option of the status quo, an “intensive and professional” assembly comprising a small number of full-time members and a “mass participation” assembly comprising a large number of part-time members.

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A declining population is not inherently problematic; indeed places facing a scarcity of resources would probably benefit from it. But if the population falls without mechanisms in place to adjust it can be painful. Time will tell whether Japan’s efforts are enough to maintain the standard of living its people expect.

But it would be naïve to think this is just Japan’s problem. Parts of Europe, including Russia, have falling populations, as do parts of rural Australia. There will surely be lessons we can learn from Japan.

It’s nearly a month now since Kawaii, The Diplomat and I arrived in Tokyo, and so far the experience has been a sensory explosion – the hearty aroma of deep-fried tempura, the soothing five-o’clock chimes that remind us of the prospect of a cataclysmic natural disaster and the garish neon that makes even the classiest restaurant feel like a greasy diner.

I’m spending a large part of each day out at about with Kawaii exploring a different neighbourhood. In spite of – or perhaps because of – Japan’s very low fertility rate, Tokyo is a remarkably kid-friendly city. It is easy to get most places with a pram, although peak-hour trains and buses are best avoided unless you’re keen to get up-close and personal with a salaryman’s armpit.

The abundance of public parks, with lots of kid-friendly equipment, make it easy to wander around confident in the knowledge that there will be somewhere fun to play. Because of the high density of apartments in Tokyo, kids often don’t have much room to play at home, so communal outdoor spaces are pretty much essential. The lack of alternate open space means the playgrounds are also where office workers go with their lunch, or smokers loiter with a sly dart, or trysting couples plan a visit to a love hotel.

Still, the playgrounds are safe places for kids and prams. We’ll often leave our pram, complete with bags, valuables and vending machine detritus, sitting near a bench while we wander. Out of habit I occasionally glance toward it from elsewhere in the park, but such is the security of Tokyo I’m more likely the find an origami crane deposited on the top than I am have anything go missing. In spite of a lack of rubbish bins, the playgrounds are near spotless – pockets and prams get crammed with the flotsam of the day.

Fun slide — Slide? Check. Swings? Check. Dirt on the ground? Check. No bins? Check. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Tokyo playground.

Each playground has its own unique design, but a slide and a set of swings is a near-certainty. Oddly, getting up the steps in order to go down the swing is not as easy as it should be. We’ve found sets of steps that are too high, are oddly shaped, feature gaps, are at an odd angle or are too narrow, but barely a set that offer an easy climb up for a new walker. Perhaps it is designed to introduce kids early to the Japanese habit of disciplined self-denial.

Octopus slide — This slide, from Tako Park in Ebisu, is styled on an octopus and offers three ramps down. Unfortunately there’s no easy climb to the apex for a young ‘un, so it is best admired from the side rather than actually used.

Unusually, from an Australian perspective, grass is rarely a feature of the playgrounds. Instead the play equipment is often situated in dirt, meaning kids are adept at dusting themselves off whenever they tumble into it. Given the sunshine and rain that Tokyo receives, it seems that grass would grow well in many playground sites, but alas it remains absent. Even the “sand” pits seem filled with black dirt, which means it can be a bit confronting when a little one starts running their hands through it and putting it through their hair or that of a playmate. That’s one way to toughen them up.

When we visit playgrounds during the day there’s a high probability that there will be other kids there as well. Kawaii is getting the hang of interacting with other kids, taking turns to sit on the swing, head down the slide or complain about the difficult steps. As a gaijin, Kawaii is occasionally an object of curiosity for Japanese kids, but the interaction is always friendly.

Often our playmates at the playgrounds are kids from a local kindergarten or primary school, who come to play as a group, usually donning matching hats or T-shirts in order to stand out from the crowd. It is an impressive show of discipline that kids as young as four can be walked to the playground alongside main road, linked hand in hand, without wandering off or otherwise causing heart palpitations for those nearby.

Day care child mover — Kudos to the teachers who keep their young ones happy and safe. Photo via Facts and Details

Once they get there the kids are usually happy to play on the equipment, but often the kids play games in the open space. One common one is janken (known elsewhere as rock-paper-scissors), a game Japanese kids seem to have turned into a competitive sport. (Basically, the kids line up as two teams in single file facing each other head on, with the front two in combat and the winner of each bout progressing down the line to take on the next challenger. Mesmerising to watch.)

Pick the right park and there can be a few twists (sometimes literally) on the conventional playground setup. The Ajiro public park in Azabu Juban has an enormous slide that is comprised of small rolling cylinders, so the child (or drunken adult) slides down like a box of ramen noodles at the Nissin factory. That same park features a wide slope leading to a sandpit, which is best used by sitting on cardboard or something else to reduce bum-on-cement friction.

Long slide — Sliding down like a box of ramen noodles at the Nissin factory, at Ajiro public park.

Sadly dads are a pretty rare sight at the playgrounds. Beyond the aforementioned kindergarten educators, mostly it is mums taking their charges to the park to burn some energy, and in affluent neighbourhoods it seems it is the nanny doing the duty. While some mums are admirably hands-on, others seem to have fallen into the national (possibly global) obsession of staring at their phones while with their kids, only occasionally raising their head up to ensure their offspring hasn’t gashed their head.

Now that we’ve had a taste of the kid-friendly things to do in Tokyo – parks and beyond – it’s time to get a bit methodical in sharing our experiences. Over coming months (and possibly years) I’m keen to share my reviews of some of the more interesting places for kids to go, so that others can seek them out or avoid them, if that’s how they roll.

So, Tokyo-ites – what is your favourite park?

Tag: children

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