[Feature: How to Perceive an "Immigrant Society"] Roundtable Discussion: Thinking about the Future of Japan from the Perspective of Becoming an Immigrant Society

Since the revised Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act was passed by the Diet last year and came into effect this April, there have been various discussions regarding the role of foreign workers.

In reality, there are already over 2.7 million foreign residents living in Japan. Today, based on this reality, I would like to discuss the theme of how we should perceive an "immigrant society."

It is almost too late, but Japan must seriously consider the issue of becoming an immigrant society. Today, rather than a short-term policy debate based on mass media, I hope we can have a long-range discussion on what kind of society Japan aims to be in the medium to long term, including the issue of norms.

First, regarding the current situation, Mr. Mochizuki's recent book ("Two Japans: The Tatemae and Reality of an 'Immigrant Nation'") focuses precisely on the long-term trend of the increasing foreign population as de facto immigrants. What aspects of the increase in foreign residents are you paying attention to?

This book summarizes what has been happening over the 30 years since the 90s, based on government statistical data and various publicly available research.

My motivation for writing it was a sense that the theme and issue of immigration itself had hardly been noticed as a domestic problem within Japan. Previously, when people saw the term "immigration problem," they tended to think of stories from abroad, such as France or the United States, rather than inside Japan. One of my motivations was to create a common understanding that similar themes actually exist domestically.

In fact, according to the government's statistics on foreign residents, the pace of increase has accelerated to coincide with the 30 years of the Heisei era. The number of foreign residents, which was still in the 900,000s at the end of the 1980s, tripled to 2.73 million by the end of 2018. I think this change is very significant, but I doubt whether general citizens, including myself, have correctly recognized that it has been increasing continuously in this way.

I feel that we, including myself, have not properly looked at the fact that Japan has been continuously increasing its foreign resident population. Thinking from the standpoint of a general citizen, I feel our perception of our own country was naive.

Mr. Menju, you were one of the first to pay attention to this issue of foreign residents.

I think that in Japan, both the public and the government kept foreigners in the position of "temporary stayers." Even as the numbers grew in reality, I don't think there was any recognition at all that they were "settlers." Therefore, there were no statistics based on that premise, and the government provided no support at all for the Japanese language education of foreign children.

I call this the "30-year policy vacuum." These 30 years represent one generation. Enough time has passed for children born in Japan to grow up and have their own children. The number of 2.7 million is comparable to the population of Hiroshima or Kyoto Prefecture. Among them, there are actually many people falling through the cracks of society. Therefore, this lack of recognition is very problematic.

Currently, there is talk about taking new policies and increasing the number of foreigners from now on, but I think we should first face the reality that there are already 2.7 million people here and the government has done nothing for them.

However, as you yourself have introduced, various coexistence efforts have been made at the local government and civil society levels. What are your thoughts on that?

In the end, because the government basically did nothing, the reality is that it was dumped onto local governments, NPOs, and citizens. For example, Japanese language education for foreigners is handled by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, but the annual budget was only about 200 million yen last fiscal year. Despite there being 2.7 million people, that amount is almost equal to zero.

Ultimately, I have to say the government did not envision that foreign people would settle in the regions. However, they were actually settling, and in place of the government, local governments and NPOs independently accepted foreigners and promoted multicultural coexistence. In this way, I believe there is a foundation of multicultural coexistence that has been advanced on a volunteer basis or voluntarily by local governments despite the lack of funds.

However, the volunteers are also aging, and because it is a foundation based on goodwill, it is very precarious. Meanwhile, the number of foreigners is rapidly increasing now, so I don't think this approach can possibly hold up.

Mr. Mochizuki, you edit a web magazine called "Nippon Complex Kiko" together with the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan (AAR Japan). Having interviewed people placed in complex situations living right now in real-time, what do you think?

As Mr. Menju said, the government has made "low-wage workers who rotate in and out over a short period" the basis for accepting foreigners, and as a result, the situation of insufficient support for daily life continues. However, in reality, they are not just beings who work inside factories; they have lives outside the factories, and there are issues with families and children. It's obvious, but they naturally have various needs such as becoming unemployed, getting old, getting sick, or needing to go to school.

From reporting on each site, I feel that those parts have somehow been managed through the various efforts of local governments, NPOs, and schools. But it makes me wonder, "Is it okay to leave it like this?"

There are children growing up without fully developing either Japanese or their mother tongue. In what form will those children enter the labor market? While such things are far too neglected, the government continues policies like bringing in people who are already established as workers and sending them back after five years.

Among the foreign workers and their families already in Japan, not a few are currently in some kind of difficult situation. And I feel there is a problem in the fact that this itself is still not well known.

Unless we rebuild policies after recognizing what is happening and what the state of society as a whole is now, the long-term impact will affect a very large number of people. A situation sufficient to think so is already occurring.

I was able to hear in detail from both of you about the current situation of foreigners in Japanese society.

I would like to broaden the perspective a bit. It also becomes necessary to grasp the immigration problem globally, that is, within global trends. From that perspective, how does the reality look to Mr. Se?

Speaking from a macro perspective, in my recognition, the biggest factor in the immigration problem over the last 30 years has been the progress of neoliberal globalization.

In the flow of globalization, the voices of global companies and investors inevitably become very strong. This is because with globalization, the international movement of capital becomes free due to deregulation, and if the environment is not one where it is easy to make a profit and do business, companies and investors will leave a country. If it is a foreign company, they will stop investing in that country. In that way, the power of global companies and investors has become increasingly strong.

If you ask what they have become "stronger" than, it is relative to the ordinary people of each country. This trend started in the UK and the US around the time of Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s. In Japan, it began in earnest around 1996 when financial system reforms and the Financial Big Bang emerged under the Ryutaro Hashimoto administration, and since then, many policies advantageous to global investors and companies have been created.

In recent years, Japan has tended to raise consumption tax and lower corporate tax. It also took policies to hire people more cheaply by rapidly increasing non-regular employment. I believe last year's revised Immigration Control Act should also be viewed within this flow; it is part of a policy to lower labor costs.

In Japan, labor costs had been falling for a long time due to deflation, but they hit bottom around 2015 and have a tendency to rise slightly. I suspect this is the biggest reason why the issue of the revised Immigration Control Act came up so hurriedly. In other words, isn't it about "wanting to hire people even more cheaply"?

So you're saying it's thoroughly the logic of globalization.

Japan's economic problem over the last 20 years is the problem of deflation. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Monthly Labour Survey, real wages have fallen by about 15.6% over the last 20 years. In other words, the economy doesn't circulate because ordinary people can't spend money. Since more than half of Japan's GDP is personal consumption, to escape deflation, the economy cannot recover unless personal consumption is restored.

However, if we bring in a large number of foreign workers engaged in simple labor here, escaping deflation will be impossible. Because labor costs will go down. That is actually the goal. This policy only worsens deflation and makes the lives of ordinary people increasingly difficult.

A book titled "The Political Economy of Immigration" (by George Borjas) says this: By bringing immigrants into the United States, it is said there is certainly a positive impact of about 50 billion dollars annually. This is the part where companies made a profit because immigrants work as cheap labor. However, what is more problematic is that at the same time, about 500 billion dollars in wealth is transferred from workers to companies.

Therefore, if you ask who is profiting by accepting immigrants, it is overwhelmingly companies and investors. In the shadows, ordinary workers face increasingly unstable employment and falling wages. The government also has to pay for so-called social costs, education, and various welfare.

That's why when discussing this revised Immigration Control Act issue, I think it's important to look at the very unfair problems behind it. This issue must be subjected to more national debate.

That is a very important point. The 30 years of the Heisei era that Mr. Mochizuki and Mr. Menju discussed was also a period when the movement called neoliberalism became clear, and a series of phenomena called the gap society became manifest within it. We must not forget that.

The acceptance of "foreign workers" over these 30 years has been through what is called the side door—Nikkeijin (people of Japanese descent), technical interns, and further, international students. It seems that the fact that workers have been supplemented in forms that are "not workers" and Mr. Se's point that companies want to hire cheap foreigners without incurring costs coincide.

As you say, forms like technical interns and, recently, migrant international students came to Japan because they can be "used cheaply" by companies.

The Technical Intern Training Program is like a drug for companies, and I think it makes the corporate structure very precarious. Since you can hire up to 15 technical interns for the wages paid to three Japanese people, once you start using them, you become completely unable to hire Japanese people.

In Shikoku, technical interns are now the most common status of residence in all four prefectures. They have increased rapidly in the last five years or so. Mandarins, udon, and bonito—none of it would function without technical interns. In the case of udon, technical interns make it, international students sell it, and foreign tourists buy it.

It's become a closed loop (laughs).

The problem is that technical interns are confined within companies and are invisible to the general public. So, while in reality Shikoku's industries would not function without foreign workers, the awareness of the general public is lagging, and prejudice against foreigners is strong. In that way, foreign workers have been used in the easy form of cheap labor.

From now on, the Technical Intern Training Program and the Specified Skilled Worker status will be used together. Then, from the company's perspective, there will be two options. Even if the Specified Skilled Worker status reaches its limit, there is no limit on the number of technical interns. In other words, it's like a story where even if you put a lid on the top, the bottom has fallen out.

Another problem is that neither technical training nor specified skills have educational requirements. Therefore, in reality, people from the poorest classes in developing countries are being rounded up and brought here. I believe that even in blue-collar fields, we should have people who have studied to some extent come and settle down.

If things stay as they are, the sense of them being disposable will remain, and the same kind of problems could occur again. And Japan will be thought of as a "country that uses foreigners as disposables," and good people will stop coming.

If we consider the theoretical trends in political thought and political philosophy over the last 20 or 30 years, multiculturalism theories have become active in political thought and theory since around the 90s.

What was in mind then was the story of how to coexist and live together in so-called multi-ethnic nations like Canada and Australia. How to treat ethnic minorities. It was a matter of citizenship and political representation. I also wrote a book on multiculturalism in 2007, and at that time, what was mainly in mind in the Japanese context were the Ainu people, the Ryukyuan people, or the Zainichi Koreans known as old-comers.

On the other hand, immigration research has become very popular since around 2010. I think this is a problem that is similar to but different from the problem of multiculturalism. Immigration is a problem of population movement, and to use the words from Mr. Mochizuki's book, it is a problem of flow, not stock.

One background to that is globalization, as Mr. Se mentioned. Since globalization promotes the international movement of production factors (people, goods, money), flow naturally occurs.

I think this movement of flow is inseparable from the problem of population decline. I believe the problem of population decline is also behind the various policies of this immigration law revision.

When talking about the immigration problem, the problem of globalization and the problem of population decline are occurring as a set, so I think we have to consider them together.

The government says this policy is not a measure against population decline, but a "measure against labor shortages." In other words, I think the problem is that it is "not based on the premise of settlement."

Population decline is still just the beginning; data from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research suggests that the population will decrease by 6.2 million in the 2020s.

However, it is already serious in rural areas. Regional revitalization has only considered Japanese people until now, but in the end, even after using a budget of 1 trillion yen, the birth rate hardly rose, and the movement of people from rural areas to Tokyo has actually increased. Maintaining the population is based on the premise that everyone gets married and has two or more children, so I think it's impossible no matter how you look at it in today's world.

Therefore, developed countries are taking immigration policies and thinking about how to bring in good human resources, but Japan has not done that until now. In other words, it assumed it would get by with Japanese people, and there was no plan for when that failed.

We really have to think seriously about Japan's population decline. Considering that, I think the acceptance of foreigners should have been done much earlier.

In the end, that also means flow and stock were considered separately. If we are to consider immigration as a response to population decline, we must actually have them live in the regions and integrate them in some form with the previous residents. In other words, accepting immigrants must be considered as a set with how to make immigrants members of society.

So, shouldn't we think more about multiculturalism, which is the discussion about stock? In Japan's case, the term "multicultural coexistence" is said to apply there, but there is a debate that it might be a bit different from multiculturalism.

Within the theory of multiculturalism, a person named Will Kymlicka divides categories broadly into indigenous peoples and immigrants. In multiculturalism, the problem of immigrants is a kind of secondary issue, and the main issue is based on the premise that people with their own languages, religions, and manners live together to some extent. How to maintain their culture and lifestyle habits was one way multiculturalism policies developed, especially in Canada and Australia.

So, for better or worse, I think the challenge of multiculturalism there was how to maintain the uniqueness of the minority society against the majority society.

In contrast, the recent problem of immigrants is about how to blend into the majority society and live as a member of it. Since they came by their own choice, it's about "how to have them integrate."

That is different from assimilation. I feel that the challenge for new immigrants is to integrate into the host country while maintaining their own lives and ways of thinking. I wonder if "coexistence" in the case of multicultural coexistence includes that kind of meaning.

I think a major argument for pro-immigration people is the declining birthrate. However, I think if we perceive the declining birthrate as a natural phenomenon, we might fall into the trap of neoliberalism.

It's a bit old, but looking at the White Paper on Health, Labour and Welfare (FY2013), there is a marked difference in whether young men are married or not depending on whether they have regular or non-regular employment. Among regular employees, 59.3% are married by age 34. But only 28.5% of non-regular employees are married.

So it can be said that economic factors are quite large in the declining birthrate problem. Within globalization, Japan continued regulatory reforms because it would lose international competition unless it lowered labor costs, and as a result of rapidly increasing non-regular employment since the 90s, the lives of young men became unstable. In Japan, if a man is in non-regular employment, he rarely gets married. Naturally, the number of children also decreases. Therefore, I think the declining birthrate is largely the result of neoliberal measures.

If the government and industry really think it's a crisis that Japan will no longer function due to the declining birthrate, the first thing to do is to stabilize the employment of young men. Unless this is done, the declining birthrate problem will not be solved.

Another thing is that we must do something about the over-concentration in Tokyo. I think the government has hardly taken any serious policies on this either. The prefecture with the overwhelmingly lowest birthrate in Japan is Tokyo. Birthrates tend to be lower in urban areas. When the government talks about the birthrate problem, it only talks about nurseries and children on waiting lists, but rather, it is important to stabilize the employment of young men. I don't think they are responding seriously to the declining birthrate problem.

This is not just Japan; Europe is the same. First, we must review the current state of neoliberal policies and once again think of politics by prioritizing policies that stabilize the lives of ordinary people in each country—what you might call a "Keisei Saimin" (governing the world and saving the people) line.

I think bringing in foreigners is absolutely necessary, but I agree that economic issues are important for maintaining Japan's population, as you said.

However, if the economy stabilizes, it is quite difficult to say whether the birthrate will become 2 or more. In fact, there are quite a few people, both men and women, who have money but live single lives.

Another thing is that the population is decreasing more among younger ages. Looking at population statistics by age for women, comparing the 20-39 age group with the 0-19 age group, the 0-19 group is 22% smaller. In other words, because the base number is decreasing, even if the birthrate is raised, the number of children will not increase. In such a state, I think it is almost impossible to increase the number of children.

Furthermore, even for foreign people who have many children in their home countries, the birthrate becomes lower when they live in Japan. This is because, as Mr. Se said, they are economically unstable. Unless both Japanese and foreigners are economically stable, the number of children will not increase. In that sense, it is as you say.

Mr. Mochizuki, you also wrote that the plight of foreigners living in Japan actually has something in common with the plight experienced by Japanese people placed in unstable situations like non-regular employment.

When talking about the immigration problem, there are several perspectives and themes. One is related to culture and prejudice, such as the problem of discrimination against foreigners.

As you say, many of the reasons for the surge of newcomers in the Heisei era are undoubtedly centered on the logic of capital accompanying globalization—the desire to "lower labor costs." From that logic, whether it's "foreigners or Japanese," to be honest, either is fine, and I think the difference is only about which is more convenient to use.

If we grasp the theme of immigration in the context of the population problem, if we accept them in the current form, it will be difficult even for foreigners to have children. It is the same as the situation where it is difficult for Japanese people to form families. With this, the dynamics for the population to increase naturally will never be born.

Also, I think we need a discussion on "why we should maintain the population in the first place." If maintaining the population itself becomes the goal, and as a result, only the number of people struggling to live in Japan increases, then nothing is improved, is it?

It is important that there is a certain degree of economic stability, happiness in life, and an increase in people who have hope for the future. If the logic is just that the GDP will fall if the population isn't large, I think we will go greatly astray.

Thinking about Japan as a whole is important, but whether Japanese or foreign, I think it will be bad unless we think about what path each individual can take to become happy from the perspective of their individual life.

During these 30 years of becoming an immigrant society, Japan has been on a downhill slope, and not only poor foreigners but also poor Japanese have increased significantly, falling into a situation where no exit can be seen. Some may say policies were made from the perspective of industry or the state, but looking only at the results, I wonder what on earth we were optimizing for. I think we have reached a time when we must calmly look back at the past and rethink.

I think immigration policy should also be considered within such a large framework. How can we realize a wage and social security system that allows both Japanese and foreigners to live normally? Unless we rethink policies based on that, I think we will become a country where ordinary people cannot be happy.

The story is that properly guaranteeing the citizenship of the people living in that society will become a counter to neoliberalism. When the citizenship of people from diverse backgrounds is included there, it becomes a story of multiculturalism.

Then, the question arises: "Can anti-globalization and multicultural coexistence be compatible?" If these can be compatible, what kind of direction and norms could exist? I think this is extremely important.

That is a difficult question. I believe you are asking about what the future holds. Currently, in developed nations, there is a growing trend toward breaking away from the neoliberal path. Examples of this include Brexit in 2016 and the emergence of President Trump. The rise of populist forces to power in Italy and the Yellow Vest movement in France since last autumn are also manifestations of this trend.

I believe all of these can be seen as a backlash from the common people against the neoliberal path—in short, the globalization path. Over the past 30 years, the middle class has declined in every country, and inequality has continued to widen.

Looking at the trends in sales, salaries, ordinary income, dividends, and capital investment for large Japanese corporations over the 20 years since 1997 in the "Financial Statements Statistics of Corporations by Industry," dividends to shareholders have increased significantly by about 5.7 times. While ordinary income has roughly tripled compared to 1997, employee salaries have actually decreased over those 20 years. Capital investment has also seen a major decline.

For the past 20 years, large corporations have handed over profits as dividends to shareholders and have not returned them to employees. Japan might indeed be the "star pupil" of neoliberalism.

However, in developed nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France, the common people are raising their voices against this neoliberal path, saying, "Enough is enough." I believe Japan must cooperate with these nations and, under international coordination, put some brakes on the international movement of capital and shift to a path where the common people of each country can once again become properly prosperous.

If we continue to bring in unskilled foreign workers as demanded by the global business community, I fear that even the Japanese people, who have endured without complaint, may eventually explode. Furthermore, anti-globalist populist movements might emerge in Japan as well. In such a climate, I have a pessimistic outlook that a massive influx of foreign workers could lead to very unfavorable outcomes.

I also believe that risk exists. I observed the Yellow Vest movement in France in April. I actually walked with them for a day, and while it is a movement with a strong "top vs. bottom" aspect, it is said that a truly diverse range of claims, from right-wing to left-wing, have entered the fray.

Resistance to economic globalization and resistance to the diversification of people are easily conflated. Movements that intentionally exploit this, using anti-foreigner rhetoric to gain political support, have occurred in various places, including Europe. I have concerns that something similar could happen in Japan, and in fact, hate movements primarily targeting "old-comers" are already a reality.

When ordinary Japanese people realize that the reason their lives are worsening lies in politics and the underlying logic of economy and industry, and they begin to raise their voices, we must ensure that this does not become a package deal with the exclusion of foreigners and immigrants.

I think curbing or stopping the acceptance of new foreign workers is a valid policy option. However, we must never expel people who are currently living in Japan in some form, or treat them as second-class citizens while allowing them to remain. This distinction is crucial.

To balance the prosperity of ordinary Japanese people with social integration that includes foreigners, we need to steadily appeal to common interests—for example, by pointing out that "the issue of technical interns is not just a story about Vietnamese people, but also a problem for Japanese workers."

Issues such as why someone wants to get married but cannot, or why it is difficult to have two children even if they want to, are deeply synchronized with how foreign workers are accepted. It is very important to keep being "anti-global" separate from "backlash against foreigners."

I also think there is a possibility that movements to politically exploit the increase in foreigners will emerge, but there is a decisive difference between Europe and Japan.

First, the number of foreign workers is orders of magnitude different from Europe. Furthermore, Japan is the only developed nation where the population has already begun to decline, and this will accelerate further. Therefore, I think the situation is different from Europe, where there is a fear of jobs being taken by foreigners. On the contrary, the current situation is that without accepting foreign workers, companies will collapse due to labor shortages.

Additionally, while it is true that global corporations in Europe profit from immigration policies, in Japan, those who would be in trouble without technical interns are small businesses in rural areas, like the example in Shikoku I mentioned earlier. I think this is another difference.

Japan has held out until now without adopting an immigration policy, but now that the population is shrinking and the number of young people is decreasing, we are in a desperate situation regarding the acceptance of foreigners. I believe that if we accept them in an appropriate manner, what happened in Europe will not happen here.

It seems several issues have come to light. As Mr. Mochizuki mentioned, as long as Japan continues to choose capitalism and democracy, the option of expelling people who are already legally living in Japan does not exist. That is the first point.

The second point is that while the opponent populism is fighting is global capitalism, movements may emerge to exclude the foreign workers next door who are in the same predicament as themselves. This is fighting the wrong opponent, but such confusion may occur within populism.

Thirdly, as Mr. Menju mentioned, even though Japan has been called closed and assimilationist, there have been efforts made by local communities, civil society, and local governments. How should we evaluate that potential?

Fourthly, in the current Japanese government's acceptance policy, there is a movement to accept so-called semi-skilled workers, symbolized by Specified Skilled Workers and technical internships, on one hand, and a movement to accept so-called highly skilled foreign professionals on the other. The immigration policies of all developed nations have these two sides. In other words, there is a movement to select "useful" immigrants.

Regarding the selection of immigrants, the background is, after all, economic rationality. It can be seen as part of the logic of globalization—viewing human resources as labor and productive power while avoiding welfare burdens as much as possible.

Relating to the previous discussion, anti-globalization and anti-immigration are often talked about as a set, but I don't think globalization actually aims for cultural diversity. What is important there is economic rationality, and diversity is merely a byproduct. This leads to the current treatment of foreigners in Japan.

In contrast, when one advocates anti-globalization, one response is to exclude "impurities" coming from the outside to maintain our purity. In that case, the target often tends to be immigrants and foreign workers. Indeed, in today's populist movements, there is a significant trend toward "reclaiming our identity."

Given the fact that there are already many foreigners in the country, the question is how we should think about multicultural coexistence.

This is also a question of how we can separate multiculturalism or multicultural coexistence from nationalism, or whether we can separate anti-globalism from nationalism.

That's right. If globalization is what pushes economic rationality, and if we take a stance of "No, we will protect our way of life," then, for example, living without getting married, or diverse lifestyles such as homosexuality and same-sex marriage, might in a sense go against economic rationality.

However, a way of life is a way of life. Therefore, if we expand the concept of multicultural coexistence and move toward recognizing diverse values and ways of living, I feel that the logic of anti-globalization and the approach of purifying the interior to restore identity will not necessarily proceed together.

In other words, by recognizing a diverse multicultural citizenship that includes foreign residents, it might be possible to create a flow that uses that as a driving force for anti-globalism.

Thinking about the immigration policy of the last 30 years in that context, the policy for accepting foreign workers promoted by the LDP government has been to bring in workers but not let them settle—that is, a policy that does not assume long-term naturalization or the granting of citizenship.

This is typically expressed in the government's words, "This is not an immigration policy." The "opening up" part of accepting foreigners and the "closing off" part of ensuring it doesn't result in the diversification of Japan's residents because they won't settle are always paired. When considering Japan's future, the reason we can't feel "it's okay because diversification is actually progressing" is that purity and homogeneity as norms are always used as excuses to avoid looking at the diversification happening in reality.

Even if the number of settling immigrants is actually increasing, words are intentionally chosen to negate that fact. It is precisely because those words are believed by the conservative base that the short-term acceptance of workers becomes possible. I think there is a major problem in this combination.

When creating a counter-axis to globalization, I am anxious about whether we can choose a path that assumes the nation of Japan while simultaneously diversifying the interior, and how much support that would have.

Unless we consciously speak about that necessity, we will be left with only simple choices: either a "bad nationalism" that says "homogeneity and purity are important," or the acceptance of short-term foreign workers under globalization. Currently, I think those two are like mirror images of each other, but we lack the language to say that "an option in between is possible."

And as Mr. Matsumoto said, this is not just a topic about immigrants; I believe it is necessary to establish a new path for the coexistence of various types of diversity.

As Mr. Mochizuki accurately pointed out, the contradiction between what is happening in reality and the government's view that "foreigners should not settle" is growing larger and larger.

In my own view, if things continue as they are, Japanese society is becoming unsustainable. The mayor of Akitakata City in Hiroshima Prefecture is a rare individual who has been saying for some time that an immigration policy is necessary. According to population projections for Akitakata City in 2035, the population aged 80 and over will be the largest group.

He says that at this rate, the region will not survive and that he wants to increase the number of foreigners anyway. Since Japan is also a country with many natural disasters, in order to maintain society, it will be a disaster if there are no young people, regardless of whether they are foreigners or Japanese. A society of only elderly people simply cannot be maintained.

Furthermore, workers are not just laborers; they are also consumers. If the number of consumers continues to decrease, Japan's GDP will naturally shrink, and tax revenue will also fall. Then the question becomes how to repay the 1 quadrillion yen debt.

Therefore, my opinion is that it would be better for Japan's future to maintain a certain population level by bringing in foreigners, utilizing robots and AI, and somehow keeping things running.

Regarding the declining birthrate, I think Mr. Menju's talk is a bit too pessimistic. As I mentioned earlier, we must start by acknowledging that the problem of the declining birthrate is a failure of economic policy.

Conversely, regarding the acceptance of foreigners, I cannot be as optimistic as Mr. Menju.

For example, I believe the Cold War has not completely ended in East Asia, and we need to think seriously about security issues. For instance, it is said that China has aspects where it does not hesitate to move people, such as through forced relocation. When such a country is nearby, saying we should just send foreigners to rural areas feels like a total lack of consideration for security issues.

There is also the issue of local suffrage for foreigners. In a municipality like Aogashima Village in Tokyo, where the total population is about 160 and there are about 140 voters, if China were to strategically move people and bring in immigrants, the risk of a takeover cannot be denied. Therefore, I think saying we should just put foreigners in local areas is too simplistic a solution.

That is the logic of the "securitization" of the immigration issue, which is also pointed out in Will Kymlicka's work that you translated, Mr. Se. I think we must be cautious about using that logic. Even if foreigners tried to move to Aogashima Village, there is no employment there to begin with.

However, turning a blind eye to such issues is also problematic. It is true that turning it into a security issue too easily is a problem. Indeed, the book by Kymlicka I recently translated made that point. But conversely, downplaying it too much is neither realistic nor a responsible position.

Also, I believe it is a problem that the government is significantly reducing public investment, claiming it is a fiscal issue, at the same time that companies are not making capital investments. Now, there is the emergence of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), which argues that even if government debt increases, if government bonds are denominated in the local currency, it will not easily lead to fiscal collapse. I think Japan has been practicing too much austerity. Therefore, I believe we should return to the basics of nation-building by properly conducting public investment.

How did Japan resolve labor shortages during the period of high economic growth? It was by properly making capital investments and public investments. Through that, productivity was raised, the Japanese people became prosperous, and the economy circulated. This is the royal road to economic growth.

The solution to labor shortages is first and foremost the improvement of productivity. Stabilizing employment for young people, increasing salaries, and getting the economy moving—those policies must come first.

The reason productivity is not rising in Japan is that society is aging and companies have gone on the defensive. That is why I believe Japanese society will not develop from now on unless we do something like having young people newly enter society and stir things up.

The world's population is increasing by about 80 million people every year. Despite this, for Japan to close its doors, refuse to accept foreigners, and simply shrink as it ages is a strange sight. Instead, we should say, "Please come, talented people from overseas; we will create a foundation where such people can do their best," and through that, Japanese young people will also be stimulated and revitalized. That is the state Japan should aim for.

Otherwise, since there are many countries around us saying "Please come, talented foreigners," we will lose people to those places, and I cannot say for sure that a time won't come when Japanese young people eventually emigrate as well.

Another thing I think is a major flaw in current liberal discourse is that many people uncritically believe that "it is better for people to move, and accepting immigrants is more humanitarian." But that is not true. Most people prefer to settle.

According to a book by Professor Rieko Karatani of Kansai University, even in today's globalized world, 97% of the people on Earth are settled. Therefore, the priority should be to make settlement the basis and create an environment where people in each region can become prosperous without moving.

Most of today's foreign workers and immigrants are people who don't want to move but can't make a living or are politically oppressed if they don't. Therefore, we should first aim for a world where people can create an environment to live within their own culture with their families and peers. The vast majority of people do not want to become immigrants. I think most people want to live with their families and peers within their own culture and language.

I believe there is a major pitfall if we discuss policy based on the assumption of human movement. Making the world order fair comes first, and after that, the discussion should be about how to treat those who have moved.

To balance multicultural coexistence and anti-globalism as Mr. Shiobara suggests, instead of immediately accepting immigrants, I think the priority is to aim for a world where people can live prosperously without moving by creating a fair world order. Before accepting unskilled foreign workers, Japan should seriously work on improving productivity and addressing the declining birthrate. Accepting foreign workers is not automatically liberal or humanitarian.

As I summarized at the beginning, there is a situation where the Japanese people themselves, or the people living in Japan, are diversifying. When we say the well-being of our own people should be prioritized, I think the ideals of multicultural coexistence have already inevitably entered into that.

There are parts of what Mr. Se says that I understand and parts that I don't. I agree that it would be better if people could live happily wherever they are born on Earth, and a society where that is possible is a fair one. However, in reality, global economic disparities exist, and on top of that, there are foreigners living in Japan precisely because the Japanese side opened the door.

Furthermore, what is important is that it is common for a foreigner who decided to come to Japan based on the logic that "it's better to earn for five years in Japan than to struggle in my home country" to find themselves in a situation where they don't or can't go back after working for several years.

Even if they came with a migrant worker mindset initially, it is not at all strange for them to end up wanting to stay in Japan because they got married, became settled in their job, or the security in their home country worsened. And this kind of settlement is exactly what has actually been happening over the last 30 years.

In that case, I am curious how the words "it is important to be able to settle" that you mentioned earlier would be applied to these people. While I think it is normatively correct that people should be able to live comfortably in the country or region where they were born, in a reality where that is not the case, how do we treat people who came to Japan as a result of the Japanese state's immigration policy and then decided they "want to be here"? This is not a simple problem.

That's true. Furthermore, "not migrating" changes depending on how you define migration. In fact, the definition of "migrant" by the International Organization for Migration includes people who have moved within their own country. Indeed, the Japanese term "chiho iju" (regional migration) exists.

I was born in Saitama Prefecture, but now I have migrated to Yokohama. I don't dislike Saitama, but it is also important whether I can think of Yokohama, where I am now, as my second home. In other words, when we say "settlement," that exactly includes settling in the place one has migrated to. In that case, isn't it important for those people to be able to think of that place as home?

I don't think this is very far from what Mr. Se is saying. Even if one moves, one creates a home at the destination. To put it further, I think a situation where one has two homes—between one's original home and the destination—is possible.

Therefore, I think it is necessary to consider policy with such global ideals in mind.

The recent legal amendment introducing Specified Skilled foreign workers was decided with almost no deep debate in the policy-making process, and I think it was quite hasty.

From now on, there is no doubt that more cautious and thoughtful acceptance and social integration policies are required. If we properly promote social integration, foreigners will become citizens. I would like to ask finally about future challenges.

Regarding social integration, not only culture and daily life but also the nature of employment is important. I think it is a major problem that the current system is not designed with the assumption that low-wage foreign workers will steadily advance their careers. Even immigrant workers should be able to form careers just like Japanese people. If salaries rise, the possibility of forming a family increases, and the possibility of working together with Japanese people also increases.

Since current foreign worker policies, especially technical internships, deviate from this idea, I think they should be reconsidered.

Because the technical internship system has continued for so long, many companies view foreign workers as synonymous with cheap labor. I think changing this corporate mindset is a major challenge.

In South Korea, they moved from something like the industrial trainee system—similar to the technical internship system—to an Employment Permit System. In Japan, these currently coexist, so if a new system for hiring workers has been created, I think we should set a period and stop technical internships.

And we should pay salaries on par with Japanese people. We must make it so that companies that cannot do that should exit the market.

I believe that when creating a stable political order, customs and culture are things that cannot be underestimated. In many countries, such non-legal, non-authoritative things play a major role. If we strip those away, there is a high possibility that we will be forced to take very authoritarian, administrative-state policies.

For example, China is currently trying to create a cashless society, but it is often said that this is an attempt to create a "digital authoritarian" society. In other words, by going cashless, the movement of money becomes visible to the government, allowing for the creation of a digital administrative state.

China is inherently multicultural, with various races and religions, and is in a sense a society that anticipated globalization. In Japan, if we accept more and more immigrants in the future, creating order will become difficult. At that time, the possibility of a digital authoritarian form emerging might also exist. I am concerned that Japan will become an immigrant nation, deflation will progress, and it will move toward becoming an administrative state.

I believe the current policy, where foreign children have no obligation to attend compulsory education, leads to dropouts, low enrollment rates, and low advancement rates among the children of foreign residents. After all, school is an important opportunity for social integration, and as Mr. Mochizuki pointed out, it is also an opportunity for career formation for foreigners.

Even regarding the point Mr. Se made about emphasizing culture and manners, I think educational opportunities are extremely important. After all, we don't so much become Japanese by being born Japanese as we become Japanese through education.

What I thought through today's discussion is how we should think about the scope and content of "we." Is it the premise that "we" have always been diverse and will inevitably become more diverse? Or is it a position of feeling hesitation and stopping at the idea of making it more diverse than this?

However, my honest impression is that, unexpectedly, everyone shares a similar recognition of the current situation. This issue cannot be talked about at all in a simple framework like Conservative vs. Liberal; there are dissenting opinions even among those called conservatives, and among those called liberals or leftists, there are almost no people who unconditionally support the acceptance of immigrants. I felt once again that it is important to have discussions in a way that is not the conventional framework.

Thank you very much for your time today.