Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2011

Phil Couzens

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, now fully equipped to deal with any crisis in a snazzy new boiler suit—nice creases!—has described the situation resulting from the Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake as the greatest crisis Japan has faced since World War II.

While an estimated 28,000-plus dead or missing, a major leak of radioactivity, and trillions of yen in repairs is certainly bad, it doesn’t on the face of it compare with WWII. After that conflict, Japan’s cities lay in ruins, with two of them reduced to radioactive rubble. Two million servicemen and half a million civilians had been killed, 40 percent of the nation’s industrial capacity had been destroyed, and the country had been stripped of its empire and occupied. Yet by the middle of the next decade, the damage had largely been repaired and production overtook prewar levels.

Why was this possible? One reason was demographics. Postwar Japan was simply a lot younger than it is today. For example, in 1960, half the population was under 25, with less than 8 percent over 60. A younger population is hungrier and more ambitious, and will often put up with lower wages—all factors that help in rebuilding and creating economic growth.

Japan’s annual growth rate after WWII—10 percent in the ’50s, 5 percent through the ’70s, 4 percent in the ’80s, and stagnant thereafter—correlates well with the nation’s proportion of young people. In today’s Japan, the number of under-25s has shrunk to a mere 23 percent, with over-60s making up nearly a third. And it’s not going to get any better. In 2050, it is estimated that less than 19 percent of all Japanese will be under 25 and 44 percent will be over 60.

In the rural areas of Tohoku struck by the earthquake, this degree of demographic aging is even more severe, making full recovery almost impossible. So maybe Kan is right to compare this crisis to WWII.
But on the other hand, one thing that the earthquake taught us is that Japan is essentially overcrowded. Even in the rustic North, in every bay the giant tsunami invaded there were thick clusters of houses waiting to be swept away. If we accept that endless economic growth is ultimately unsustainable, a long, slow decline in the population may not be such a bad thing after all, even if it means some of the devastated towns must be given back to nature or become farmland.

When it comes to short-term economic interests, a dense and growing population basically favors the property- and money-owning class at the expense of the working class because wages are pushed down while dividends and rents soar. In short, the whip hand of capital is strengthened. This is the reason why countries like the US, the UK, France and Germany, which also have declining birth rates, continue to see mass immigration despite the enormous unpopularity of this policy. It benefits the ruling elite who set the political agenda and control the parameters of debate. With a falling population, by contrast, the rich see a drop in their income, while the value of labor increases.

Japan is different from other developed countries. Here the ruling class is not as wealthy, separate, and powerful as it is in the US and other developed countries. While you occasionally get business leaders like Mitsui chairman Shoei Utsuda calling for increased immigration, as he did at last year’s APEC summit in Yokohama, for the most part Japan’s leaders share in the general consensus with the people that mass immigration is not in their best interests.

Criticism of the status quo is much more likely to come from those who have no real business meddling in Japan’s internal affairs. In 2003, The New York Times ran an article titled “Insular Japan Needs, but Resists, Immigration,” suggesting that the country would need an influx of 17 million foreigners by 2050. Of course, a shrinking Japan is bad news for the US, which needs a constantly growing and overpopulated Japan to keep on buying its debt in order to finance its budget deficit and various military adventures.

While the earthquake was a terrible calamity, and may be an important milestone marking Japan’s continuing economic decline, this may not be so bad for the common people. Back in the Middle Ages, when the Black Death reduced the population of Europe by between 30 and 40 percent, it also helped place a premium on labor that not only raised the living standards of the lowliest but also effectively destroyed the old feudal system of semi-slavery. While the period of adjustment may be difficult, the demographic shortcomings revealed by the Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake may ultimately lead to a healthier balance between capital and labor, and between man and environment here in Japan.