What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants? (opens in new tab)

> Why does ever single bleeding heart liberal globalist try and ignore the deep psychological truths about human tribalism?

I'll bite.

In the US, for one, every single person has an ancestor that thanked their lucky stars the locals didn't think the way that you are recommending we think today. Or an ancestor that suffered because the locals did think that way.

We honor that heritage by paying it forward, lest we be lumped among the trash of history that punished the Irish, the Chinese, and the Jews for the cardinal sin of living down the street.

Lot of Americans in this forum, so that's why.

The idea that Japan is a uniquely "homogeneous culture" is honestly a modern construct anyway. Japanese culture and language has been enormously influenced by colonial and migrant presence in the country, from Chinese to Dutch to British to American, and a zillion others.

Just look at the language! I don't have the exact figure in front of me, but I remember when taking Japanese language courses that something like 30% of the lexicon is loanwords from other languages (edit: I looked it up and it's apparently closer to 50%) Way higher than most other widely spoken languages on the planet. Japanese culture is legitimately _amazing_ in its capacity to absorb and domesticate outside influence, and it's unfortunate that people both in the country and abroad are so short-sighted to not see that.

The Meiji and Showa era militarism benefited a lot by promoting this myth. They weren't alone, mind you. Lots of folks across the EU and the US are still falling for the same nationalist stories that their governments cooked up in the early 1900s to drive them all to war.

The country _does_ have a really notable cohesion and shared identity, but the problem is in attributing that to some kind of unique isolationism rather than their long history of pluralism.

> the deep psychological truths about human tribalism

… that the races should keep to themselves? Yea, I’m going to have to disagree on this one.

This was pretty handily disproven by the New World. Mixing, sharing, cohabiting… this creates culture and makes us stronger. Isolation, protectionism, and fear makes us weak.

>They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values.

That idea is a fallacy. It has never been true. All of Europe was always a melting pot for people from everywhere. Over the centuries people kept moving, immigrating and emigrating. England.. Britons, Celts, Anglo-Saxxon, Norse, Normans (which were themselves originally immigrants). And my own country? Surnames from everywhere. 40% of my language's vocabulary came from immigrants. Is that a problem? I most certainly can't see any.

The idea about 'homogenous culture and shared traditional values' is as true as looking at a flower for five minutes and then claiming that "nah, it doesn't grow, it's frozen".

> Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”?

If you become poor enough and weak enough, you'll be "replaced" anyway. And not on your own terms.

> Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”?

I'm not "... liberal", however there are two reasons. For one it has turned or to be very hard to convince people to "just have more babies". Second reason is that immigration workforce is available immediately, while an increase in birth rate will only help 20 years later.

Even if you manage to reverse the trajectory of the birth rate, how long would it take to approach 2.0? How long until you have healthy demographics? 50, 70 years, maybe, that's just too long.

> truths about human tribalism?

Truth is that human are complicated and have survived for so long not because of their thumbs or their language, but because of their adaptability.

> They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values.

Talking about homogenous culture I hope you don't live in the US, because that guys for sure never had one. US is way too big for that which is also why so many laws are still defined by the states.

Because it takes 18 years to create an adult and nothing other than immigration is working at the moment.

If any country was truly serious about this problem, they would end social programs for the elderly and focus that funding for families.

I think the point is we can't have our cake and eat it too.

They need _someone_ (or something, if they can manage) to sustain the way of life they hold so dear.

And it's not something a country can just decide on a whim like "oop looks like we really need more people tomorrow folks". What are they going to do? Import millions of people 18 years from now? Or plan ahead to make sure millions of babies are born now to grow into the people they like 18 years from now?

Not everyone views outsiders with unease, it's actually possible to nurture curiosity over fear.

I completely agree, very well said.

Japan's population is dropping like a stone. Since I first arrived here some years ago the population has gone down by several millions. Countries which have more immigration (like my native one, also with a low birth rate) manage to keep up the population size, and, equally important, manage to keep the median age somewhat lower (the median age in Japan is now above 50).

If immigration is not a solution, then I assume you mean that reversing the birth rate problem is the way to go. Can't disagree there, but how do you propose to do that? No country with a birth rate below 2 seems to have been able to come up with a way to "fix" that.

(The worldometer site makes it easy to look up and compare various countries: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/japan-populat...)

> There is no “zero” immigration policy, this is a strawman.

Japan and Korea(can’t remember their names at the time but pretty sure it wasn’t those two) were famously hermit kingdoms until the US showed up and threatened war if they wouldn’t trade.

The first Medal of Honors awarded for combat internationally were given to US soldiers who ended up fighting the Koreans shortly after the civil war because of their desire to keep foreigners out[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_expedition_to_Ko...

> no country has reversed its birth rate problem.

America has, it reversed below subsistence rate birth rates. More importantly despite some years of negative population growth the net long term trend is slow population growth.

So despite both issues the long term trend is slow net population growth. Thus significantly below subsistence birth rates where flipped from a massive issue to a non issue.

> Also weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution.

Because those "floodgates" for the most part have never existed and are just fear inducing rhetoric. Immigration has always been insignificant in terms of the whole population and therefore can not solve systemic problems alone.

there is no birth rate solution.

but if you want to keep the economy functioning, you need to do something. immigration is something.

Korea is starting to turn things around! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-bi...

> weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution.

How exactly is this weird when you don’t want your population to decline? Like it or not, every modern economic system whether it’s capitalism or socialism relies on population growth.

In the united states the birthrate problem is largely climate change panic (which is not a reason to not have kids because other populations / immigrants start accelerating their birth rates), and then because of heavy migration and other market factors, home prices have skyrocketed. Many couples don't want to have kids until they at least buy their "starter house".

I'm not very familiar with Japan's problems, but I think it's different. I think it has more to do with some kind of never growing up adults.

Around 1900 the median age of the Japanese population was somewhere in the twenties, in other words, they had a healthy and able work force relative to the population size. Today the median age is above 50, and there aren't many who can work the fields. In fact around here I see very old people doing that, and a lot of them can hardly walk normally, they're permanently bent.

The quantity of people isn't relevant, it's the quantity of people by age.

Older people, en masse, become a burden. If you add another 43 million people aged over 60 on top of your 43 million from 1900, suddenly that 86 million is less productive than the original 43 million.

Currently Japan has ~41 million people aged 0-40, ~41 million aged 40-60, and ~41 million aged 60+

> cede your land to some other people who will

This is an insane way to frame immigration reform. It isn’t “ceding” anything, it just means being OK that not every single person you know is the same race. Having some cultural exchange, growing as a person, learning about the world beyond your borders… these are virtues.

This will be easy to say up until there isn’t enough money for retired folks.

As an European living in Japan... no, Japan will not be fine. At least we Europeans are aware of our problems and try to look for solutions (whether we actually solve anything is another topic), the Japanese are masters of solving problems by ignoring them.

Their culture has a lot of good things, but also bad things that are leading then to the abyss, but if you watch Japanese media they never discuss any sensitive topic and always try to paint themselves as the best country in the world. Maybe they should start doing some self-criticism...

I completely agree.

Children cost hundred's of thousands of dollars to raise, and that doesn't even count the opportunity cost of your own career progression as you have to spend a year of sleepless nights and possibly have one or both parents reduce their work hours to care for the child.

The Japanese government already struggles to pay out pensions with its aging population, healthcare and pension costs are both rising, where do you propose the money for this comes from?

Should the government increase its already high tax rate from up-to-50% to up-to-90% and take money from the childless to give to parents?

Should the government replace your salary if you quit your job to raise a kid (since after-all that is a cost of the endeavor)?

If you're just talking about "giving birth", I assure you the cost to give birth is already close to free, the government already covers that, and various cities have local parent stipends which make it "profitable" in a sense.

But the real cost of giving birth is not the giving birth, it's the millions of yen you then need to spend over the next 18 years to raise and educate the child, not to mention the cost of possibly dying during childbirth.

It is not as simple as that. In my country giving birth is free. And you get economic support for every child. For most people it's still an economic burden to some extent, but for the majority it's not something which blocks them from having children. It's more that most families I know are content with having two children. It feels fine to them. But that's the families that do have children. 25% of men in my country never have children. It's not enough. A lot of families need to produce 3 children, and better if there are some with four.. and most people simply don't want that. And that's for the most part not a question of economy.

> It's as simple as that.

Not really. Cultural values is a huge factor, and that was seriously upended when the US invaded and occupied them.

I do find it funny that some folks treat this is like the complete end of Japan (or whatever) nation, like you said a straight line down. But eventually it will bottom out and potentially rebound a bit. It find on the way up or at the top, and it will be fine at the bottom once the trends return but the issue really is the pain of the phase shift.

>> You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles.

"a turtle that retracts its head will later extend it"

Except in growth imperative system we have, to stop growing is not to not grow, it is to spiral into a cascade failure

A few of the comments in question have a bad tone - but most of them are reasonable opinions about valuing one's people, culturally or socially, or about the effectiveness of immigration.

I’ve noticed this too. I think it started around the time of the first round of big tech layoffs in the US, and when the US ratcheted up the price for H1B(?) visas.

Seems like economic uncertainty or fear of it breeds xenophobia. Who knew

Not everyone on HN is from SF, sometimes you also get reasonable opinions here.

The article paints immigration as something undoubtedly negative:

> They are willing to accept a smaller economy, strained pensions, and dead rural towns as the price for keeping their core cities safe, clean, and culturally familiar.

I'll not pretend that immigration is an easy, uncontroversial and solved topic. But can we maybe not equate immigration with dirty and dangerous cities? Yes that has been the rhetoric for thousands of years, but it's most often the rhetoric of those with a dubious track record of saying true things. Trump is famously anti-immigration, why trust what he says? Since 9/11 the stereotype of a terrorist in the USA has been a brown Muslim. The facts tell us the majority of domestic terrorism is done by white christian dudes. I get that xenophobia is an emotional topic for many, but that doesn't excuse racism.

Unbridled immigration doesn’t work, and that’s become pretty clear.

You need limits, and integration, assimilation would be even better.

Sometimes I wonder how long it is possible to keep supporting properly senile people. Or those that need constant care. At some point unless there is some massive productivity increase in care it is just not realistic anymore.

"fewer old people" will actually, spoiler alert, happen. Just wait about 20 years. Certain parts of Japan are gonna be completely empty.

Eventually that will be the case but it just takes decades of the demographic bubble to work its way through.

Canada? https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-servi...

Covid-2030 is coming to help.

The worldometer statistics site doesn't fully agree with that, the Guardian reports that the rate went from 0.75 to 0.80, while worldometer states that the 2026 rate will probably end up at 0.76. At best this has kind of stopped dropping, but it is any case catastrophically low (and way worse than Japan)

"Successfully reversed" would require a number over 2.0. This is just bad reporting.

I suspect part of the problem is that people are worked hard and don't really have a vision of the future that they are actively building towards as a nation. Hard work alone doesn't dissuade people from having kids but not having a positive or even constant future target combined with that can cause folks to just give up on that kind of aspiration.

This is an issue that develops over decades and places like Japan, South Korea and potentially China, this is already baked in to the point that it is unstoppable. The same is coming to many other nations over the coming decades.

I suspect this is why China is going in so hard of humanoid robots over the last few years. They have seen a potential future in Japan and are now trying to avoid this at all costs. It is big long term bet but we will know if it worked in about 20-40 years.