The Norks will be looking for work.

Just the phrase "importing foreign labor" gives me the willies and proves they don't get it. Not exactly Statue of Liberty stuff, is it.

There's just something so pretty -- so asthetically pleasing -- about Japan's economy being doomed by its xenophobia.

Rather, it's doomed by its refusal to reproduce. They'd have to allow immigration at such a high level that all that would be left of Japan is the land mass.

If the government actually wanted to encourage babies, it could simply improve housing.

Millions of Japanese live in apartments smaller than 110 square feet.

Japan's cultural and demographic situation is way more complex than Orrin allows for, but some things are no-brainers.

Lack of housing isn't the problem; the Japanese have been cramped for space for a long time, as have other countries that aren't experiencing any sort of birth rate problems (see: most of the third world). The real problem is the heavy state welfare system, which taxes youth and subsidizes old age. You can only keep that going for so long before society en masse starts making the rational economic decision to stop producing children. Much of Western Europe is having the identical problem, although there they're more open to "importing" their youth from other countries (and subsidizing those kids to boot).

I said it was complex.

Nevertheless, and despite any spiritual revivals, couples living in one-tatami apartments are not going to have big families.

Japan is very, VERY far from "doomed".

They are facing some severe problems, which MIGHT cause them to self-destruct, but we're twenty years from knowing how it'll go.

One point: The Japanese worked their way from devastation and poverty, post-WW II, to being cast as the country that was going to end US economic supremacy, in the mid-80s.

I'm not going to count them out, yet.

Lots of aspects here, but Michael is right: Japan has been in big messes before and it has managed to get out of them. It trounced Russia in war in 1905, just a few decades after it had begun emerging from its long isolation; it was literally in ruins after WWII, and it built a thriving economy by the 60's. It's still a major player in the world economy today, even if it's less dominant than it was 20 years ago.

The current situation will certainly take a major social shift -- sharp reduction in welfare, rethinking of the mindset of life-time employment with one company, and encouraging people to move out of the horrendously crowded Osaka-Tokyo corridor (there actually is a fair amount of space to expand in Japan -- in Kyushu, in Hokkaido, and even in northern and western Honshu -- but no one wants to live there). But the Japanese have performed big shifts before, and sometimes with dazzling rapidity. I wouldn't rule them out yet.

Problem here is that they need the workers now. more children is a 25 year proposition.

Don't overestimate "life-time employment" in Japan. Only a small minority have it. (You can distinguish which is which on the factory floor by the color of the work coats, if you know the key.)

Up until at least the 1970s, Japan considered itself overpopulated and policy was to dampen reproduction. This was a better solution than the previous policy, which was to kill Chinese and Koreans and live in their houses.

Why is extinction a better solution?

They are not going to be extinct.

Circumstances change. A population that appeared almost insupportable in 1964 is easily supportable now, but the Japanese did not foresee that, at least not so soon.

You freely predict that dozens of societies are now in the process of breeding themselves out of existence. As far as I know, it's never happened before.

Predicting the future is a mug's game, but if you can't get data, history is your second-best guide.

How many golds did the Etruscans win at the last Olympics?