Mr Nakatani is worried because Japanese are living longer, yet having fewer children. The result is a shrinking workforce which threatens economic growth.
In recognition, the government is thinking of loosening its restrictive immigration policy.
But any changes may come as a shock to a nation where registered foreigners make up just over 1% of its population.
News
‘No sex please, you’re teachers’
According to the language school chain’s instructor contract, foreign employees are forbidden to “participate in any interaction with the clients of the employer outside the place of employment.” In theory, insist Nova instructors, they are under threat of the sack for so much as a chance encounter with any of the company’s 450,000 students.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20040601zg.htm
McEnglish for the masses
“The largest eikaiwa school has a staff turnover of 70 percent a year,” says Dennis Tesolat, vice-chair of the General Union, which represents hundreds of teachers in Japan.
“They have guys whose job is it to go to the airports just to pick up new teachers. And that’s because the teachers have a grueling schedule of eight lessons a day, with a 10-minute break between each. It’s worse than a factory.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20040224zg.htm
Revised law removes barrier to nationality
The revised Nationality Law cleared the Diet Friday but only after lawmakers at the last minute managed to have a clause inserted to prevent what they claimed would be a surge in bogus paternal recognition cases.
The revised law cleared the Upper House with the nonbinding clause, which calls for applicants to submit pictures of offspring and fathers taken together to prevent false paternal recognition.
Whether a DNA test should be applied to applicants was debated by lawmakers at length during the deliberations, including by Yasuo Tanaka, leader of New Party Nippon, who strongly advocated the need for such a test.
Other lawmakers said that since the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to discriminate against children based on whether their parents are married or not, it would be further discrimination to include DNA tests to the revision.
Fukushima of the SDP said it is important to prevent false recognition, but warned that if the debate focuses too much on that issue, it might shy away from cases of true recognition.
The Justice Ministry opposes the DNA test, claiming it would send the wrong signal by promoting the concept of a family based purely on biological ties.
In the nationality acquisition process, the ministry official said the ministry will carry out thorough and varied checks to prevent false recognition. For instance, it plans to ask how the couples met, why they applied for nationality and whether the fathers plan to support the children.