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The plight of Japan with its ever-increasing aging population is well known. It is widely predicted that by the year 2025 Japan could face a labor shortage of more than 4 million people. This figure results from a combination of the falling birth rate with the nervously anticipated loss to the workforce of the baby boomers (those born in the 1950s who are due to retire in the next 10 to 15 years). According to the government, this amounts to a labor-shortage time bomb that is waiting to explode.
Politicians have been debating this issue for years and while several solutions seem to continually get bandied around, a firm, proactive answer has yet to be decided. Enter the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation with their brilliant and original proposal.
The answer to Japan’s problem, they cry, lies not in people – but in robots! Their vision entails substantial numbers of advanced robots taking the place of humans in many sectors of industry. With companies such as Honda Motor Co. and others beavering away to release ever-more sophisticated and versatile robots, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation predicts that as many as 3.25 million of them could be in use by 2025. Industries cited as potential growth areas for mechanized workers include medical, nursing and care services, agriculture and forestry, cleaning, and delivery.
There are two points about this idea that make me feel more than slightly uncomfortable. Before expounding, I should make it clear that I am not one who eschews technology in favor of life being the same as it was “in the good old days.” Humankind is an evolving, progressive species and the ability that we have to creatively develop technology, from sewing animal skins with bone needles to performing keyhole surgery with lasers, must surely count as the greatest of all our talents. Not only has the ability to create and use tools eased us out of the hardship of living in caves, it may yet prove to be of vital importance in securing our future existence on this planet. But this view of technology as a tool is exactly my point. It is a means that facilitates and there are surely some instances when it can never come close to replacing the personal, human touch.
Let’s take an automated telephone response system as a crude example. When asked, most people will readily admit that they are “generally dissatisfied” with such systems. Information about how to circumvent the machines in order to get to speak to a real, live operator as quickly as possible abounds on techie websites; the fact that this information can be found in all languages shows this reaction to be one that is universally shared. As technology creeps further and deeper into our everyday lives, I suspect that the personal touch will come to have greater value. There may well come a time in the not-so-distant future when human interaction is widely recognized as being incredibly important for the health of a human, both in terms of mind and soul.
The second, and probably more practical point I want to make about supplanting humans with robots concerns Japan’s attitude to immigration. For all of the country’s insistence on modernization, one wonders when this issue it going to be seriously addressed. More than anything it seems that Japan’s outmoded approach to immigration and foreign involvement in all levels of business and society is a restraining force that is preventing the country from being able to truly “move forward.”
Surely it is time to recognize that an active and welcoming immigration policy, one aimed at attracting young, talented professionals, could help to ease both the labor shortage and the issue of a falling birth rate. Young migrants invited to join the workforce would most likely be more than willing to actively contribute to life in all its varied aspects. They may even be happy to repopulate the provinces, areas currently suffering from a migration of their own youths to the big cities.
One thing is certain: change, while sometimes embraced, can be painfully slow in coming to Japan. We are currently witnessing a huge shift in the balance of power in the world and any country wanting to survive this shift would do well to brace itself in much the same way as a surfer – poised for action, muscles alert but mind relaxed, ready to respond the second that the surge of the wave strikes. While some die-hard, old-school business leaders and politicians may like to believe that the answers to Japan’s problems can be found in their own laboratories (it should be no surprise to find that the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation is an affiliate of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), surely the reality is that this shift in focus is just another way to ignore the bigger issues rather than tackling them head on.
Now, more than ever, the time is ripe for globally-minded, multi-cultural organizations and individuals to step forward and prove that a more fully-integrated, altogether more human approach is what is needed. Companies wanting to employ workers from outside Japan need to apply pressure to the system, forcing it to bend. This is not to say that things aren’t changing; in the last 10 years improvements to the system have occurred – the extension of validity for a working visa from one to three years being perhaps one of the most notable. There is still, however, a long way to go before Japan can reap the benefits of an educated, multicultural, and above all, mobile workforce. Technology has its place, but it should be beside, and not instead of, the people who invent it.
Japan’s Future – Robots or Immigrants?
I often think it funny, in this life of surplus communication, how some matters, seemingly small and unimportant at first, can slip through the net so quietly. Then, when they “suddenly” become big news, everybody is surprised and can’t possibly imagine how matters escalated so far without somebody noticing. This could one day be true of a small article recently published by The Japan Times. Based around a recent statement made by the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, it concerns extending the use of robots in the workforce.The plight of Japan with its ever-increasing aging population is well known. It is widely predicted that by the year 2025 Japan could face a labor shortage of more than 4 million people. This figure results from a combination of the falling birth rate with the nervously anticipated loss to the workforce of the baby boomers (those born in the 1950s who are due to retire in the next 10 to 15 years). According to the government, this amounts to a labor-shortage time bomb that is waiting to explode.
Politicians have been debating this issue for years and while several solutions seem to continually get bandied around, a firm, proactive answer has yet to be decided. Enter the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation with their brilliant and original proposal.
The answer to Japan’s problem, they cry, lies not in people – but in robots! Their vision entails substantial numbers of advanced robots taking the place of humans in many sectors of industry. With companies such as Honda Motor Co. and others beavering away to release ever-more sophisticated and versatile robots, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation predicts that as many as 3.25 million of them could be in use by 2025. Industries cited as potential growth areas for mechanized workers include medical, nursing and care services, agriculture and forestry, cleaning, and delivery.
There are two points about this idea that make me feel more than slightly uncomfortable. Before expounding, I should make it clear that I am not one who eschews technology in favor of life being the same as it was “in the good old days.” Humankind is an evolving, progressive species and the ability that we have to creatively develop technology, from sewing animal skins with bone needles to performing keyhole surgery with lasers, must surely count as the greatest of all our talents. Not only has the ability to create and use tools eased us out of the hardship of living in caves, it may yet prove to be of vital importance in securing our future existence on this planet. But this view of technology as a tool is exactly my point. It is a means that facilitates and there are surely some instances when it can never come close to replacing the personal, human touch.
Let’s take an automated telephone response system as a crude example. When asked, most people will readily admit that they are “generally dissatisfied” with such systems. Information about how to circumvent the machines in order to get to speak to a real, live operator as quickly as possible abounds on techie websites; the fact that this information can be found in all languages shows this reaction to be one that is universally shared. As technology creeps further and deeper into our everyday lives, I suspect that the personal touch will come to have greater value. There may well come a time in the not-so-distant future when human interaction is widely recognized as being incredibly important for the health of a human, both in terms of mind and soul.
The second, and probably more practical point I want to make about supplanting humans with robots concerns Japan’s attitude to immigration. For all of the country’s insistence on modernization, one wonders when this issue it going to be seriously addressed. More than anything it seems that Japan’s outmoded approach to immigration and foreign involvement in all levels of business and society is a restraining force that is preventing the country from being able to truly “move forward.”
Surely it is time to recognize that an active and welcoming immigration policy, one aimed at attracting young, talented professionals, could help to ease both the labor shortage and the issue of a falling birth rate. Young migrants invited to join the workforce would most likely be more than willing to actively contribute to life in all its varied aspects. They may even be happy to repopulate the provinces, areas currently suffering from a migration of their own youths to the big cities.
One thing is certain: change, while sometimes embraced, can be painfully slow in coming to Japan. We are currently witnessing a huge shift in the balance of power in the world and any country wanting to survive this shift would do well to brace itself in much the same way as a surfer – poised for action, muscles alert but mind relaxed, ready to respond the second that the surge of the wave strikes. While some die-hard, old-school business leaders and politicians may like to believe that the answers to Japan’s problems can be found in their own laboratories (it should be no surprise to find that the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation is an affiliate of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), surely the reality is that this shift in focus is just another way to ignore the bigger issues rather than tackling them head on.
Now, more than ever, the time is ripe for globally-minded, multi-cultural organizations and individuals to step forward and prove that a more fully-integrated, altogether more human approach is what is needed. Companies wanting to employ workers from outside Japan need to apply pressure to the system, forcing it to bend. This is not to say that things aren’t changing; in the last 10 years improvements to the system have occurred – the extension of validity for a working visa from one to three years being perhaps one of the most notable. There is still, however, a long way to go before Japan can reap the benefits of an educated, multicultural, and above all, mobile workforce. Technology has its place, but it should be beside, and not instead of, the people who invent it.
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