Still there is little doubt that Abe is a right-leaning nationalist. He visits the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, sits on a variety of questionable committees — such as the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership Diet Member’s Roundtable (Shintou seiji renmei kokkai giin kondankai), the Liberal Democratic Party Committee for Historical Investigation (Jimintou rekishi kentou iinkai), Diet Members’ Group for Considering Japan’s Future and History Textbooks (Nippon no zento to rekishi kyokasho wo kangaeru giin no kai) among others — and he would like to formally revise the Article 9 ‘peace clause’ of the Japanese constitution. But Abe’s nationalist ‘qualifications’ need to be divorced from analyses of Japan’s foreign policy.
Criticisms aside, Japan has a free press, transparent rule of law and a democratically elected government. Civil society groups are actively ensuring Japan does not forget its wartime past by remembering the so-called ‘comfort women’, arguing against the revision of Article 9 and promoting an anti-nuclear Japan by preserving the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sheer numbers of Japanese involved in these activities dwarf those in far-right nationalist groups, such as Nippon Kaigi, Sakura Channel and Zaitokukai, not only in number but also in the diversity of their membership.
While nationalism is present in Japan, far-right nationalism and historical revisionism is a peripheral view that does not represent mainstream Japanese society.
https://archive.is/WfW6n
Seike suggests a number of measures: increasing the fertility rate (though the impact will be lagged a couple of decades); increasing the participation of older people in the active workforce (though the structure of pensions and mandatory retirement encourage them to stay out of the workforce); and expanding childcare and other benefits to young people with the aim of lifting female participation in the workforce.
Lifting migration (a difficult sell in Japan) might be another.
https://archive.is/FvPY5
Mandatory retirement also tends to push workers who stay in the workforce into jobs where their acquired skills and knowledge are underutilised, leading to a loss in productivity.
But if Japan revises mandatory retirement practices by lifting the legal minimum age of retirement or by introducing anti-age discrimination legislation, it will also need to change the seniority-based wage and promotion system. If a firm lifted the mandatory retirement age while leaving seniority-based wages unchanged, it would have to raise its wage bill considerably. Tackling this will require cooperation between unions and employer groups.
Encouraging older Japanese people to stay in the workforce will only mitigate part of the problem. The social security system also needs urgent reform.
Benefits for young people should be more generous, particularly with respect to childcare. In the late-1970s, when the fertility rate started declining, the Japanese government should have been concerned about population decline. But it took until the 1990s for the government to introduce the so-called ‘Angel Plan’ — a package of policies, which on the whole was not very daring, to promote comprehensive childcare support.
Unlike pensions, medical care, and long-term care — which are guaranteed revenue under Japan’s social insurance system — childcare has historically not had any permanent revenue source. So in 2013 the National Council on Social Security System Reform, which I chaired, recommended that the government should reserve revenue from the consumption tax for childcare.
Costs in both the pension and in the medical and long-term care systems must also be contained. Changing the pension eligibility age will help with the former, but medical and long-term care spending will be somewhat more difficult to restrain. They will increase at more than the rate of increase of the older population. This is not only because people over 75 years old are more likely to need medical and long-term care, but also because of the increase in the quality and the cost of medicine and care. Addressing this problem will require cooperation with service providers.
Japan’s high debt-to-GDP ratio means that social security system reform is vital.
https://archive.is/RI223