Asian countries which were trying to develop saw Japan's economy in the 1980s shinning. Appraisals on their economic performances were anywhere in Asia.

But, now what happened to Japan? Asian countries were deeply disappointed at the country which still agonizes over its bad loan problems and has lost its confidence after experiencing what they called ''the lost decade''

In order to get out of the economic dead-end, Japan should seek a breath of fresh air all over the world. I think, the fresh air in this context is talented foreigners which Japan should accept systematically and massively.

Among industrialized countries Japan is the most passive one to make use of foreign experts and engineers. Foreign workers in Japan constitutes only one percent of the total workers or 700,000. Out of the foreign workers, those who are specialists amounts only to 100,000.

There are no comparable developed nations which have such a small number of foreign workers like Japan, not to speak of the United States whose main sources of vitality depends on immigrants and foreign researchers.

Japan is no longer allowed to say :''Wait a minute. We need time to implement a rehabilitation policy. '' Because the crisis is imminent. Japan will soon enter the stage where the society is occupied by aged population with an extremely low birthrate. The population of those whose life depend on pension will rapidly increase while those who earn bread and butter will decrease.

People who are employable in terms of age recorded 87 million in 1995. The population as such is expected to lower to 57million in the middle of this century.

Japan not only cannot keep competitiveness but also unable to achieve an economic growth at all.

U.N. Population Division warned at the end of 2000 that Japan needs to accept 610,000 immigrants annually in order to maintain the current level of employable population under the period of the extreme low birthrate.

Business leaders proposed ideas which are positive in accepting foreign engineers. The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare have begun discussing whether to seek human resources abroad for the development of computer software. But the prolonged economic slump have overshadowed this discussion and they won't be able to come up with a conclusion in the near future.

Japan appears to be still under the influence of the closed door policy which took place in 300 years of the Edo period? Going abroad is nothing unusual among Japanese. But, Japan is still a homogenous society and closed toward foreigners whose cultural backgrounds are of variety and heterogynous.

Japan does not make use of talented people in the world and the country's policy is very different from the United States and European counterparts which compete with each other to secure capable foreign experts.

It would take a long time for Japan as a whole to psychologically be ready to accept massive immigrants. But, if Japan wants to sustain and develp itself depending on technology and to achieve economic growth, it is an urgent task for the country to institute a systematic mechanism to accept foreign experts at first. I think, this is a realistic policy which Japan can implement.

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The author is a professor in economics at Waseda University. (January 24, 2003)