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After World War II Japan experienced a baby boom 1947-1949, and then an echo in 1971-1974. It was expected that there would be a further echo in the 1990s; instead Japan's fertility rate has dropped remarkably to a level of 1.32 in 2006, although this was up from a record low of 1.26 in 2005. A low fertility rate is particularly worrying to Japan because Japan has the fastest ageing population in the world - in 1950 there was roughly a ratio of twelve working people to each aged person; by 2000 it was roughly five working people to each aged person. Japan is in a unique position where solutions to the problem of its ageing population are difficult to come by, many of which are linked to the attitudes of Japan's society. Immigrants often provide a source of high birth rate for countries, but Japan's immigration level is minute. The attitudes of Japanese men and women has also compounded the problems of a low birth rate - the attitude of Japanese companies towards their female employees has encouraged Japanese women to marry later or not at all, and the cost of looking after them has caused families to choose to have fewer children. The government has tried, in the past, to change the attitudes of Japanese towards child-rearing, and has tried to help with the cost of bringing up children, but the continued low fertility rate is a testament to their lack of success. Without changing the level of immigration, the solution to the low fertility rate could hinge on changing the attitudes of Japanese society to child-rearing and the role of women in the workforce.

A major attitude of Japanese society that has hampered attempts to deal with the low fertility rate is the idea of cultural homogeneity. In 2005 former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stated that "If the foreign labour exceeds a certain level, it is bound to cause a clash. It is necessary to consider measures to prevent it and then admit foreign workers as necessary. Just because there is a labour shortage does not mean we should readily allow foreign workers to come in. " This is typical of the belief in Japan that the answer to their fertility rate problems does not lie with major foreign immigration. This stems from the fact that Japanese people believe, due to their shared language, blood and cultural identity, that they understand each other. Since Japan is a country with many cultural rituals, many Japanese may believe, rightly, that immigrant populations would find it difficult to assimilate into life in Japan. In the economic boom of the post-War era there was a belief that high immigration would lead to losing the economic boom - Japanese people were willing for Japanese companies to charge exorbitant prices at home in order to gain a foothold overseas, something that many other countries would not be willing to do. This idea is strongly linked to the Japanese concept of honne and tatemae - that we must separate our true feelings from the role we have in society. Since Japanese people are able to separate their own feelings from their role in society, consensus decisions are often reached; something that is almost opposite to the Western idea of individualism. There has also been a growing belief among the public that immigrants, especially ‘those with unauthorised or questionable status in the country ', are helping to raise the crime rate and contribute to the deterioration of society. In December 2003, the government instituted a plan to halve the number of unauthorised foreign residents, in an attempt to deal with the fears that these people were contributing to the growing crime rate. Thus Japan has been reluctant to open its borders to large-scale immigration, which could have a very positive affect on fertility rate, as immigrant populations tend to have high fertility rates.

Another aspect of Japanese society that has hampered attempts to deal with the low fertility rate is the government's reluctance to face up to the problem of the low fertility rate, and the general reluctance of Japanese people to question the government. This reluctance derives in part from the ideas of honne and tatemae and the feeling of needing to fit in with societal norms - people often follow what their superiors tell them without feeling the need to question them if it does not concern them. Thus there has been no push to deal with this problem from the citizenry, and the Japanese government has been somewhat slow to come to terms with the problem, and even slower to come up with a solution to it.

This slowness on the government's part is largely linked to Japan's attitude towards women. Japan's attitude towards women in the workforce has led to many women choosing either not to get married or to put off getting married for the sake of their career. In the Tokugawa Period, a feudalistic idea of women staying at home and managing the house developed, and this was compounded in the Meiji Era with the idea of ryousai kenbo (good wife, wise mother). During the Occupation however, protections for women were enacted by the government, in an attempt to protect women from the exploitation in the workforce that had occurred in the pre-war build up. Despite these reforms however, Japanese society did not really move on much from the feudal idea of women not being as good workers as men, and their place being at home. Thus, almost all companies enacted unequal hiring policies, where women could not bring discrimination suits (the laws covering discrimination only applied to the employment phase, not the hiring phase), and there was an expectation, often enshrined in contracts, that women would quit when they got married or became pregnant. Employers frequently regarded women as a temporary workforce; women's salaries are frequently seen as merely supplementary to their husband's and father's and ‘Company employers assume that once working women reach the age considered appropriate for marriage, or become pregnant, they will leave the company because their responsibilities at home should outweigh those at the company '. A lawsuit that was typical of the discriminatory hiring policies of the time was the Sumitomo Cement Company case in 1966, which had a ‘...contract which provided for marriage retirement '. The Tokyo District Court found the company to be guilty of discrimination based on gender, since the company was only forcing married women employees to retire, not men. The Court found that the company was restricting women's constitutional right to freedom of marriage - ‘forcing them to choose between marriage and employment '.

This is linked with another problem in Japanese society - the cost of raising children. It is extremely expensive to raise children in Japan nowadays; Japan is a society of having everything new, therefore when people have children they buy everything new - small desks that children use to study at are extremely expensive. Parents almost always send their children to juku (cram school) to give them an edge in the fiercely competitive university entrance exams - this is another cost that parents have to bear. Comparatively, Japanese men do the least amount to help with childrearing, or housework - linked to the feudal idea of women staying at home and men working. Whilst this might have been viable in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan, it has now proved to be harmful; women are choosing careers over families, which has hurt Japan's fertility rate. When they do stay at home and help their children with schooling and education, mothers often help their children throughout the school years of their education by making an ‘alliance' with the child, against the exam system, often with the child's teacher. This hopefully leads to the child feeling that they are not pressuring them to perform, but are in fact on their side against the examination system . This is another burden that women face if they choose to stay at home, and yet another reason why they may choose not to have children. The Japanese government made some attempts to change the attitude to child-bearing, including an advertising campaign to encourage fathers to stay at home and introducing childcare benefits and state-funded pre-schools; however these efforts have not had a large impact on Japanese society. In a study of the Panel Survey of Consumer's Life, conducted by Yamaguchi Kazuo, he states that in fact:
‘When other determinants of fertility rate are controlled, the fertility rate among women who either know that their workplace provides no maternity leave or do not know whether their workplace provides a maternity leave is the lowest, followed by nonemployed women, whereas the highest fertility rate is observed among women who know that their workplace does provide a maternity leave. '
Kazuo goes on to suggest that fertility rate can be increased if the government makes efforts to reduce the ‘quality cost' of child rearing through ‘income tax exemptions and compensations for parents' expenses for children. '
Thus I believe that that the attitudes of Japanese society have hampered attempts to deal with the low fertility rate - the Japanese feeling that large-scale immigration will be detrimental to society has prevented the use of immigration to deal with the problem of falling fertility rate. However, Japan has been more willing to encourage the immigration of Nikkei - second-generation Japanese - particularly from Brazil, to provide short-term help for the economy and to try and deal with the falling birth-rate, on the grounds that it will be easier for second-generation Japanese to assimilate into Japanese society.

I believe that the major attitude that has hampered attempts to deal with the falling birth rate is the attitude to women. Women are forced to choose between marriage and their career and many women are now choosing their career over marriage. This same attitude carries over to child-bearing; it is expensive and women are afforded little help by men. Whilst this could be an argument as to why women should not join the workforce and stay at home, it is unreasonable to say that women should be expected not to get a job because they must raise children, and this has proved to be the case as many women are choosing a career over children and frequently marriage. If there was a change in the attitude of Japanese society to the attitude of men and women in the workforce, there could be an increase in the fertility rate. Removing the marriage-related retirement clauses and the expectation that women will quit when they get married and have children is the first step to encouraging women to get married. An important second step however, would be to limit the amount that men could work, and allowing them to be at home more to help in childrearing, as well as lowering the costs of rearing a child would encourage women to have more children. Countries with higher fertility rates have a higher share of women in the labour force , therefore in order to raise Japan's fertility rate without large-scale in-migration, Japan needs to change its attitude to women in the workforce and stop forcing them to choose between children or a career. Since Japan seems reluctant to encourage large-scale immigration, Japan needs to review the way it views women, which will provide them both with short-term help in the work-force, and also with something of a long-term solution to the low fertility rate. As well as being an important solution to the problem of low fertility rate, this was the root cause of the low fertility rate I believe. Women chose not to have children because of the high cost and the conflict between marriage and a career, and that led to the current situation. Whilst encouraging women in Japan to get married more and have more children may not provide a concrete solution to the problem of the low fertility rate, it will go a long way to helping deal with it. Yamaguchi Kazuo ends his article with the quote: ‘It will be an effective measure to help increase the fertility rate if the society succeeds in making child rearing a joyful experience for couples... ', something that I believe is crucial for Japan to do if it intends to effectively combat the declining fertility rate.