[War] "The Population Plan"

[Ian Martell]

“The Population Plan”
Prime Minister Shunichi Sato
Japan
August 25th 2005

[This post contains some thoughts which may be considered to be racist or 
discriminatory in nature, while I personally disagree with them they were 
true to the views often held by the Japanese government and were included 
for that reason.]


Sato had told Yuko to be dangerous and she had done exactly. He read over 
the top sheet of her proposal while the young minister serenely sipped her 
tea and waited for him to finish, when he did he set the document in his 
hands down carefully. Then took a sip of his cooling tea before speaking.

“I like it,” he said.

Yuko looked visibly relieved her previous calm cracking just enough for her 
to smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I think my staff is convinced I’m crazy.”

Sato gave that a muted chuckle. He had not been in a terribly good mood 
since Obon, the Junji situation having pretty much made a ruin of his much 
anticipated day of family time, however this was Yuko and he made an effort 
to be less bearish than he’d been in the last week with her.

“Well, it’s a bold plan,” he said flipping through the pages again, in which 
contained both bold and conservative plans which were strung together as 
part of a single coherent strategy to combat the population implosion.

“The main question is of course,” Sato continued. “Is how to get it past the 
budget hawks.”

“Like you,” said Yuko with a grin.

Sato smiled. “Yes like me.”

“Well really the babysitting plan only offers a modest tax break to those 
families employing such services and the inclusion of a tax break for those 
retirees who agree to help take care of children will not strain our tax 
system over much.”

Sato nodded, Yuko was attacking the easy ones first.

“Parents Day” she continued. “That will cost in that it will be a mandatory 
day off, but as you have read Prime Minister, we have a plan to approach 
Japan’s major retailers about offering a selection of gifts for parents 
during the weeks before and encourage the giving of gifts especially to new 
and expecting parents so that will provide a little bit of economic stimulus 
to counter it, not fully of course, but this is a serious problem and I feel 
if we can get the Shinto shrines on board, it will have a great mobilizing 
effect on the population.”

“Hmm,” Sato said reading over those details. “How do we do that without 
tripping over Article 20’s separation of church and state?”

It was a leading question they both knew.

“We ask, we don’t tell. If we kindly inform the right people of the plan for 
this new holiday I believe they will see the advantages in creating rituals 
for this event, blessing of parents, fertility charms, good parenting charms 
the same sort of things they do for other holidays, they won’t miss this 
chance to be a part of a new cultural movement within Japan.”

“Especially if there’s some yen in it for them,” Sato smiled. Dedicated as 
he was to Japan’s native faith, he was keenly aware of its secular concerns 
as well. Shrines cost money to run and festivals and holidays were the 
biggest days for offerings. He was certain they would play along with 
Parents Day. Better yet, he was sure he could sell it to the LDP Executive 
Council which had in recent years become the final word on new policy.

Yuko smiled. “Yes that’s right,” she said. “I think the Executive Council 
will go for it as well,” she said.

“After some hmming and hawing,” Sato said. “What worries me are your next 
two proposals.”

She nodded. “Yes me too.”

She turned the pages of her own copy of the policy document. “Securing 
sufficient maternity leave from the big corporations will be a problem.”

Sato nodded. He was all to aware of the situation women faced, his own Ayame 
had taken up teaching because she was sure she could get a job again after 
Ichiro was born, where as in the private sector she knew they would be 
reluctant to give her a meaningful position because the prevailing attitude 
was that women would quit when they had children and so it wasn’t worth the 
time letting them climb the corporate ladder.

It was a case of the thinking of the Japanese public not yet catching up 
with the times, when women were as ambitious and diligent as men in the 
workplace and just as dedicated to their careers so much so many refused to 
have children altogether. Which was what Sato assumed was the case with 
Yuko, which was part of the reason he chose her for the job, she understood 
better than anyone else in government the generation she would be coaxing 
into motherhood.

“This however is critical if we want to see an increase in birthrate, as 
women are more and more interested in having their own careers and are 
willing to sacrifice motherhood for it.”

“Just as men have been doing with fatherhood for generations. The sharp side 
of equality I suppose,” he said. “Nobody wants to stay home with the 
children.”

Yuko nodded. “Indeed, my predecessor studied the solutions of the West when 
they faced the same situation over the years following the war, and I feel 
maternity leave and in office childcare will be essential.”

Sato nodded. “Yes but how do we make the costs acceptable to them?” he 
asked.

“Well I have two solutions, the first is we act as the moral example, we 
institute the policies we want to see imitated in the private sector in the 
civil service first. We are still a major Japanese employer and as the 
existing personnel shortage hits, they’ll need to be able to compete in 
order to get the people they need to continue to do business which means 
offering women maternity leave and in office child care.”

Sato nodded. “How much leave are we talking?”

“Ideally, I’d like to see one year of maternity leave, and two-years of 
early in office child care.”

Sato nodded, he had no idea of what the numbers would be like to institute 
that in the whole of Japan’s mammoth civil service but he knew it would give 
the more extreme deficit hawks a heart attack. As it was, his heart was 
beating a little fast at the prospect.

“Which brings us to the biggest one.”

She nodded. “Yes, universal nursery school starting at age three.”

Two more years of public schooling for all of Japan’s children, he sighed. 
He could just about forget closing that deficit gap anytime soon if this 
passed, yet it had to pass in order to make sure Japan could compete in the 
future, when people like Yuko would be running the country.

Unfortunately, people like Yuko weren’t running the country yet, people like 
Nukaga and Nakabe were, and those were the people whom he’d have to ram this 
through, so that when it was Yuko and Akira’s generation’s turn they still 
had a population to govern and an economy to manage.

“Beyond that, you’ve also got an immigration suggestion?”

“Yes, a two year “Visiting Worker Visa” this could be helpful in serving as 
a stop gap measure to deal with the drop in population that will hit us in 
about twenty years and fill the spots we’re seeing left open now by the 
retirement of Japanese workers. The plan would be to allow immigrant workers 
into Japan from countries with fewer opportunities for a five year period, 
at the end of which their usefulness to the Japanese economy could be 
reviewed and the program would be expanded, contracted or terminated as we 
saw fit.”

This was going to be another touchy issue. Japan was by in large a 
homogeneous nation and liked it that way. Visitors were fine, the country 
practically swam in English teachers from the west, but beyond that the 
Japanese tolerance was slim. Thanks to the ultra-right wing and the media 
many Japanese equated immigrants with crime.

“What about security?” asked Sato.

“I had considered that, all visiting workers would be issued a Alien 
Registration card upon arrival, photographed and finger printed, and they 
would have to have acquired a job before their visa would be approved and we 
would make it a policy that any visiting labourer who missed work over a 
specified period of time without notice to their employer would be reported 
to the National Police Agency found and be deported.”

Sato nodded. “That would go some ways in making it more acceptable,” he 
said. “I’d also prefer if we screen out Muslims as a whole, not publicly of 
course, but our plans in the area of Foreign Relations will put us further 
in the anti-terror camp and I don’t want any chances of a Mumbai or 9/11 
happening on Japanese soil.”

“I had also thought of screening out those of religious groups more prone to 
aggressive proselytising as well, again privately.”

Sato nodded considering that as well. “We’ll hold off for now on that,” he 
said, thinking this was just the sort of thing he could offer the Executive 
Council when it came time to bartering the terms of this new policy. Many of 
the council’s members held the view that the proselytising of foreign 
religions was a danger to Japanese cultural integrity and should be 
curtailed if at all possible. Sato held a more philosophical view, he’d seen 
devout Christians call the Emperor “Prince of Heaven” and take part in 
Shinto rituals, his Chief of Staff Mura was one such Christian, and Sato 
took that as a sign of the Japanese culture being made of a more resilient 
fibre than the right believed it to be. However pandering to their view from 
time to time was not something that bothered Sato overly much either, as in 
his mind it couldn’t hurt so long as the focus was on those of foreign 
religions outside of Japan and not within. Sato was a man who believed that 
the constitution was right at least in a man’s right to choose their 
beliefs.

Pushing that aside, he looked down at the document again and shook his head. 
“Very good work Yuko, however I hope you are not too attached to this as it 
is right now.  The Executive Council will make it a mess of red ink in short 
order, and I can’t promise I can give all of this to you.”

“Thank you even if we don’t succeed this time I will carry on Prime 
Minister, like you said I’ve a long time left in politics and a strong 
constituency behind me thanks to my father and grandfather, I can afford to 
fight for this.”

The bad mood that had hung around Sato like a dark cloud lighted a bit at 
his protégé’s words. He had at least made the right choice in Yuko, he 
decided. That was something.

“Excellent, well sit on this for a day or so, I’ll call a meeting with Mura 
and Akira and your staff for a couple of days from now and we’ll get the 
consensus building started, the more time the Executive Council has to 
digest these things the easier it will be to take.”

“Like frogs in boiling water,” she said.

“Yes, like frogs in boiling water,” Sato smiled, imagining some of his more 
strident opponents on the Council slowly being boiled. He chuckled, at the 
bizarreness of that thought then once their tea was finished excused Yuko 
and went on about his day, while in the back of his mind he began to draw up 
strategy for how he was going to get these initiatives the support they 
deserved.


Actions:

1>	Un-shelf the babysitting plan in “The Other Crisis” post and put it to 
the Diet for a vote, expanding it to include a campaign to encourage 
families to tap the elder generation for additional child care and give a 
tax cut equal to that given to mothers using child care to the seniors who 
participate. (Given the LDP majority and strict party discipline, the vote’s 
pretty much secure)
2>	Float “Parent’s Day” to the key members of government (Cabinet, the 
Executive Council senior members of all the parties) and gauge their 
reaction, do the same for the private sector and religious community (Shinto 
mostly) then because it won’t stay out of the press for long, the media for 
the public’s reaction, and poll the results.
3>	Have the Ministry of Finance do a feasibility study on instituting one 
year maternity leave and two years of in house daycare for the civil service 
with some 600,000+ employees nationwide (after the privatization of the 
postal service who employs some 400,000) and assuming that 40.7% of that 
work force is women (national average).
4>	Pass the idea of public nursery school starting at age three around to 
the key members of government as an ‘idea’ to get their reactions.
5>	Discuss the idea of the visiting worker program with the Ministers of 
Justice, Foreign Affairs and Labour and quietly discuss it with the private 
sector as well as unions, to gauge their needs and concerns before moving 
ahead with this plan.

Sources:
My original article seems to have vanished on the babysitting plan so here’s 
someone’s summary of it:

http://nichi-bei.blogspot.com/2006/08/government-babysitters.html
Civil Service:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_of_Japan
Foreign Workers:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20060804TDY03002.htm
Japanese Ethnic Issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_Japan#Political_Correctness


(OOC: Can everyone currently doing a JP with me send me a quick test 
message, I've been having problems lately recieving messages in my 
martellian at hotmail.com account and I may not have gotten all of your 
responses lately)

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