“but then I remember that this is the culture that recently produced ghastly robot “babies” to try to entice people to have more children.”
Truly a culture in a death spiral, similar to that in the United States (we just use different “bread & circuses”). After resisting for decades, Japan is now forced to let in foreigners because their population is aging & dying...
We still have a very small gaijin population here compared to Europe, the USA, and Canada. Most foreigners here are professionals with good jobs. We are not like Toronto and Los Angeles. Japan has done well with their strict immigration policy. I love it here because its still homogenous, and most foreigners are accepted as respectable people.
What change did the Japanese do to their immigration laws?