A (Different) Crisis In Japan

While, for obvious reasons, everyone's mind is on the aftermath of the disastrous earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan, today I'd like to bring another problem in Japan to your attention, one with potentially far worse effects in the long term. I speak of underpopulation. Though the world was in the midst of a looming overpopulation cris which peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, uin developed countries around the world, birthrates have declined and net population is beginning to (or will soon) drop rather than increase with time. In the United States, this has not happened yet, as the net population growth rate is still positive (according to the CIA World Factbook, about 0.963% per year.) This current growth is expected to extend into the future, with the US population expected to reach about 400 million by 2050. Japan, however, is in a very different sitauation. Its population is aging rapidly and its birthrate is extremely low, the second lowest in the entire world. It only ranks ahead of the small nation of Monaco. The immediate effects of this problem are transforming Japanese society. Schools all across the nation have been boarded up and sold, as there are no children to fill them. Companies are beginning to have labor shortages from the lack of workers. The repercussions are for more expansive than just this, and despite Japan's leadership in the field of robotics (which help aid the gap in labor by reducing the number of jobs needed, which, paradoxically, may be a good thing in this situation), the country is beginning to feel the effects of having a declining population. The problem has a few possible solutions. One solution, which I mentioned before, is an advancement in robotics. These advances will allow Japan's economy, which is by no means struggling, to become even more efficient and productive despite a declining labor force. Another solution that is more practical in the short term is to bring in workers from other areas to replace the lack of labor. However, Japan's incredibly stringent immigration policies and distrust of foreigners make this concept politically distasteful to implement. What do you guys think? If you were in a senior position in the Japanese government, what might you propose as a good solution to the problem? Does this situation surprise you, since a labor surplus has been the way of life for essentially all nations for much of recorded history? How likely do you think it is that Western Europe or the United States could face a similar problem in the future? --- *Clicking on the title will take you to the CIA World Factbook statistics on Japan's population.