Japan’s Economic Boom Undermined by Baby Bust : Lifestyle: Alarmed by a declining birthrate, the government is trying to make parents’ lives easier.

This land of overproduction, overtime and even death by overwork may be the best place in the world to make microchips. But it is arguably one of the worst places to make babies.

Even as Japan’s trade surplus hits the roof, its birthrate is sinking into the cellar. Suddenly Japan Inc. must grapple with a demographic dilemma that could force a radical change in the daily grind of life here--how to make this society livable enough so that citizens will want to raise children.

“The Japanese economic system is not sustainable,” warns economist Kimihiro Masamura. “The population cannot even reproduce itself. . . . It’s not that we want to increase our population. But we are an advanced country, and we need a more advanced way of life if we are to have more children.”

In 1925, Japan’s birthrate averaged 5.1 children per woman. According to the latest statistics, made public Saturday, it plunged to a historic low of 1.53 last year, down from 1.54 in 1990 and 1.57 in 1989 and far below the 2.1 births per woman that would spell population stability.

Low fertility rates are the norm in all industrialized countries, and six European nations, including Germany and Italy, have even fewer births than Japan.

But this traditionally insular nation has long been unwilling to stomach the idea of allowing immigrants or even more foreign guest workers. Without new babies, who will support the growing ranks of geriatric Japanese?

In a nation of 123.6 million, there are only about 21.6 million children younger than 15--and only 1.23 million babies younger than 1, according to government statistics released on “Children’s Day” last month. At present, children slightly outnumber those over 65. But by 1998, there will be more retirees than young fry.

Fearful that Japan will run out of workers and consumers in the 21st Century, the government is slowly but deliberately adopting policies aimed at reversing the baby bust.

First, it has doubled the monthly allowance for women with children. As of January, any family earning less than $46,500 receives $38 per child for up to two children. A third baby means an extra $77 a month.

A new family-leave policy guarantees--at least on paper--that a woman can take a year off from work to care for a baby and return to an equivalent job. Efforts are under way to make child-care available for newborns, and during the evening hours.

“We are not saying: ‘Have more children.’ That is of course a private matter between a couple,” said Kazuhiro Kobayashi, director of the child environment office of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “But we want to create a country where people who want to have children can do so.”

Surveys show that, although Japanese couples think that the ideal family has three children, many find they only have money space, and energy for one or two.

In a Mainichi newspaper survey of 2,389 couples conducted in March, 75% of the women said they worried about the nation’s sagging birthrate--but 71% said they did not want any more children. Asked why, 33% said they already had all the children they wanted but 38% said raising children was too expensive, 11% said it was too exhausting, 16% said educating and disciplining the children was too difficult and 10% said their living quarters were too cramped.

Despite Japanese media reports that suggest that women are not having babies because they have become too independent--or selfish--only 4.4% said they had limited the number of children so they could pursue careers; only 2.4% said they thought life would be more fun with fewer kids.

Officials say Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s plan to make Japan a “Standard of Living Giant” is, in part, aimed at improving the quality of life so that couples will be able to afford--and even enjoy--raising children.

The specifics of exactly how Japan would become a “Standard of Living Giant” are still being hashed out, but the idea is to make living conditions tolerable--especially for the quarter of the population who live in Tokyo and other major cities.

Among the stated goals are to increase the supply and quality of housing, so urban Japanese no longer need to live in what they sardonically refer to as “rabbit hutches.” Officials also hope to reduce the nightmarish commutes--commonly two hours each way on overcrowded, bone-crushing trains.

“It’s inhuman,” says economist Masamura, who sits on the committee advising Miyazawa on the standard of living issue. Masamura complains that he is the only member of the distinguished panel who uses the overpopulated public transportation system from Senshu University in Kawasaki to downtown Tokyo to attend the panel’s meetings.

“I think it’s amazing that we don’t have transportation riots,” he concluded.

But planners also want to guarantee more job opportunities and social equality for women, who are finally beginning to climb up from the bottom of Japan’s steep status pyramid. Now, 53.7% of Japanese women who have children also work--and everyone agrees their lives can be extremely difficult.

Economist Kenneth S. Courtis said he surveyed his staff at Deutsche Bank in Tokyo and found the average one-way commute was one hour and 57 minutes. One couple commutes more than two hours each way--and they spend 45 minutes dropping their baby at a private nursery school even before they leave for work.

“The social infrastructure is such that working women have to make a choice” between having fewer children or abandoning their careers, Courtis said.

And steering a child through the Japanese educational rat-race is no easy task. By some estimates, parents must spend a minimum of $180,000 to get a child from preschool through university, including the extra juku cram schools that prepare students for “examination hell.” There is talk of the need for reform, but so far no specific proposals.

Perhaps most fundamental of all, creating a “Standard of Living Giant” of Japan would have to mean slashing the seemingly endless hours that Japanese are forced to work. Masamura argues the only way to accomplish that is to enforce the overtime laws, now widely ignored, and to raise overtime pay by 20% to make it equivalent to the international rate.

If the government is serious--and skeptics abound--such steps would represent a profound change in a country that has for decades been hellbent on becoming the ultimate producer society, no matter what the cost to consumers.

“The Japan that wasn’t a ‘Standard of Living Giant’ produced this falling birthrate,” said Kobayashi. For decades, he said, the Japanese have sacrificed everything--including their families--on the altar of economic progress. Now, they are wondering if it was worth it.

“What did we get?” Kobayashi said. “We produced the highest (per capita) gross national product in the world. In a macro-economic sense, we are extremely prosperous. But are our individual lives the richest in the world? No one thinks so.”

Many would welcome a more life style-friendly, laid-back Japan. Even Sony Corp. Chairman Akio Morita, in a seminal article published in February, argued that Japanese corporations should share the fruits of their profits by giving shareholders bigger dividends and employees higher pay and more free time. (Some of his corporate brethren here do not agree.)

But even if Japanese industry cooperates, it is not at all clear that Japanese women will start bearing more babies to keep up with the government’s latest five-year plan.

Some are suspicious of the sudden emphasis on fertility on the part of a government that has long viewed the status of women and families as less important than the now-mighty yen.

“Women are being treated like cows or sows, valued only for their ability to breed,” novelist Foumiko Kometani wrote in the February issue of Japan Views. She takes special umbrage at the increase in the baby allowance, which she says “stirs unpleasant memories of the militarist era, when women were exhorted to have more babies for the nation.”

She proposes that Japan extend its retirement age to 70 in return for a reduction in salary during the last 10 years when the worker’s children are presumably grown and gone. And, she argues, Japan ought to consider the environmental implications of its xenophobia.

By the time Japan’s population begins to decline in 2011, Kometani argues, the world will be beset with overpopulation, food shortages and acute pollution. “In a global context, fewer births here would be a good thing,” she wrote. “A more logical solution to any labor shortage would be to hire workers from other Asian countries and elsewhere who desperately want to work here.”

Kometani also attacks former Finance Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who complained that the birthrate was declining because more Japanese women were going on to college. (Hashimoto later denied the remark.) Kometani does not mention the birth control pill, which remains banned in Japan even though abortion is legal. But she says the Japanese government should leave reproductive decisions to women alone.

Kyo Nakata, a children’s book editor turned children’s rights activist, decided in college that Japan had neither the physical nor social environment that made it a desirable place to raise children. Now 38 and still childless, she sees no reason to change her mind.

“The low birthrate? It serves them right!” Nakata said. She has befriended many children in her suburban Tokyo neighborhood and says the ferocious competition that begins in elementary school may prepare children to be good corporate warriors, but it leaves most of them isolated and unhappy.

“It’s like they’re in the army--and they’re more afraid of their classmates than their teachers,” she said. “They call it ‘jail.’ ”

Nakata doubts that Japan’s male politicians are truly prepared for the economic slowdown that would be needed to ease the rat-race. And unless men spend more time helping their mates, she warns, don’t expect more babies any time soon.

The Mainichi poll asked Japanese men about their domestic habits. Only 2% said they helped with the cleaning almost every day, while 3% said they helped clear the table after dinner; 8% said they helped with child-rearing every day, 48% said they sometimes did, 20% said they rarely did and 16% said they never help out with the children.

“They should start teaching homemaking to boys,” Nakata said. “Unless they change their attitudes, all these policies are worthless.”

Times researcher Chiaki Kitada in Tokyo contributed to this report.