Japan is known as a homogeneous country, but it may surprise you to learn that of the babies born in Japan in 2014, one in 29 had at least one non-Japanese parent. That's about 3.40 percent - 35,000 in all, according to a Kyodo News analysis of government data.
And that isn't even the record high. In 2008 it was 3.44.
It was also reported that many children entering primary school need help speaking Japanese, as that is not the main language spoken at home.
Where are these foreign parents from? Chinese was the largest nationality for both a foreign-born father or a foreign-born mother. This was followed by Koreans and Americans for foreign-born fathers and Filipinas and Koreans for foreign-born mothers.
Add to that 2 million foreigners living in Japan (over 1.5%) with a large majority of them (85%) between the ages 15 and 64, as opposed to the general population in Japan where only about 40% is between 15 and 64, and you have an increasingly diverse workforce.
This is a very, very different Japan than I moved to in 1971!
On the other hand, in February of this year, a 61-year-old male principal of a junior high school in Osaka lectured an assembly of about 600 students that, "the most important thing for a woman is to give birth to two or more children" and it is "more valuable than building her career." He added that women can go to college after finishing their childrearing.
Some things never change…
