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Japan is touting better bunks and bigger steaks in an effort to address a yawning shortfall in military recruitment as the country’s population shrinks and ages.
The plan to improve living conditions on military bases is part of a recruitment drive as Japan ramps up spending on its Self-Defense Forces to counter growing global instability, including a rising threat from China and North Korea.
Japan’s defence ministry on Friday requested a record $59bn allocation for the fiscal year from next April, the latest instalment of a plan announced in 2022 to raise the defence-related budget to 2 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027.
As well as highlighting the need for better satellite technology and greater investments in automation and AI, the defence ministry presented a strategy for “making military careers more attractive”, with pay and allowance bumps to try to prevent young Japanese from being tempted by higher paid private sector jobs.
More practical efforts include a promise of improved showers and toilets, and greater privacy in sleeping quarters. Money will be allocated to building individual “capsule” style sleeping rooms on naval vessels.
Recruitment efforts by the SDF in some parts of the country have focused on poorer families. A recent controversial leaflet drive in the northern city of Sapporo focused on parents at “children’s cafeterias” — facilities set up to provide free meals to children of low-income families.
The recruitment campaign in the past year has also focused on the size and quality of steaks served at various army bases.
The hunt for recruits comes as Japan fortifies itself against what it sees as a rising threat from neighbours such as China.
Earlier this week a Chinese military aircraft made an unprecedented incursion into Japanese airspace — a violation described by Tokyo as “totally unacceptable” and a threat to national security.
Like all employers in Japan, the SDF is having to fight a persistent enemy: demographics. The country’s working-age population is shrinking and the number of young people is in long-term decline.
In July, the defence ministry said its enlistment rate in the tax year to March 2024 had fallen to a record low of 50.8 per cent of its target. The 15 percentage point drop from the previous year was blamed on the shrinking population as well as high-profile sexual harassment scandals.
On Friday, government data showed a sharp 5.7 per cent year-on-year drop in the number of babies born to Japanese nationals between January and June, to just over 350,000. The sharp drop puts the annual number of births on course to fall below 700,000 this year for the first time since records began.
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