Japanese military recruiters struggle
AS A Japanese military recruiter sat patiently at a booth outside a supermarket in northern Tokyo one recent weekend, she welcomed a rare visitor, high school student Kazuaki Matsumura.
But Mr Matsumura, who plans to go to university, wasn’t there to sign up. He was just curious.
“There are scenes in the media that spark interest in the Self-Defence Forces,” the 16year-old said, referring to Japan’s military. “But there are also scenes showing how tough it is and I don’t think many want to join. They want to do other things.”
Empty recruiting tables and disinterested audiences are becoming more common for the SDF as Japan’s demographic troubles and robust economy have created what some defence insiders call a “silent crisis” for military recruiting.
Amid a rock-bottom birth rate, the number of Japanese age 18 to 26, the core of the recruitment pool, has shrunk to 11 million from 17 million in 1994. That group is forecast to shrink to 7.8 million over the next 30 years.
That has left the SDF unable to hit recruitment quotas since 2014. Overall, the military was only able to recruit about 77 per cent of the 9,734 lowest-rank enlisted personnel it had sought in the year ending in March.
“Twenty years from now, unless we can replace a considerable number of people with robots, it’ll be hard to maintain the current level of war capability,” said Akihisa Nagashima, a former parliamentary vicedefence minister and conservative independent lawmaker. “Japan’s [security] situation won’t be more peaceful, so I think this is really serious.”
The personnel crunch could force Japan’s military into tough choices about future missions as it tries to contain China’s maritime expansion and deal with volatility on the Korean peninsula.
“The manpower shortage will affect operational efficiency,” said Hideshi Tokuchi, a former vice-defence minister who once headed the ministry’s personnel bureau. “It is a headache. There is more to do with fewer people and I don’t think there is any easy solution.”
As Japan’s economy has improved, unemployment has fallen to around a 25-year low. More high school graduates are also heading to college.
That is good news for the country, but it makes military recruiting even tougher.
“Even though we have the budget, we fall below the allotted number of troops,” said Kanji Wakamiya, a former defence vice-minister who heads a ruling party panel on defence policy.
Japan budgeted for 247,154 SDF personnel in the year to March 2018, but the military employed only 226,789. The biggest shortfall is in the lowest ranks of enlisted personnel, which were roughly 26 per cent below their budgeted level.
With conscription deemed unconstitutional, the military is trying to recruit more women, and starting next month, the maximum age for new recruits will be raised to 32. Retirement ages may be increased as well.
“There was a time when it was thought youth equals strength, but if you think about it experience and skill have become even more important for today’s SDF,” said Ritsuko Hiroshi, director of the defence ministry’s personnel affairs division.
A Female Personnel Empowerment Initiative unveiled last year aims to double the percentage of women in the SDF from 6.1 per cent in 2016, and to at least 9 per cent by 2030. That compares with about 15 per cent in the United States and 10 per cent in Britain.