As already mentioned, some industrialists and parliamentarians as well as high-ranking officials of the Government have come to worry about the current exceedingly low level of fertility and have been urging the Government to do something in order to thwart this current of low fertility. These groups of people have come to be seriously concerned that if the current low fertility would prevail in the future, the Japanese industries could not secure a full recruitment of young labour force fresh out of school and the Japanese economy would lose its vitality which has been a part and parcel of the strength in the thrust of Japanese economy. Furthermore, these people argue that the imminent population decline must shake up the very foundation of Japan's current prosperous economy and threaten the future economic growth. The increasing population ageing would create an acute shortage of young and docile segment of manpower and would entail in the decline in productivity and slump in saving rate. These people seriously consider that inasmuch as Japan almost categorically lacks natural resources the only abundant are human resources with a high quality of education and hard-work ethics and such have been the panacea for Japan's miraculous economic achievement in the past. Without abundant manpower resources with a high level of education and aspiration, Japan must in the long run lose its advantageous position in the world economy.
On the other hand, however, some groups of women, notably those female intellectuals related to Japan's feminist movement have been arguing otherwise that it is a woman who bears and rears children and industrialists, parliamentarians and government officials cannot enforce pronatalist population policies and programmes upon the families without a full consent by women. The current unprecedented decline of fertility simply means the disenchantment of women with the current state and mode of family, marriage and reproduction which are male-dominant and often patriarchal. They argue that women are not a child-bearing machine and they are flatly opposed to the goverment officials and industrialists' views which they regard as rather short-sighted and unbalanced.
