If you’re a homogenous culture with a lack of fervor for immigration and a graying population as Japan is, robots are a necessity, an elegant solution even, as Yoshiaki Nohara writes in an Financial Review article. For a country like America that embraces immigration (well, some of us still do) and has thrived on youthful demographics, it’s more complicated.

From Nohara:

The rise of the machines in the workplace has US and European experts predicting massive unemployment and tumbling wages.

Not in Japan, where robots are welcomed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government as an elegant way to handle the country’s aging populace, shrinking workforce and public aversion to immigration.

Japan is already a robotics powerhouse. Abe wants more and has called for a “robotics revolution.” His government launched a five-year push to deepen the use of intelligent machines in manufacturing, supply chains, construction and health care, while expanding the robotics markets from 660 billion yen ($US5.5 billion) to 2.4 trillion yen by 2020.

“The labour shortage is such an acute issue that companies have no choice but to boost efficiency,” says Hajime Shoji, the head of the Asia-Pacific technology practice at Boston Consulting Group. “Growth potential is huge.” By 2025, robots could shave 25 percent off of factory labour costs in Japan, according to the consulting firm.•