3.6% unemployment and virtually every store has an "help wanted" sign [1] on its front door. Japan is facing an incredible demographic challenge: Japanese population decline has really started 3 to 5 years ago (depending on the source), and it will be getting worse and worse in the next few decades. It means its internal market is essentially shrinking, which makes a terrible case for large investments.
That said the situation is not terrible for workers. I found a job here even though nobody in the company could even talk with me (my Japanese was really bad at the time). The first few months were interesting, we were just communicating with signs and drawings... Programming skills are few and far between in Osaka.
Conversely I know immigrants who took 5 years to find a job in France, which is in the opposite situation: population up, gdp flat, gdp per capita down.
Japan's biggest problems are extreme debt, and poor allocation of capital via government spending (Japan's famed public works programs, which have net resulted in zero real GDP growth for 20 years).
Japan is the poster-child for what's happening to the US and Europe: Keynesian economics has failed. QE, inflation, central bank stimulus, debt accumulation - none of it actually grows an economy or increases productivity. It's all fake, all of these measures are meant to keep the fraud going a bit longer, and now the clock has run out and the consequences are being paid.
> Keynesian economics has failed. QE, inflation, central bank stimulus, debt accumulation
It's kind of funny how much of a content-free buzzword Keynes has become. None of the measures you mentioned are originally tied to the original Keynesian idea of anti-cyclical government behaviour.
"Keynesian" as used by the mainstream today is only very weakly related the writing and thinking of John Maynard Keynes. I've seen it suggested in more than one place that if Keynes was alive today he wouldn't be a Keynesian.
Even modern Keynesians are usually the first to tell you the central bank is going to be pretty much helpless in a liquidity trap, that QE isn't going to make a big difference, etc.
No discussion of Japan's economy (whether it's government debt, inflation rates, recession, etc.) is complete without mentioning that the unemployment rate is 3.6%, the 2nd-lowest (behind South Korea) in the OECD.[0]
So all the doom-and-gloom about Japan's future prospects and what they're doing and should be doing has to be balanced by the continued commitment by the successive Japanese governments to maintaining full employment.
I'm not an economist, but in their position, what would mass immigration solve?