I'd rather see advanced robotics replacing labor intensive jobs than letting low skill and more prone to criminal acts immigrants in. We've had more than enough trouble with chinks immigrant workers already, there's no need for more of the same with different kind.
Funny you should mention that because I was just talking with my Japanese friend about this. I actually just started working a part-time factory/ warehouse job recently and I'll tell you what I think. I'm currently in the UK, which no longer has much of an industrial sector to speak of but from my experience what little factories we have are all pretty well automated. At least the ones I've worked in so far.
It is absolutely doable on a theoretical level. It depends on the type of industry we are talking about but take the alcohol factory I'm working at, they're shitting out tens of thousands of bottles of alcohol per hour ( probably even more, but the lines run so quickly it's hard to count ) with less than 10 workers on each production line (there are a total of 3) and one extra line which I will talk about later. Of course there are management staff and forklift operators, but there aren't too many of them and you shouldn't really have to hire foreign workers as management anyways. It is insanely efficient.
The only time the lines get lively are when machinery breaks down or when they've just introduced new machinery or modifications and need workers to look after those sectors for a bit until they're certain everything is stable and self sufficient.
Then there is the extra line which is used for testing production of newer products. This line is pretty much always used to streamline and test new products that have different requirements so they know how to set up a proper production line later on. This is the only line where a decent amount of workers are required, because the line itself doesn't have the equipment made specifically for the materials used in the production of said products.
And if you've ever seen car factories in Japan you'll know that there are very few workers there.
From my two and a half years of living in Japan this is what It think. I think the biggest issues preventing Japan from becoming like this is a lack of familiarity with machinery / tech amongst the general populace and a lack of intent from the higher-ups especially in less talked about industries. If you want to automate your production lines to the extent of the place I am working at, your minimum wage workers need to be able to do basic machinery calibrating and maybe even perform minor maintenance when machinery breaks down on their own accord, so you don't have to call your engineers in every time a conveyor belt gets jammed because there's something stuck in front of a sensor or some shit like that. Japan is very technologically advanced in many ways, but it is also very archaic in the way it's society operates in certain aspects. Fax machines are still common, there is no way to file taxes electronically, the vast majority of Uni students still rely upon pens and paper to take notes instead of laptop and tablets and many, many more. Being able to invent shit and having one of the strongest academic and tech sectors doesn't increase the efficiency of your society if people don't incorporate it into their lives. The tech is there, the people just don't take advantage of it.
Then there is the lack of intent from smaller, less talked about industries. Japan is a lot more decentralised than say, the UK and Germany. There are a lot of factories operating outside of their biggest cities and those industries get far less attention. Those factories also tend to have local roots and the employers don't feel like it is necessary to automate their factories, nor do they want to. Apart from branches and subsidiaries of larger corporations, many factories still rely on archaic equipment and production methods.
'Wait' you might ask. 'Doesn't Japan produce a lot of high end industrial equipment?' And you'd be correct. However, what Japan produces usually falls under the category of forklifts, generators and engines, blah blah blah, basically stuff that have very little to do with automation. The costs behind making an automated forklift that is able to be extremely flexible and reliable simply isn't worth it in factory environments, so you can expect most factories to hire people to drive forklifts for a very long time. Warehouses might be different though. Japan does produce equipment that has to do with automation, but it mostly has do to do with heavy industries and the automobile industry which is way too specific to make a nation-wide impact, not to mention that it is not at all economical for smaller businesses to adopt them with the initial and maintenance costs and the expertise needed to set up and maintain the darn thing.
Anyways, most of the automated equipment I've encountered in the factories/ warehouses I've worked at were made in Europe in countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland and less often Poland and Italy. Many of the forklifts, generators and shit are Japanese though.
If I ever work a similar warehouse/ factory job when I move to Japan I'll write a comparison post maybe. However, from the information I've been given by my friends in Japan, this is largely the case.
One final thing I'll point out is complacency and modern anime culture. in general. The 令和 era punks in Japan really like their mobile games. However, they've recently been gravitating towards Chinese made games ( such as Genshit ) and apps ( such as TikTok). Japanese apps are still alive and well due to all the revenue from gacha culture, but they're struggling to acquire new players. This is because, as much as I hate to admit it, Chinese mobile games are simply of better quality. Genshit is an open world experience that gets frequent, working content updates and Japanese mobile games are mostly just jpeg files with minimal animations moving around with different stats. If you're lucky enough you can get a game with actual 3d assets with a ton of recycled animations. How did the genetically inferior Ching Chong pigs overtake places like Japan, Korea and Hong Kong when it comes to the quality of their products, you may ask? This all comes down to complacency. Why should I spend more time and effort making a better game when this shitty game that runs on the same engine we made 15 years ago is making me millions a month through gacha revenue? All we need to do is add random events every two weeks with a couple new characters and voila, 5 million yen in revenue, minimum. What's worse, is that spending money on free gacha games, unlike buying new games, toys or whatnot doesn't really contribute to economic growth. The programmers are still not going to get a pay raise and the content they're paying for requires minimum effort in the first place. They're also spending money that could be spent on actual consumer goods that would contribute to aggregate demand and consumption and thus improve the economy and benefit the nation.
This extends to other industries as well, and this is pretty much how modern Japanese culture is like. In my friend's own words: 'Ever since the 90s Japan has stopped advancing as a society and only changes when it is forced to do so. The young generation complains and blames it all on the older folks without realising that they're part of the problem and if they're lucky they fuck off to Australia, the US, Canada or the UK and will most likely never go back. It's honestly really sad to see.'
Japan has a lot of cultural and societal issues, probably second only to the US and maybe Germany. Japan absolutely has the ability to accomplish that if they decide that that's what they want and work towards it as a collective, but due to the cultural issues it's going to be very difficult. Which is why I said that is is possible on a THEORETICAL level.
What I've said here is by no means the full picture and I have my own biases. Feel free to add to it or point out any mistakes I have made if you disagree. Sorry for the long ass post.
