The 2030 worker shortage was identified by japan long enough ago that policy interventions has mostly eliminated this problem for them.

This is why Japan is one of the world leaders in industrial robotics. Also service robots, ai receptionists etc are prevalently used now.

They are also one of the last countries in the world with penal labour; not to mention 99% chance of conviction to fill those labour quotas.

They will certainly look at AI as perfectly supplementing what they are doing.

So while they still have a demographics collapse and oh boy their debt situation is yikes, this high inflation must be a godsend for them.