I have always been intrigued at the way the Japanese counted their unemployment rate. I don't know why there isn't any international standard in calculating who is jobless and who isn't. In Japan, whoever works even 1h a week, whoever turns down a job, or is employed a week a month, is considered as employed. As a result, the Japanese have long boasted at their low unemployment rates, eventhough it isn't the case anymore (over 5% officially).

But one of the most important differences between Japan and most Western countries (esp. individualistic Northern Europe), is that many married Japanese women stay at home, and are not considered unmployed because they are not seeking employment. This, I believe, is the same everywhere, but the fact that more Japanese women voluntarily stay at home gives more vacant jobs to men, and forrcibly reduces unemplyment. If all those house wives suddenly started to imitate their European counterpart and work, even part-time, unemployment rates would surge well over anything seen in Europe (well half of Western European countries already have lower unemployment rates than Japan, but big ones like Germany, Spain, France and Italy have rates around 10%).

Let's now calculate Japan's real unemployment. Japan's active population (that is between age 15 and 64) is 85 million or 66,9% of the total population.
The Ministry of Home Affairs' Statistical Handbook of Japan writes that in 2002, 109m Japanese were over 15, but only 66,9m were part of the labor force, among whom 63,3m were employed. That left the unemployment rate at 5,4%.

So why do we have 42,3m Japanese over 15 who are not part of the labor force ? Those are retired people, house wives, disabled people, etc.

To get a good approximate of the people who are voluntarily not working, I will exclude people over 64. It is true that some continue to work, but that will compensate for people between 15 and say 20, who do not feel like working, or do not need it because of their parent's support, or because they are too busy studying even for an "arubaito".

We get : 85m - 63,3m = 21,7 million people who are not working or 25,5% of the "active population" (those between 15 and 64 years old). This is our real unemployment rate. In other words 5,4% looking for work, and 20,1% not looking for work. Among them, 70% are females (housewives, students...); the remaining 30% of males being probably students who don't need to work or living/travelling abroad, homeless, or just self-employed people not declaring their income.