Japan’s Canon, Inc., wants its employees to do their part in helping the nation by leaving work early to go home and procreate.

The country’s 1.34 birthrate is far below the 2.0 needed to hold the population at an even rate, so executives are sending employees home to give them more family time and inflate those numbers.

One stat to note: Japan’s population is shrinking and aging faster than any other country because of employees’ notorious 12-hour workdays.

Even though Canon is sending its workforce home early twice a week, on average, those employees are still putting up numbers well over a 9-to-5 pace.

Amid charges of wasteful spending and political collusion, Japan’s transportation ministry has decided it’s time to get serious with its employee training. The ministry has hired a coterie of stand-up comedians to train employees in communication skills.

The program will kick off this week when about 100 new hires with the ministry attend classes conducted by the comics.

“By experiencing comedy routines, we hope they can learn more about how to speak to clients and how to manage their staff as they begin to have more management responsibility,” said ministry deputy director Atsuya Kawada, with a straight face. “We also hope this training will soften the stiff image of bureaucrats.”

The training is a response to allegations by officials and business leaders who say the ministry is a poorly run operation that needs to be more efficient during the economic downturn. (Yeah, we don’t understand the connection with comedy, either.)

With the tight budget, however, it’s unlikely that newly-humorous newbies will be issued essential training aids, such as water-squirting flowers, exploding cigars and whoopee cushions.