As the problem isn’t inherent to Japan i’d be interested to see how different developed countries that have experienced significant birth rate declines compare to each other. I think that would give a bit more of an objective view versus relying on perceived biases about a given country.
I very much agree though that the media we see that comes from Japan is more symptomatic and reflects the anxiety that they’re dealing with, it is not the cause.
Add to that an aversion to immigration. Immigration offsets population losses from declining birth rates brought on by general prosperity. Japan has immigration to some degree, they just don’t talk about it openly.
They import “guestworkers” from Brazil and the Middle East. The general problem with guestworker efforts being that the people never come up with the obvious inevitable idea that a country has to eventually treat people who grow roots in a country like human beings.
Put blunt I’ve constantly wanted to visit Japan then am immedistely turned off by how they view non natives and then get angry I ever had any like of their culture that seems to take a ‘home islands first indifference to everyone else’ approach.
If it makes you feel any better, you probably would never experience any of that as a visitor. They also tend to cut a lot of slack to foreigners (especially US and European ones) when it comes to adhering to cultural peccadilloes. Pretty much its “an enjoy our country, don’t overstay your welcome” kind of thing.
Also thanks to cheaper and shorter flights to Japan (due to opening up Siberia for trans pacific commercial flights) there are far more foreign tourists in the country than there were a decade ago. Plus the country has become more popular for exchange students. They are adapting to foreigners far better than one would think.
I get by with my Japanese in-laws mostly on the goodwill of taking their oldest unmarried daughter off their hands and my father in law’s love of booze.
So basically ‘feel free to visit and leave your money but the instant you want to stay we will close ranks and blame you for every infraction you make of our thousands of layered unwritten cultural rules you filthy gaijin.’
Note: I say this as someone who enjoys their traditional music, the architecture, and their appreciation of nature. This is not a reflection of any one person. Just what to me looks like what the culture wishes to admire to.
yeah. id bet there are some interesting media studies out there which compare different content consumption, but if you want to see why population rates are different look to:
data about healthcare, education, contraception, ages when people are having kids, surveys on people’s desires for kids, … and, not video games.
it is interesting to note that in american, our obsession with police and law and serial killer dramas - the almost implicit belief in stranger danger and high crime - has no basis in the reality of low crime rates. it’s a case where our media “makes” us feel one way, when reality is very different.
i have no idea whether japan has similar self-perception issues. ( or rather, which they have. since im sure everybody does. )
Italy is in a similar position - I believe their birth rate is slightly lower than Japan’s, but they at least have immigration to make up the difference.
Austerity is not what comes to mind when I think of Japan. The government spends enormous amounts on stimulating the economy (budget deficit of 6% of GDP). The government has also recognized that one way to deal with the demographic crunch is to get more women into the workforce. And they’re getting results, according to the OECD* two thirds of Japanese women were in the labor force in 2015, which means the number of people working has actually increased despite the demographic decline. It puts Japan just behind the United States female labor participation rate, and means Japan probably surpassed America in 2016 if the trend continues (in the US the participation rate is shrinking for some reason). I think some of the people in this thread argue a bit too forcefully, based on outdated information and even national stereotypes, rather than actual knowledge.
*https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=LFS_SEXAGE_I_R
(change All persons to Women, you can also customize the way the data is presented for greater clarity).
Japan is having the first go at solving the demographic problem that all countries will have to face if we’re going to deal with the issue of only having one planet.And I hope they find a way to be successful with it. Because a future of declining populations is the only thing that’s compatible with a high standard of living for all. We need Japan to show us how to get there, and what mistakes not to make on the way.
As someone said up-thread, the solution to the problem cannot be for the industrialised nations to asset-strip the developing world of human capital to deal with their ageing population.
" Japanese officials, who have trudged down an increasingly nationalistic path in recent years, have touted the country’s homogeneity. Accordingly, immigration has been limited,"
Actually immigration is not nearly as limited as it was when I came here. There are spouse visas for men, working holidays and even work visas are easier to obtain.
OK, every needs to pitch in, do their part, and repopulate Japan! Who’s with me!!
Austerity is not what comes to mind when I think of Japan. The government spends enormous amounts on stimulating the economy (budget deficit of 6% of GDP). The government has also recognized that one way to deal with the demographic crunch is to get more women into the workforce. And they’re getting results, according to the OECD* two thirds of Japanese women were in the labor force in 2015, which means the number of people working has actually increased despite the demographic decline. It puts Japan just behind the United States female labor participation rate, and means Japan probably surpassed America in 2016 if the trend continues (in the US the participation rate is shrinking for some reason). I think some of the people in this thread argue a bit too forcefully, based on outdated information and even national stereotypes, rather than actual knowledge.
And yet, little to no support for child care, time off, etc. Abe’s “stimulus” was undercut by announcing a tax increase which he cannot implement because… there isn’t much actual stimulus to the economy. It’s a bunch of balance-of-trade twiddling, essentially a right wing banker’s version of stimulus. Krugman pointed this out a number of times whenever Abe’s initiatives came up. You say stereotypes, I say a particularly uncreative rehash of the not-stimulating-stimulus that Western bankers think amounts to an economic response. Hollande did the same kind of crap for France. The undisguised austerity has only come to southern Europe at the behest of Germany, and Britain at the behest of the City. It’s more of a Western thing, but there’s different flavors all over.
Option 3: The caretakers reproduce.
You think someone’s going to do it with a… caretaker?!
I agree with you. In regards to societal and cultural practices, I feel like a large portion of what Cory wrote here is either:
A: extremely exaggerated.
OR
B: using decades old information.
As you said, it’s much easier to get a work visa here than it was even five years ago. Not to mention that unlike US work visas, they are not tied to a single employer, which allows people to switch jobs and have plenty of time between employment opportunities.
Also, in regards to women being forced to quit their jobs once they get married, I feel like this is disappearing with younger generations. It tends to vary by couple, but almost all married couples I know have both people working. In the case that one spouse does not work, it is usually because they don’t want to or they never had a job in the first place.
That being said, many things need to be fixed. childcare is still a major issue that needs to be addressed, as not everyone is able to continue working after they have kids, which has a huge effect on ones decision to have children.
There’s a theory that claims that the reason for higher birthrates in countries with low standards of living is that fewer children survive there. In contrast, countries with low birthrates have higher standards of livings, and thus more children survive, so people choose (unconsciously, I guess) to have fewer children. It’s like an evolutionary feature. It also claims that for this reason we won’t really have an overpopulation problem.
Don’t discount the lack of access to birth control and legal rights for wives, but having said that, I’d say it’s not an unconscious choice to have more children when you can see the survival rate is not in your favor. Just because people are poor and uneducated (in a formal sense) doesn’t mean they’re not smart.
If you’re saying that the phenomenon is another example of opting out of the dysfunctional and unsustainable treadmill that Japanese society defines as normal family life then I would agree.
That version does sound good, but the reality of “make more babies” propaganda is a lot less pleasant. In practise it’s really “make more of the right kind of racially pure babies that women will stay home to care for” propaganda, without the giant robots but with a lot of restrictions on a woman’s right to control her body.
I find nationalistic sentiment among certain cultures/countries and preserving their heritage to be an interesting dilemma. Cultures, language and demographics are meant to change and evolve over time and it’s definitely important to keep cultures, traditions alive and what makes a region unique but it seems like a losing battle that can be harmful and self destructive.
Looking to the past is good and all but clinging onto it is not.
I think there is also a problem of not looking at the past in a way that distorts it? Ignoring the bad in favor of the positive isn’t history - it’s propaganda. It can be a fine line between propaganda and historical accuracy, I think. Just go pick up many books on the history of the Balkans/Yugoslavia… there are some great works out there, but lots of books that cherry pick to make an argument in favor of one ethnic group or another. Writing history in the Balkans is a fraught political process.
Or looking here, it’s like the neo-confederate narratives about the antebellum period and the CW that started being employed on Southern history almost as soon as reconstruction ended. The fact that much of that has seeped into current history taught in some schools is telling.
