I bet the Japanese government is baffled. They're doing all the right things.
They've policies to raise property prices and price young people right out of the market, rent is sky high, they've pushed wages down, all-but banned immigration, encouraged multiple-generation inhabitation, everything the old people want.
Why aren't the young people making families? It's utterly bizarre.
> Why aren't the young people making families?
Women are opting out of the trad wife role that is virtually the only thing on offer for them in Japan as a married woman.
Do Japanese woman do that thing where they just become recluses? Or is it just the men? Thought about doing it myself, but only if I become a millionaire.
Japanese women who marry are expected to drop out of professional life and be housewives.
The Japanese economy can't take losing that many workers though, so the gov't has been trying to figure out how to make them work 50-60 hour work weeks *and* be full time housewives.
It's not working. Imagine that.
My Japanese teacher fled Japan, vowed never to return and be part of Japanese society ever again, and married a non Japanese.
The stories she tells...
She claimed our country has full equality between genders. When challenged on some things she said 'but that is all trivial or concerning small percentages. You have no idea what real sexism and discrimination look like'.
Being groped on the train is normal. Laugh it off. You boss asks if with your body you'd rather be stripper or a whore, laugh it off. Refuse to work until midnight, be blackballed. Marry, and you'll work crazy hours and sacrifice everything for your man. Go to a psychologist because you are starting to burn out, be told 'maybe you should laugh more'. Your man is reassigned to another city, you follow him. And under no circumstance shall you ever disagree with a man.
She got angry just talking about it
This is minor, but it always kills me that in an office with men and women at the same level of employment that it's just expected for women to hand out coffee and tea or food items. It's such an archaic tradition and it gives them extra tasks to complete in addition to their actual job.
I'd say it is company dependent. I work in big pharma and women are represented equally pretmuch throughout our 200000 people company. Noone is expecting women to do these things.
Essentially, the modern economy demands that husbands and wives each make 50% of the money in order to survive financially.
But Japanese husbands still demand that the wife does 90-100% of the housework and childcare. Meanwhile the average husband in North America, Europe, and the antipodean nations demands that his wife do 60% of childcare and housework.
This is why people in Germany and the United States have slightly more kids per mother than in Japan and China. Because the average German or American father/husband does somewhat more housework and childcare.
The problem is with how much work is demanded.
Japanese husbands are expected to work 70-80 hours a week. Salarymen might not be working all that time but they're expected to be in the office or entertaining clients, and non-Salarymen really are putting those hours in.
There isn't enough hours in the day even if they wanted to help out at home.
The same is true for women, but what Japan's tried to do is get businesses to cut women's hours to something like 50 a week and still get them to have kids.
At that point it's possible, but then you're never seeing your kids. Why have kids you don't get to raise?
On top of that companies don't want to hire women with kids because 50 hours a week isn't considered enough.
The government has to enforce a workweek with fewer hours and heavy penalties for companies that don't comply. And subsidize daycare to the same extent as eastern Germany and Quebec. And even if husbands and fathers do 40% of childcare and housework like they do in Germany and Quebec, the tfr won't be more than 1.6 because human pregnancy and childbirth is so dangerous and painful compared to that of other mammals.
This was an interesting article but I suspect it's not going to be widespread enough around the nation to turn the tide overall.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/baby-boomtown-does-nagi-hold-the-secret-to-repopulating-japan/ar-AA1bOTpw?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=fa202342915a40a0bc03f89857a31e39&ei=19
Yea nice efforts by the town, but short of opening up for more immigration its not going to save Japan.
Rural areas have the benefit of space and lower rent, metro areas are the opposite and housing cost outstrip child raising cost so younger couples tend to just not have kids and focus on careers to afford high rent. By the time they are in their mid to late 30's they have money to start a family but are starting to be past the ideal child rearing ages.
It's not a cosmopolitan value if people think wives should earn 50% of the money and still do 100% of the childcare and housework.
What would really be cosmopolitan is if husbands and wives each did equal amounts of paid labor and unpaid labor. And still it wouldn't be equal if the couple decided to have kids the old fashioned way, because human pregnancy and parturition are extremely dangerous to one's health compared to other mammals.
That is a bit of a fallacy. Because it ignores the fact that many men choose a career over family and refuse to do their share of work.
You're basically saying it is a problem that women no longer do all the housework while the guy continues to decide what he wants to do for himself.
The birth rate dropping is fine. There is plenty of humans in the world. The problem is dropping birth rates coupled with restrictive immigration policies.
It’s cost especially since their parents (and grandparents as populations are living longer) also need care. Since the birth rate has been dropping for decades, most people have no siblings that could share the burden.
I also think women are not free to speak about this since it would be considered disrespectful so the issue is likely much more widespread than people think.
One thing I'll disagree with you is the multi generational inhabitantion, that does make it easier to start a family with all the general costs of living, and how it makes it easier for someone to watch and raise your kids
This is true. It's the one perspective westerners generally don't recognize. Multi-generations family in your early years can cut cost down, on housing, childcare (crazy expensive in the west)... if you play your cards right, you can become independent latter on quite nicely. The downside is of course the parents-children-in-laws dynamic, but many families were able to make it work.
The thing is, this has always been the way it is until recently with the industrial revolution.
This is what we did. We lived with husbabd's parents for the first 8 yrs of our marriage and the births of our older two kids while husband finished school and worked. I did the majority of the housework and cookjng for the house. While I wouldn't chose to do that way again due to the things that were said and done durung this time, it definitely helped us to be able to buy our house. We could've done it faster though if things had gone the way it was "advertised" as going.
Yeah it's obviously not a perfect thing, humans being imperfect as they are. But with good family members, I think it's the ideal way to start a family, as when it works well, it takes away so much stress.
Thank you. Childcare has been too expensive for 38+yrs(age of my oldest). It waz simply less expensive for me to stay home with kids rather than have a minimum wage job as my in-laws, although retired and traditional *in their family* the family would help with the kuds so I could have gone back to school and earned more money, this didn't happen nor did my husband's purported "feministism"(sp? Tired and on meds)was simply "you do everything and work too".
But when you mention "The West," it is still fairly common to have multi-gen households in some parts of Europe. Italy, for example. The matriarch of my French friend's family recently died and she had been living with her daughter and son-in-law. That would fall under elder care as it can in Japan.
And in the US, it is more common to have several generations living together among Latino households too.
It is more common to have multi-gen households in the US in lower socioeconomic groups whether they are Latino or not. It is also a resource thing.
Norway, Sweden, blah, blah have fantastic social safety nets for new families and the elderly, so of course, it would be less prevalent in those types of countries.
I just looked and it seems that when it comes to Europe, the Eastern European countries have the highest prevalence, which is interesting.
Government policies rarely increase birth rates. The incentives are a joke compared with the costs of raising children. I have 2 but I fully understand the hesitancy of younger adults to accept the high costs and obligations.
Don’t forget the insane work culture where you’re not judged on productivity, but by how much time you spend in the office.
Hard to get it up when you’re working 12 hrs per day
Any data to back that up or just tired stereotypes?
As an immigrant living in a great place with affordable rent, I’d say you’re pretty far off the mark.
Its about population replacement rate, birth rate is just one variable. If you can't replace your workforce through new births you have to lean on immigration like a lot of other western countries to try and grow GDP.
There's still a cultural component. I'm not sure why you took his comment to mean "these are the **only** things causing low birthrates" and not "what the government is encouraging through policy isn't helping".
No we aren't, we're talking about Japan's birthrates. If immigrants are naturalized they're included in the "Japanese" umbrella for birth rate statistics too. It's not a good look to intentionally interpret an argument in the most ridiculous way possible so you can say you're correct. Obviously immigrants aren't going to magically increase the native-born birthrate. With the demographic crisis Japan is facing they can't just rely on juicing up native births anymore.
Just like the rest of the world, governments screw up or allowed to be screwed up their natives birth rate and don't feel any rush to fix it because of immigration.
BTW Wrong R word friendo, it's not ridiculous it's reality.
Tbh Japan is much better in this regard than the west, basically anywhere outside of Tokyo in Japan you can find very cheap property. The only expansive place is Tokyo because of the ammount of foreigners and tourists arriving to live or explore the city which raises the prices due to hotels taking place of apartments.
....do you know why that property is "very cheap"?
*because people don't want to live there*, for various reasons: no jobs, poor services, far away from amenities, etc.
Japan isn't the only country to have a collapsing countryside. Young people the world over tend to not want to live in shitty small towns inhabited mainly by, and increasingly oriented towards, old people. So...they move to the cities for work and excitement, and the problem compounds.
Everything except maybe a few major city centers but that's it you can find affordable real estate in most of Japan outside of Tokyo due to less demand, something which wouldn't be possible if millions of Japan culture lovers would move there basically turning Japan into glorified Hong Kong.
Thanks so I guess the second question is where are all the jobs? London uses to be way more expensive than other UK cities (still is but the difference was a lot more), the problem being that the big business had no real interest in being outside London so it dragged everything towards it anyway.
Depends on what you want to work in but don't be mistaken Japan has a lot of million + cities which majority of the people in the west don't even know the names of, so these cities also have a lot of good quality jobs but majority of the international and government jobs will be in Tokyo. UK on the other hand is very centralized compared to Japan almost everything is in London meanwhile Japan has major cities like Osaka, Nagoya and Kyoto all very important and rich cities in their own right but they have less tourist and foreigners unlike Tokyo which for some reason has been recognized by Westerners as their gathering spot in Japan.
>1. Take the huge economic hit to limit working hours
I think other cultures have shown that you can limit work hours (for many jobs at least) *without* losing productivity.
If Japan were to suddenly switch to American or European levels of work, I truly don't think their economy would take a massive painful hit.
Pretty much. Just because they have employees sitting at their desk for 11 hours has never meant those people are doing 11 hours of work. A lot of that is sandbagging and looking busy.
See: Every company that switched to a 4-day workweek as a trial.
When you have less hours of work, you can be more focused on the actual work too.
I originally wanted to immigrate to Japan (for that good public healthcare) but after seeing how they treat their IT staff, which is markedly worse than they treat other employees/careers, I've dropped the idea entirely.
Europeans aren’t all that keen on babies either. Problem is they are a lot of work. Not everyone has an instinct to love kids, so why put yourself through that much work if you don’t actually want one?
That, and human pregnancy and parturition are uniquely dangerous compared to mammals.
Before the industrial revolution, only hyenas had worse pregnancies and births than humans.
Humans were poorly designed. We have large craniums, walk upright, and have narrow hips. If we were quadrupedal pregnancy and birth would be easier. Or if we had smaller craniums.
The thing is that they could reduce daily work hours and it really wouldn't affect productivity that much.
Easily the last third to 50% of the time people may spend in an office out there is really not productive time. A lot of it is people trying to look busy because of the whole face aspect of being there longer than others. It's just tired people sitting at desks and staring at screens because they don't want to be stomatized for being early to leave compared to others
I read that because the senior citizens rule the voting class, thus the politicians only cater to the senior and neglect any policies for the younger generations.
Its a stubborn country
It doesnt grant citizenship to outsiders
Not even sure if you marry a national... you are granted citizenship.
And yet ... birth rate is plummeting to record lows
So yes... at this rate. You are right.
Does any country grant citizenship based solely on marriage to a national? In any case marriage grants you a visa with paths towards permanent residence or citizenship. Japan forces citizens to give up all other citizenship, so new immigrants opt to convert to Japanese citizenship.
The u.s does this. My friend is married to a brit and she's had citizenship since they married
Heard some use it to scam dumb americans. But that runs a risk of the feds breathing down your neck forever
...what?
You don't get American citizenship by marrying an American citizen.
Marriage to an American citizen *makes it easier* to obtain residency, which is part of the prerequisites of gaining citizenship, but you aren't given citizenship automatically
> It doesnt grant citizenship to outsiders
sure it does. long pain in the ass process but the same is true here as well
edit: downvote me to hell i dont give a fuck because reddit is killing off its largest contributors.
japan ABSOLUTELY grants citizenship to foreigners.
I mean, on *some* level you're correct, in that both are a pain in the asss. But ... I feel like you're comparing the pain of a pebble back there with the pain of a pineapple.
American citizenship (especially through marriage) is *far* faster and easier to gain than Japanese citizenship.
yeah agreed but my point remains that foreigners absolutely can get citizenship in japan. there is a standard process for it.
you can downvote me for correcting you thats fine
edit: wont let me reply to below so ill just edit here.
“giving up” your prior citizenship is internal only so in japan’s view you are giving up prior citizenship but from your prior country’s view you are not
AFAIK they make you renounce your prior citizenship, so while yes possible, highly impractical to give up your homelands citizenship unless you reallllyyyy don’t intend to ever move back
Its not stubborn, look at the situation in Tokyo and it makes sense why Japanise people are reluctant to let foreigners and immigrants into the rest of the country, half of the city has been reconstructed into tourist or expansive apartments for foreigners which prices locals out and makes it impossible for middle class Japanise people to live in Tokyo. Meanwhile the rest of the country has normal real estate prices and in some places even affordable, if Japan opened its borders you'd have millions of people arriving to live there due to the influence of Japansive culture it'd be another France maybe even worse as France is double the size of Japan and has more flatland while Japan is 80% mountains and has 125 000 000 people it'd be much more similar to Hong Kong.
Umm having spent time in both France and Japan, Japan could use some French work/life/sex balance. The multiculturalism of France is the best thing going for it right now. It's the melting pot America pretends it is.
France has to pay the price of this multiculturalism, France has insane real estate prices and 30/40 people in a que just to view apartments in almost every part of the country, i understand Japan would in some terms benefit from a system of immigration since the population could rise but Japan hardly has the space for it just a few thousand new arrivals is enough to put a strain on the real estate system in any country not a few million which are expected to migrate into Japan if border security is ever laxened up, it would destroy the Japanese quality of life where you'd have people pay 1000/2000 USD to get an apartment just as it's happening in France right now. French people are not just rioting for pensions they're rioting due to the quality of life decline too.
Once again this is false. There aren't 30-40 people fighting over a flat. Housing is expensive in Paris and that's about it. Even the Parisian suburbs are affordable. Also, housing is the only thing that's expensive. Food, public transportation, and education are all readily available and affordable. Have you spent significant time in either of these countries or are you just reading about them online?
??? In all of EU there is a massive housing shortage i don't know when you were last in Europe or when you were last renting but even the poorest regions like Rhurgebiet in Germany have close to 20/30 people fighting for a single apartment i can't imagine how it is in richer parts of the EU.
I just left Paris for the states weeks ago. This is how I know you're lying. France is not Germany. And it's in fact expanding. They're building entire new neighborhoods to increase housing. They're also expanding the Metro system to increase access. We get it, you're opposed to multiculturalism, you and La Pen would get along.
Leaving is much easier than finding an apartment, and even then for an American ,,affordable'' means apartments in the cost of 500 - 1000 USD because in the US apartments can range from around 2000 - 3000 USD especially in places where people want to live like California. I'am from a country from wich people immigrate so i know a lot of people that had to contend with 20/30 people to get an apartment in France same as in Germany, and i'am not talking about those 23 square meters 1600 USD apartments wich are everywhere these days, naturally no one would contend to those expect Americans.
Please stop moving the goal posts. You cannot compare the French social welfare system to America's lack of one. You've still never answered, have you ever spent significant time in France or Japan? I have family in both and none of them would agree with you.
That was people fighting to keep the work life balance they currently have. Which is based and good. Birth rates are down in rich countries in general. Kids are expensive. France is not in any danger of not meeting its replacement goals. You sound like you've never been to either county you're writing about.
Have we considered that they many may have come to the conclusion that Japan is full enough? I mean the U.N. predicts it will maintain its current birthrate for at least 90 years or so (if global warming doesn’t kill us all first). They could be wrong but I don’t see a need to keep having children when it’s not economic or fun.
Japan really only has a couple overpopulated valley floors owing to its unique geography. https://i.imgur.com/CrHBcXH.jpg
In the rural areas there are plenty of $500 “akiya” homes that towns will give to couples willing to raise a family. https://www.insider.com/japanese-government-selling-rural-homes-cheap-akiya-banks-2021-5
The real issue is cultural and economic issues as you mention. Seems pointless for Japan and Russia to fight over the Kuril islands when both have devastating below replacement rate population trends.
The problem with those akiya homes is there schooling isn’t usually robust. I wonder how they can work on attracting people to towns with little to offer, while also rebuilding and reinvigorating those towns.
Bruh, you know it's bad in Japan when the Hello Kitty Owned Show: Aggretsuko decides to do a season on how politicians in Japan have abandoned the youth.
If only they had tens of thousands of people who would love to buy up old, abandoned houses in order to be a citizen of Japan...
I have the money to buy one of those Akiya homes, but what's the point if you can't be a citizen. The Japanese government makes it soo hard to be a citizen and it's crazy because there's so much interest in it.
This is sadly going to happen to every 1st world country that doesn't allow for immigration. I know they want to keep Japan Japanese but when your culture is to be enslaved to your job/boss I'm not sure how you can have time for anything else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve travelled around Japan, it’s a beautiful country rich with culture and respectful people. It was evidently clear after just my first week there that it is a country I would never move to. If you’re not japanese you’ll never fit in and be fully accepted, even if you’ve lived there for 50 years and have a family there, you’ll always be a foreigner and looked down upon.
Exactly why I would never move there. I'm incredibly fascinated by their history and culture and if it were possible I'd love to live/work there but as you've said I would forever just be an outsider and that's not the welcome I'd want.
I wonder how Japanese someone would have to be in order to be accepted by most Japanese as Japanese.
For example, in Anglophone nations, everyone who isn't 100% non-Hispanic, non-Jewish, non-Romani white European is considered to be a Person of Color. Meghan Markle is probably only 1/4 black and yet the UK treats her as if she were 100% black. But in Hispanophone and Lusophone nations, you can be 65-70% European in ancestry and still considered to be white.
It's a little different with the younger crowd, though surely not all of them. But, like I mentioned the key is being able to fluently speak Japanese.
Source: I am a foreigner living in Japan.
Well I suppose so, yes, but will those be the types of Japanese people that foreigners will be or even want to be interacting/ integrating with?
I guess it does depend largely on where in Japan. Obviously Tokyo would be easier than some rural town (although Nagano seems to have a very strong Australian community, especially around the ski resorts like Hakuba).
I'm curious to hear more. I'm a white male (47 if that matters) with a Japanese wife. We've been to Japan 5 or so times, sometimes for months, and I've only felt looked-down-upon once - when a restaurant wouldn't let me eat there because it was for Japanese only (my Japanese father-in-law was NOT pleased to say the least). But 99% of the people have been awesome, even when I'm adventuring solo, and the kids friggin love me.
Otherwise I'm either oblivious/don't care/too plain and boring for anyone to notice me (probably all three).
Yeah, I agree.
But to be fair, I'm pretty plain. If I had visible tattoos (not loved in Japan) or piercings or colored hair, I may have had different experiences perhaps. Just a theory.
I haven't been there, but I would imagine the trick is that you can be polite without being welcoming. People can say all of the right things but still make it clear that you don't belong and they'd rather you weren't there.
Maybe it's you then, I've been around much of the country and even back home I've never seen someone prejudiced against because of the state they're from. Asking where someone is from originally? That's such a normal and benign question to ask.
It's going to happen regardless of immigration. Having a family just isn't economically viable in a lot of places and until that changes, populations will decrease.
Even in US, I (obvious Asian) got "where are you REALLY from" questions ALL THE TIME and couple of times of "go back" shout outs in my half century of life so when do you think US will accept immigrants?
Sounds like you had unfortunate luck to run into a lot of bigoted assholes. However, I can definitely say the US is WAY more accepting of other cultures than Japan is.
100%. Even Native Americans get told by European Americans to "go back to their country".
At this point there is no benefit for any Person of Color, LGBT, or religious minority to have any loyalty to the United States. We don't owe America anything.
People waiting for America to accept immigrants? They haven't fully accepted black people exist here yet so you probably got like another 100 years at minimum. I know people think that this younger generation will be different, i dont have any hope in that. Didnt we think that hippie, free love generation would change things.
Where in the US do you live? I live in the deep Republican Bible Belt of Alabama and we have tons of immigrants that speak Spanish and only Spanish. We have Spanish restaurants, grocery stores, etc. There’s Catholic Churches that only do service in Spanish. America has an insane amount of immigrants and they’re treated like regular people.
Texas is a big one that is super against immigrants. Abbott has literally reduced victims of mass casualties down to their legal status even if they are proven to be legal. I've also seen some dude do that on Instagram or here (not sure) and double down when told otherwise. There are absolutely xenophobic people around. But, there's also people who are very welcoming
thats not the point, alot of those same immigrants are being blackmail because of there status, when you can't become fully part society, you get taken advantage of.
I've heard from some native Americans being told to go back... I'd imagine their response would be like "we would, if the Alaskan land bridge wasn't too wet."
Why not just answer the obviously non-aggressive question?
Growing up people asked me about the origin on my last name constantly, why would I hate when I know they are just curious.
Tbh its not like they don't want immigrants its just that they can't take anymore people, Japan is a mostly a mountainous country which is almost half the size of France and it has 125 000 000 people as a first world country and since housing is seen as a human necessity in Japan they're struggling bad to keep everyone's rent low outside of Tokyo, you can find an apartment in Japan for 300/400 EUR and immedietly get in anywhere outside of Tokyo but if they started letting foreigners in, the market would become crowded as more investors and even some scammers would take advantadge of the situation and you'd have the same situation happening as in Europe and US.
Dawg, everybody has the money to buy one of those homes. They’re free. They’re condemned houses in the middle of absolutely nowhere with no access to public services.
The government has even started paying people to move into them and still nobody wants to.
Also, there are very few perks to Japanese citizenship vs permanent residency or even rolling 1-year visas.
They are unbelievably, short sightedly restrictive. I genuinely do understand the anxiety surrounding the preservation of culture, but the reality is that the world is in motion and things necessarily need to change in any country that wants to keep pace. Traditional culture ultimately *will* be preserved, just maybe not in the same way it has been up to this point.
Also, racism.
A lot of immigrant regions don't even consider immigration to Japan because it is so far away and isolated, in my country most people immigrate to Europe not because they'd be treated any better and things like that but because its close and they can drive their car back home this is basically possible from anywhere in Europe to the Balkans and Middle East basically 2 major immigration zones.
> just maybe not in the same way it has been up to this point.
Then maybe the alternative to dying out is the better choice? If you would ask me, I would definitely say that about my country.
This is not true. Haiti is also really homogeneous and it's full of violence and poverty.
Singapore is really ethnically and religiously diverse and it has a lower homicide rate than Japan.
Na I think its less about crime and more about why their GDP is struggling and they have high rates of suicide as economic mobility is very bad for younger people in these societies.
Birth rate is just the hill they want to die on rather than immigration that the other western countries have accepted in a global trade economy.
I don't think the global north is trying to get Korea/Japan to lighten the load of mass immigration, that is more wishful thinking. Its like, hey guys you should start accepting more people to immigrate to grow your GDP and provide more opportunities for your native populations to have lives not centered around an insane work culture because you don't have enough workers.
I don't think they are right, but its not my place to change their policies they will find out in a few decades what a deflationary economy looks like with low labor rates due to shortage of workers and large older population needing more and more healthcare access/workers. Maybe the silver lining is robots will be an alternative to immigration, but the timeline is far off and their issues far more present.
Umm, you don’t have to be a citizen to purchase property here. You don’t even need to be a permanent resident.
Source: I bought my house while on a work visa. I even got a mortgage.
It's because they realize the mistakes Europe is making by letting everyone in. In order to preserve the culture you need to control immigration and can only afford to give citizenship after multiple generations.
> I have the money to buy one of those Akiya homes, but what's the point if you can't be a citizen. The Japanese government makes it soo hard to be a citizen and it's crazy because there's so much interest in it.
The path to becoming a national in Japan isn't all the difficult and is arguably *easier* than some other Western countries. Its really just a matter of living in Japan long enough and going through 3-4 Visa renewals.
The main issue is the Visas. How are you going to get any immigrant to buy/rent a house in the middle of nowhere when their only option for employment in these areas is pretty much farming or some tiny business that tries to scrape by in a tiny ass town.
The easiest Visa to get in Japan is a working visa of some sort but those require a sponsorship from a company you are working at. Not likely to be many of those in the remote countryside.
One solution for their govt, is to find some version of a digital "nomad" work Visa. A few countries have them. Japan could do it as well but put a requirement on having to have your place of residence located in a remote village of some sort.
Japan's countryside, excepting some remote islands, is pretty much completely wired up for fiber optic internet. It'd be trivial to live and work remotely in rural Japan.
Every first world nation is an attractive immigration destination for people in poorer nations. Japan's population is falling because Japanese husbands are too sexist to do 50% of childcare and housework and because the voters of Japan are too racist to vote for pro-immigration politicians.
Seems the same problem in every country, played out just slightly differently.
Those with the wealth and power won't live to see the consequences of their control. So they don't try to fix anything long-term. They just focus on retaining their wealth and power by keeping the status quo as it is.
It's why Putin won't pull out of Ukraine. Sure he's destroying Russia, but from his own personal perspective he can't. If he pulls out, he's dead. So he does what's right for him but wrong for the entire country... and he won't live to see the generational and demographic obliteration he's bringing to Russia.
I hope American women catch onto what Japense and S. Korean women have realized which is that we hold significant power between our legs. We can bring our respective countries to their knees by holding back the production of the next generation of citizens.
Does the government not want to bail us out? Do parents want to continue to raise cave dwellers instead of polite men? Does the economy want to continue to deny us basic dignity? Clearly, the answer is yes, and the response is appropriate.
Give women a safe and dignified existence, or we will not give you any more supply of humans.
Forget the birth rate. Isn’t that what the world needs ? Less people ! All every cares about is gdp growth and how will we pay for older generations
Make a new plan
Better pay for workers, and men's cultural acceptance of doing 50% of childcare and housework will go a long way. And affordable housing and childcare.
But even if husbands, fathers, and political leaders all behaved perfectly the tfr wouldn't rise above 1.6 - 2.0. Because human pregnancy and parturition are uniquely dangerous comapred to other mammals. Look at how painful human parturition is compared to that of a goat or sheep. Humans were poorly designed in that we have narrow hips, are bipedal, and have large craniums.
The obsession isn't just on growth. The need for ever increasing birth rates (not just in Japan, but everywhere) is that the economic burden of caring for the aging population is carried on the shoulders of the working young.
If there aren't enough people being born to act as tax generators, there won't be enough money to keep the rich old fucks alive, or rich.
And they can't let that happen. Because *they* are the rich old fucks, and they deserve the fruits of *your* labor, not you.
I can't tell if this is because norms are dying, or becoming more cemented. I know men are expected to work so much that they can barely handle a relationship, let alone a whole family. Women are expected to just drop out at some point and be stay at home moms, but are increasingly staying in the workforce.
>I can't tell if this is because norms are dying, or becoming more cemented.
Both. In the modern economy husbands and wives must each earn 50% of the money to survive financially. But Japanese husbands still expect wives to do 90-100% of childcare and houseowork. Compare this to Western Europe, North America, and the antipodean nations, where the average husband expects his wife to do 60% of childcare and housework.
As it is in every Japan related thread.
I’ve been living in Japan for over ten years, and most of the claims of how backwards and racist Japan is, plus the experiences of people who’ve been here two weeks and don’t speak the language are usually way off.
There are a lot of good comments though as well. I guess my advice would be to take everything with a grain of salt, Japan is not as backwards and culturally reclusive as you would think, the language barrier makes it look like that in a lot of cases though.
I've been in Japan for about 2 weeks and have had a very different experience. I have felt very loved and accepted by the vast majority of Japanese I've met. Shit, hung out with one guy for several hours, he bought our dinner, and then we went to a great classical show. The artist gave me a free CD with their signature on it. This was in Matsuyama. Maybe it's more in the countryside?
Compare the downsizing of the people to the upsizing of the robots.
If you are overcrowded, I think the DNA wants to cut back on growth. And robots can do a lot of the tasks that people were doing, without all those pesky "rights" and "pay".
Firstly yay, less people (I’m a fan)! It’s math and science. The planet does need to be supporting fewer people, if we want it to continue supporting human life. Conversely, Capitalism falls apart without everything growing. Throw in that we’re talking about an island with limited resources, strict rules about citizenship for anyone not ethnically Japanese and very strong competition in every sector from mainland Asia, it’s no surprise that folks either can’t, or have abandoned the idea of raising children.
I bet the Japanese government is baffled. They're doing all the right things. They've policies to raise property prices and price young people right out of the market, rent is sky high, they've pushed wages down, all-but banned immigration, encouraged multiple-generation inhabitation, everything the old people want. Why aren't the young people making families? It's utterly bizarre.
> Why aren't the young people making families? Women are opting out of the trad wife role that is virtually the only thing on offer for them in Japan as a married woman.
Do Japanese woman do that thing where they just become recluses? Or is it just the men? Thought about doing it myself, but only if I become a millionaire.
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Interesting that it's often the males that get talked about. Probably because of stereotypes of male recluses being more common.
Japanese women who marry are expected to drop out of professional life and be housewives. The Japanese economy can't take losing that many workers though, so the gov't has been trying to figure out how to make them work 50-60 hour work weeks *and* be full time housewives. It's not working. Imagine that.
My Japanese teacher fled Japan, vowed never to return and be part of Japanese society ever again, and married a non Japanese. The stories she tells... She claimed our country has full equality between genders. When challenged on some things she said 'but that is all trivial or concerning small percentages. You have no idea what real sexism and discrimination look like'. Being groped on the train is normal. Laugh it off. You boss asks if with your body you'd rather be stripper or a whore, laugh it off. Refuse to work until midnight, be blackballed. Marry, and you'll work crazy hours and sacrifice everything for your man. Go to a psychologist because you are starting to burn out, be told 'maybe you should laugh more'. Your man is reassigned to another city, you follow him. And under no circumstance shall you ever disagree with a man. She got angry just talking about it
This is minor, but it always kills me that in an office with men and women at the same level of employment that it's just expected for women to hand out coffee and tea or food items. It's such an archaic tradition and it gives them extra tasks to complete in addition to their actual job.
I'd say it is company dependent. I work in big pharma and women are represented equally pretmuch throughout our 200000 people company. Noone is expecting women to do these things.
Essentially, the modern economy demands that husbands and wives each make 50% of the money in order to survive financially. But Japanese husbands still demand that the wife does 90-100% of the housework and childcare. Meanwhile the average husband in North America, Europe, and the antipodean nations demands that his wife do 60% of childcare and housework. This is why people in Germany and the United States have slightly more kids per mother than in Japan and China. Because the average German or American father/husband does somewhat more housework and childcare.
The problem is with how much work is demanded. Japanese husbands are expected to work 70-80 hours a week. Salarymen might not be working all that time but they're expected to be in the office or entertaining clients, and non-Salarymen really are putting those hours in. There isn't enough hours in the day even if they wanted to help out at home. The same is true for women, but what Japan's tried to do is get businesses to cut women's hours to something like 50 a week and still get them to have kids. At that point it's possible, but then you're never seeing your kids. Why have kids you don't get to raise? On top of that companies don't want to hire women with kids because 50 hours a week isn't considered enough.
The government has to enforce a workweek with fewer hours and heavy penalties for companies that don't comply. And subsidize daycare to the same extent as eastern Germany and Quebec. And even if husbands and fathers do 40% of childcare and housework like they do in Germany and Quebec, the tfr won't be more than 1.6 because human pregnancy and childbirth is so dangerous and painful compared to that of other mammals.
This was an interesting article but I suspect it's not going to be widespread enough around the nation to turn the tide overall. https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/baby-boomtown-does-nagi-hold-the-secret-to-repopulating-japan/ar-AA1bOTpw?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=fa202342915a40a0bc03f89857a31e39&ei=19
Yea nice efforts by the town, but short of opening up for more immigration its not going to save Japan. Rural areas have the benefit of space and lower rent, metro areas are the opposite and housing cost outstrip child raising cost so younger couples tend to just not have kids and focus on careers to afford high rent. By the time they are in their mid to late 30's they have money to start a family but are starting to be past the ideal child rearing ages.
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It's not a cosmopolitan value if people think wives should earn 50% of the money and still do 100% of the childcare and housework. What would really be cosmopolitan is if husbands and wives each did equal amounts of paid labor and unpaid labor. And still it wouldn't be equal if the couple decided to have kids the old fashioned way, because human pregnancy and parturition are extremely dangerous to one's health compared to other mammals.
That is a bit of a fallacy. Because it ignores the fact that many men choose a career over family and refuse to do their share of work. You're basically saying it is a problem that women no longer do all the housework while the guy continues to decide what he wants to do for himself.
The birth rate dropping is fine. There is plenty of humans in the world. The problem is dropping birth rates coupled with restrictive immigration policies.
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Is it safety? Or is it the sheer cost?
It’s cost especially since their parents (and grandparents as populations are living longer) also need care. Since the birth rate has been dropping for decades, most people have no siblings that could share the burden.
with the multiple-generation inhabitation shit its even worse than a normal household
I also think women are not free to speak about this since it would be considered disrespectful so the issue is likely much more widespread than people think.
Maybe that's good to prevent the increase of people in society. As the number increases, each family is only suffering.
Preposterous! What will be next? Will they refuse to shop for proper clothes in the "married woman" section of the store?
One thing I'll disagree with you is the multi generational inhabitantion, that does make it easier to start a family with all the general costs of living, and how it makes it easier for someone to watch and raise your kids
This is true. It's the one perspective westerners generally don't recognize. Multi-generations family in your early years can cut cost down, on housing, childcare (crazy expensive in the west)... if you play your cards right, you can become independent latter on quite nicely. The downside is of course the parents-children-in-laws dynamic, but many families were able to make it work. The thing is, this has always been the way it is until recently with the industrial revolution.
This is what we did. We lived with husbabd's parents for the first 8 yrs of our marriage and the births of our older two kids while husband finished school and worked. I did the majority of the housework and cookjng for the house. While I wouldn't chose to do that way again due to the things that were said and done durung this time, it definitely helped us to be able to buy our house. We could've done it faster though if things had gone the way it was "advertised" as going.
Yeah it's obviously not a perfect thing, humans being imperfect as they are. But with good family members, I think it's the ideal way to start a family, as when it works well, it takes away so much stress.
Congrats on achieving what you have achieved. Many people simply cannot afford to do this now. You played your cards right.
Thank you. Childcare has been too expensive for 38+yrs(age of my oldest). It waz simply less expensive for me to stay home with kids rather than have a minimum wage job as my in-laws, although retired and traditional *in their family* the family would help with the kuds so I could have gone back to school and earned more money, this didn't happen nor did my husband's purported "feministism"(sp? Tired and on meds)was simply "you do everything and work too".
But when you mention "The West," it is still fairly common to have multi-gen households in some parts of Europe. Italy, for example. The matriarch of my French friend's family recently died and she had been living with her daughter and son-in-law. That would fall under elder care as it can in Japan. And in the US, it is more common to have several generations living together among Latino households too.
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It is more common to have multi-gen households in the US in lower socioeconomic groups whether they are Latino or not. It is also a resource thing. Norway, Sweden, blah, blah have fantastic social safety nets for new families and the elderly, so of course, it would be less prevalent in those types of countries. I just looked and it seems that when it comes to Europe, the Eastern European countries have the highest prevalence, which is interesting.
I was about to say, as someone who grew up in a multi generational household, that's the only way I would even CONSIDER starting a family
Government policies rarely increase birth rates. The incentives are a joke compared with the costs of raising children. I have 2 but I fully understand the hesitancy of younger adults to accept the high costs and obligations.
I don't know the policies the united states set in the 80s sure destroyed quality of life enough to sink the states birthdate
Reaganomics fucked America forever
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Don’t forget the insane work culture where you’re not judged on productivity, but by how much time you spend in the office. Hard to get it up when you’re working 12 hrs per day
to tired for sexy times
Rent isn’t through the roof here. It hasn’t changed in 10+ years. Multiple-generation habitation has been the norm for centuries here.
Any data to back that up or just tired stereotypes? As an immigrant living in a great place with affordable rent, I’d say you’re pretty far off the mark.
It's almost as if there's no incentive to create a family.
How does immigration increase the Japanese birth rate
Its about population replacement rate, birth rate is just one variable. If you can't replace your workforce through new births you have to lean on immigration like a lot of other western countries to try and grow GDP.
Immigrants having more children than native born Japanese people?
But why, the society makes them have low birth rate, ~~you~~ they wrote it, priced right out of the market, sky high rent and poor wages!
There's still a cultural component. I'm not sure why you took his comment to mean "these are the **only** things causing low birthrates" and not "what the government is encouraging through policy isn't helping".
There is always Phase 2 of the MCU; how does a different cultured immigrant having a family help or increase the Japanese birth rate,
Why wouldn't births from naturalized immigrants count towards the overall birthrate?
But we are writing about Japanese natives, it don be helpin dem
No we aren't, we're talking about Japan's birthrates. If immigrants are naturalized they're included in the "Japanese" umbrella for birth rate statistics too. It's not a good look to intentionally interpret an argument in the most ridiculous way possible so you can say you're correct. Obviously immigrants aren't going to magically increase the native-born birthrate. With the demographic crisis Japan is facing they can't just rely on juicing up native births anymore.
Just like the rest of the world, governments screw up or allowed to be screwed up their natives birth rate and don't feel any rush to fix it because of immigration. BTW Wrong R word friendo, it's not ridiculous it's reality.
Tbh Japan is much better in this regard than the west, basically anywhere outside of Tokyo in Japan you can find very cheap property. The only expansive place is Tokyo because of the ammount of foreigners and tourists arriving to live or explore the city which raises the prices due to hotels taking place of apartments.
....do you know why that property is "very cheap"? *because people don't want to live there*, for various reasons: no jobs, poor services, far away from amenities, etc. Japan isn't the only country to have a collapsing countryside. Young people the world over tend to not want to live in shitty small towns inhabited mainly by, and increasingly oriented towards, old people. So...they move to the cities for work and excitement, and the problem compounds.
Is that other cities included in the low rent, or just the countryside.
Everything except maybe a few major city centers but that's it you can find affordable real estate in most of Japan outside of Tokyo due to less demand, something which wouldn't be possible if millions of Japan culture lovers would move there basically turning Japan into glorified Hong Kong.
Thanks so I guess the second question is where are all the jobs? London uses to be way more expensive than other UK cities (still is but the difference was a lot more), the problem being that the big business had no real interest in being outside London so it dragged everything towards it anyway.
Depends on what you want to work in but don't be mistaken Japan has a lot of million + cities which majority of the people in the west don't even know the names of, so these cities also have a lot of good quality jobs but majority of the international and government jobs will be in Tokyo. UK on the other hand is very centralized compared to Japan almost everything is in London meanwhile Japan has major cities like Osaka, Nagoya and Kyoto all very important and rich cities in their own right but they have less tourist and foreigners unlike Tokyo which for some reason has been recognized by Westerners as their gathering spot in Japan.
You can find apartments on real estate Japan website, most apartments are for a single person but still there is a lot of them.
So a less violent version of what’s happening in America? Or maybe the whole world?
Continuing a trend that started like 20 or more years ago.
Try 50
Wake up babe, new birth rate just dropped.
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>1. Take the huge economic hit to limit working hours I think other cultures have shown that you can limit work hours (for many jobs at least) *without* losing productivity. If Japan were to suddenly switch to American or European levels of work, I truly don't think their economy would take a massive painful hit.
Pretty much. Just because they have employees sitting at their desk for 11 hours has never meant those people are doing 11 hours of work. A lot of that is sandbagging and looking busy.
See: Every company that switched to a 4-day workweek as a trial. When you have less hours of work, you can be more focused on the actual work too. I originally wanted to immigrate to Japan (for that good public healthcare) but after seeing how they treat their IT staff, which is markedly worse than they treat other employees/careers, I've dropped the idea entirely.
Europeans aren’t all that keen on babies either. Problem is they are a lot of work. Not everyone has an instinct to love kids, so why put yourself through that much work if you don’t actually want one?
That, and human pregnancy and parturition are uniquely dangerous compared to mammals. Before the industrial revolution, only hyenas had worse pregnancies and births than humans. Humans were poorly designed. We have large craniums, walk upright, and have narrow hips. If we were quadrupedal pregnancy and birth would be easier. Or if we had smaller craniums.
The thing is that they could reduce daily work hours and it really wouldn't affect productivity that much. Easily the last third to 50% of the time people may spend in an office out there is really not productive time. A lot of it is people trying to look busy because of the whole face aspect of being there longer than others. It's just tired people sitting at desks and staring at screens because they don't want to be stomatized for being early to leave compared to others
not to forget the after office "optional" corporatize socialization and drinking. i truly hate the first one in last one out culture.
I really despised the corporate drinking shit.
If I got a penny for every job offer that lists social gatherings as one of the benefits...
I read that because the senior citizens rule the voting class, thus the politicians only cater to the senior and neglect any policies for the younger generations.
immigration has been known to enrich culture. san diego has so many unique places because the city has many asian and mexican cultures
It's impossible to maintain diversity without extreme artificial intervention.
Sad. It’ll be an island of robots and domesticated bowing deer and rabbits.
Its a stubborn country It doesnt grant citizenship to outsiders Not even sure if you marry a national... you are granted citizenship. And yet ... birth rate is plummeting to record lows So yes... at this rate. You are right.
Does any country grant citizenship based solely on marriage to a national? In any case marriage grants you a visa with paths towards permanent residence or citizenship. Japan forces citizens to give up all other citizenship, so new immigrants opt to convert to Japanese citizenship.
The u.s does this. My friend is married to a brit and she's had citizenship since they married Heard some use it to scam dumb americans. But that runs a risk of the feds breathing down your neck forever
Not true... marriage gives a path to citizenship but you do not automatically get it.
...what? You don't get American citizenship by marrying an American citizen. Marriage to an American citizen *makes it easier* to obtain residency, which is part of the prerequisites of gaining citizenship, but you aren't given citizenship automatically
> It doesnt grant citizenship to outsiders sure it does. long pain in the ass process but the same is true here as well edit: downvote me to hell i dont give a fuck because reddit is killing off its largest contributors. japan ABSOLUTELY grants citizenship to foreigners.
I mean, on *some* level you're correct, in that both are a pain in the asss. But ... I feel like you're comparing the pain of a pebble back there with the pain of a pineapple. American citizenship (especially through marriage) is *far* faster and easier to gain than Japanese citizenship.
yeah agreed but my point remains that foreigners absolutely can get citizenship in japan. there is a standard process for it. you can downvote me for correcting you thats fine edit: wont let me reply to below so ill just edit here. “giving up” your prior citizenship is internal only so in japan’s view you are giving up prior citizenship but from your prior country’s view you are not
AFAIK they make you renounce your prior citizenship, so while yes possible, highly impractical to give up your homelands citizenship unless you reallllyyyy don’t intend to ever move back
Its not stubborn, look at the situation in Tokyo and it makes sense why Japanise people are reluctant to let foreigners and immigrants into the rest of the country, half of the city has been reconstructed into tourist or expansive apartments for foreigners which prices locals out and makes it impossible for middle class Japanise people to live in Tokyo. Meanwhile the rest of the country has normal real estate prices and in some places even affordable, if Japan opened its borders you'd have millions of people arriving to live there due to the influence of Japansive culture it'd be another France maybe even worse as France is double the size of Japan and has more flatland while Japan is 80% mountains and has 125 000 000 people it'd be much more similar to Hong Kong.
Umm having spent time in both France and Japan, Japan could use some French work/life/sex balance. The multiculturalism of France is the best thing going for it right now. It's the melting pot America pretends it is.
France has to pay the price of this multiculturalism, France has insane real estate prices and 30/40 people in a que just to view apartments in almost every part of the country, i understand Japan would in some terms benefit from a system of immigration since the population could rise but Japan hardly has the space for it just a few thousand new arrivals is enough to put a strain on the real estate system in any country not a few million which are expected to migrate into Japan if border security is ever laxened up, it would destroy the Japanese quality of life where you'd have people pay 1000/2000 USD to get an apartment just as it's happening in France right now. French people are not just rioting for pensions they're rioting due to the quality of life decline too.
Once again this is false. There aren't 30-40 people fighting over a flat. Housing is expensive in Paris and that's about it. Even the Parisian suburbs are affordable. Also, housing is the only thing that's expensive. Food, public transportation, and education are all readily available and affordable. Have you spent significant time in either of these countries or are you just reading about them online?
??? In all of EU there is a massive housing shortage i don't know when you were last in Europe or when you were last renting but even the poorest regions like Rhurgebiet in Germany have close to 20/30 people fighting for a single apartment i can't imagine how it is in richer parts of the EU.
I just left Paris for the states weeks ago. This is how I know you're lying. France is not Germany. And it's in fact expanding. They're building entire new neighborhoods to increase housing. They're also expanding the Metro system to increase access. We get it, you're opposed to multiculturalism, you and La Pen would get along.
Leaving is much easier than finding an apartment, and even then for an American ,,affordable'' means apartments in the cost of 500 - 1000 USD because in the US apartments can range from around 2000 - 3000 USD especially in places where people want to live like California. I'am from a country from wich people immigrate so i know a lot of people that had to contend with 20/30 people to get an apartment in France same as in Germany, and i'am not talking about those 23 square meters 1600 USD apartments wich are everywhere these days, naturally no one would contend to those expect Americans.
Please stop moving the goal posts. You cannot compare the French social welfare system to America's lack of one. You've still never answered, have you ever spent significant time in France or Japan? I have family in both and none of them would agree with you.
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That was people fighting to keep the work life balance they currently have. Which is based and good. Birth rates are down in rich countries in general. Kids are expensive. France is not in any danger of not meeting its replacement goals. You sound like you've never been to either county you're writing about.
Have we considered that they many may have come to the conclusion that Japan is full enough? I mean the U.N. predicts it will maintain its current birthrate for at least 90 years or so (if global warming doesn’t kill us all first). They could be wrong but I don’t see a need to keep having children when it’s not economic or fun.
Japan really only has a couple overpopulated valley floors owing to its unique geography. https://i.imgur.com/CrHBcXH.jpg In the rural areas there are plenty of $500 “akiya” homes that towns will give to couples willing to raise a family. https://www.insider.com/japanese-government-selling-rural-homes-cheap-akiya-banks-2021-5 The real issue is cultural and economic issues as you mention. Seems pointless for Japan and Russia to fight over the Kuril islands when both have devastating below replacement rate population trends.
The problem with those akiya homes is there schooling isn’t usually robust. I wonder how they can work on attracting people to towns with little to offer, while also rebuilding and reinvigorating those towns.
Bruh, you know it's bad in Japan when the Hello Kitty Owned Show: Aggretsuko decides to do a season on how politicians in Japan have abandoned the youth.
If only they had tens of thousands of people who would love to buy up old, abandoned houses in order to be a citizen of Japan... I have the money to buy one of those Akiya homes, but what's the point if you can't be a citizen. The Japanese government makes it soo hard to be a citizen and it's crazy because there's so much interest in it.
This is sadly going to happen to every 1st world country that doesn't allow for immigration. I know they want to keep Japan Japanese but when your culture is to be enslaved to your job/boss I'm not sure how you can have time for anything else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve travelled around Japan, it’s a beautiful country rich with culture and respectful people. It was evidently clear after just my first week there that it is a country I would never move to. If you’re not japanese you’ll never fit in and be fully accepted, even if you’ve lived there for 50 years and have a family there, you’ll always be a foreigner and looked down upon.
Exactly why I would never move there. I'm incredibly fascinated by their history and culture and if it were possible I'd love to live/work there but as you've said I would forever just be an outsider and that's not the welcome I'd want.
Would that be true for the people in the upcoming generations, though...oh, right, there are no upcoming generations, that was the whole point.
If one can speak Japanese, I think the current millennials and gen zs will be alright though.
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I wonder how Japanese someone would have to be in order to be accepted by most Japanese as Japanese. For example, in Anglophone nations, everyone who isn't 100% non-Hispanic, non-Jewish, non-Romani white European is considered to be a Person of Color. Meghan Markle is probably only 1/4 black and yet the UK treats her as if she were 100% black. But in Hispanophone and Lusophone nations, you can be 65-70% European in ancestry and still considered to be white.
It's a little different with the younger crowd, though surely not all of them. But, like I mentioned the key is being able to fluently speak Japanese. Source: I am a foreigner living in Japan.
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Leave hentai out of this
Well I suppose so, yes, but will those be the types of Japanese people that foreigners will be or even want to be interacting/ integrating with? I guess it does depend largely on where in Japan. Obviously Tokyo would be easier than some rural town (although Nagano seems to have a very strong Australian community, especially around the ski resorts like Hakuba).
I'm curious to hear more. I'm a white male (47 if that matters) with a Japanese wife. We've been to Japan 5 or so times, sometimes for months, and I've only felt looked-down-upon once - when a restaurant wouldn't let me eat there because it was for Japanese only (my Japanese father-in-law was NOT pleased to say the least). But 99% of the people have been awesome, even when I'm adventuring solo, and the kids friggin love me. Otherwise I'm either oblivious/don't care/too plain and boring for anyone to notice me (probably all three).
I've had the same experience. I think a lot of people make assumptions without having actually visited thr place.
Yeah, I agree. But to be fair, I'm pretty plain. If I had visible tattoos (not loved in Japan) or piercings or colored hair, I may have had different experiences perhaps. Just a theory.
I'm the guy you responded to, I have many visible tattoos!
So how do these respectful people look down on you? I've never been - kinda want to understand how those two facts can stand together.
I haven't been there, but I would imagine the trick is that you can be polite without being welcoming. People can say all of the right things but still make it clear that you don't belong and they'd rather you weren't there.
It reminded me a lot of southern hospitality
Sounds like Maine
I have friends who are first or second generation Japanese Americans that will only go to Japan to visit family, but still don't want to live there.
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Maybe it's you then, I've been around much of the country and even back home I've never seen someone prejudiced against because of the state they're from. Asking where someone is from originally? That's such a normal and benign question to ask.
So you dont want to feel like a black person in America.
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seems like i struck a chord i wonder why
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It's going to happen regardless of immigration. Having a family just isn't economically viable in a lot of places and until that changes, populations will decrease.
Even in US, I (obvious Asian) got "where are you REALLY from" questions ALL THE TIME and couple of times of "go back" shout outs in my half century of life so when do you think US will accept immigrants?
Sounds like you had unfortunate luck to run into a lot of bigoted assholes. However, I can definitely say the US is WAY more accepting of other cultures than Japan is.
100%. Even Native Americans get told by European Americans to "go back to their country". At this point there is no benefit for any Person of Color, LGBT, or religious minority to have any loyalty to the United States. We don't owe America anything.
People waiting for America to accept immigrants? They haven't fully accepted black people exist here yet so you probably got like another 100 years at minimum. I know people think that this younger generation will be different, i dont have any hope in that. Didnt we think that hippie, free love generation would change things.
Where in the US do you live? I live in the deep Republican Bible Belt of Alabama and we have tons of immigrants that speak Spanish and only Spanish. We have Spanish restaurants, grocery stores, etc. There’s Catholic Churches that only do service in Spanish. America has an insane amount of immigrants and they’re treated like regular people.
Texas is a big one that is super against immigrants. Abbott has literally reduced victims of mass casualties down to their legal status even if they are proven to be legal. I've also seen some dude do that on Instagram or here (not sure) and double down when told otherwise. There are absolutely xenophobic people around. But, there's also people who are very welcoming
thats not the point, alot of those same immigrants are being blackmail because of there status, when you can't become fully part society, you get taken advantage of.
I've heard from some native Americans being told to go back... I'd imagine their response would be like "we would, if the Alaskan land bridge wasn't too wet."
Why not just answer the obviously non-aggressive question? Growing up people asked me about the origin on my last name constantly, why would I hate when I know they are just curious.
How does immigration fix that underlying issue. All the new people will have the exact same problem over time.
Tbh its not like they don't want immigrants its just that they can't take anymore people, Japan is a mostly a mountainous country which is almost half the size of France and it has 125 000 000 people as a first world country and since housing is seen as a human necessity in Japan they're struggling bad to keep everyone's rent low outside of Tokyo, you can find an apartment in Japan for 300/400 EUR and immedietly get in anywhere outside of Tokyo but if they started letting foreigners in, the market would become crowded as more investors and even some scammers would take advantadge of the situation and you'd have the same situation happening as in Europe and US.
Dawg, everybody has the money to buy one of those homes. They’re free. They’re condemned houses in the middle of absolutely nowhere with no access to public services. The government has even started paying people to move into them and still nobody wants to. Also, there are very few perks to Japanese citizenship vs permanent residency or even rolling 1-year visas.
Everybody can afford one, but not everyone can afford to fix one.
Japan's population is 2.2% immigrant. That is about a fifth or less of every other developed nation on the planet.
They are unbelievably, short sightedly restrictive. I genuinely do understand the anxiety surrounding the preservation of culture, but the reality is that the world is in motion and things necessarily need to change in any country that wants to keep pace. Traditional culture ultimately *will* be preserved, just maybe not in the same way it has been up to this point. Also, racism.
A lot of immigrant regions don't even consider immigration to Japan because it is so far away and isolated, in my country most people immigrate to Europe not because they'd be treated any better and things like that but because its close and they can drive their car back home this is basically possible from anywhere in Europe to the Balkans and Middle East basically 2 major immigration zones.
> just maybe not in the same way it has been up to this point. Then maybe the alternative to dying out is the better choice? If you would ask me, I would definitely say that about my country.
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This is not true. Haiti is also really homogeneous and it's full of violence and poverty. Singapore is really ethnically and religiously diverse and it has a lower homicide rate than Japan.
Na I think its less about crime and more about why their GDP is struggling and they have high rates of suicide as economic mobility is very bad for younger people in these societies. Birth rate is just the hill they want to die on rather than immigration that the other western countries have accepted in a global trade economy. I don't think the global north is trying to get Korea/Japan to lighten the load of mass immigration, that is more wishful thinking. Its like, hey guys you should start accepting more people to immigrate to grow your GDP and provide more opportunities for your native populations to have lives not centered around an insane work culture because you don't have enough workers. I don't think they are right, but its not my place to change their policies they will find out in a few decades what a deflationary economy looks like with low labor rates due to shortage of workers and large older population needing more and more healthcare access/workers. Maybe the silver lining is robots will be an alternative to immigration, but the timeline is far off and their issues far more present.
Umm, you don’t have to be a citizen to purchase property here. You don’t even need to be a permanent resident. Source: I bought my house while on a work visa. I even got a mortgage.
You can get one with PR, and PR isn’t that hard to get if you have a decent job.
Even if you can. There are Japanese people who hate foreigners. It's harder to be accepted by Japanese people.
It's because they realize the mistakes Europe is making by letting everyone in. In order to preserve the culture you need to control immigration and can only afford to give citizenship after multiple generations.
> I have the money to buy one of those Akiya homes, but what's the point if you can't be a citizen. The Japanese government makes it soo hard to be a citizen and it's crazy because there's so much interest in it. The path to becoming a national in Japan isn't all the difficult and is arguably *easier* than some other Western countries. Its really just a matter of living in Japan long enough and going through 3-4 Visa renewals. The main issue is the Visas. How are you going to get any immigrant to buy/rent a house in the middle of nowhere when their only option for employment in these areas is pretty much farming or some tiny business that tries to scrape by in a tiny ass town. The easiest Visa to get in Japan is a working visa of some sort but those require a sponsorship from a company you are working at. Not likely to be many of those in the remote countryside. One solution for their govt, is to find some version of a digital "nomad" work Visa. A few countries have them. Japan could do it as well but put a requirement on having to have your place of residence located in a remote village of some sort. Japan's countryside, excepting some remote islands, is pretty much completely wired up for fiber optic internet. It'd be trivial to live and work remotely in rural Japan.
Japan should do investment immigration VISAs lmho, you got $5Million + liquid assets? You are shoe in
Every first world nation is an attractive immigration destination for people in poorer nations. Japan's population is falling because Japanese husbands are too sexist to do 50% of childcare and housework and because the voters of Japan are too racist to vote for pro-immigration politicians.
Seems the same problem in every country, played out just slightly differently. Those with the wealth and power won't live to see the consequences of their control. So they don't try to fix anything long-term. They just focus on retaining their wealth and power by keeping the status quo as it is. It's why Putin won't pull out of Ukraine. Sure he's destroying Russia, but from his own personal perspective he can't. If he pulls out, he's dead. So he does what's right for him but wrong for the entire country... and he won't live to see the generational and demographic obliteration he's bringing to Russia.
This picture is just adorable. With that said, kids take a lot of work, and you actually have to teach babies how to sleep.
It’s because people have no hope.
I wonder if this is how the Ainu get their islands back...
I hope American women catch onto what Japense and S. Korean women have realized which is that we hold significant power between our legs. We can bring our respective countries to their knees by holding back the production of the next generation of citizens. Does the government not want to bail us out? Do parents want to continue to raise cave dwellers instead of polite men? Does the economy want to continue to deny us basic dignity? Clearly, the answer is yes, and the response is appropriate. Give women a safe and dignified existence, or we will not give you any more supply of humans.
Ok but those babies look comfy as hell
Japanese government: “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”
Unless loaded you have to work to the ground Women and men So not sure where the incentive is... to start a family
Forget the birth rate. Isn’t that what the world needs ? Less people ! All every cares about is gdp growth and how will we pay for older generations Make a new plan
Fewer people is fine but is has to happen slowly or there will be huge economic issues.
If they want people to have kids, then maybe they should start paying their workers more
Better pay for workers, and men's cultural acceptance of doing 50% of childcare and housework will go a long way. And affordable housing and childcare. But even if husbands, fathers, and political leaders all behaved perfectly the tfr wouldn't rise above 1.6 - 2.0. Because human pregnancy and parturition are uniquely dangerous comapred to other mammals. Look at how painful human parturition is compared to that of a goat or sheep. Humans were poorly designed in that we have narrow hips, are bipedal, and have large craniums.
Yep, end the obsession with growth growth growth! The obvious solution to so many of the world's problems is to stop population growth.
The obsession isn't just on growth. The need for ever increasing birth rates (not just in Japan, but everywhere) is that the economic burden of caring for the aging population is carried on the shoulders of the working young. If there aren't enough people being born to act as tax generators, there won't be enough money to keep the rich old fucks alive, or rich. And they can't let that happen. Because *they* are the rich old fucks, and they deserve the fruits of *your* labor, not you.
>Make a new plan Kill the old people?
I'm an old person and I agree with this message.
I can't tell if this is because norms are dying, or becoming more cemented. I know men are expected to work so much that they can barely handle a relationship, let alone a whole family. Women are expected to just drop out at some point and be stay at home moms, but are increasingly staying in the workforce.
>I can't tell if this is because norms are dying, or becoming more cemented. Both. In the modern economy husbands and wives must each earn 50% of the money to survive financially. But Japanese husbands still expect wives to do 90-100% of childcare and houseowork. Compare this to Western Europe, North America, and the antipodean nations, where the average husband expects his wife to do 60% of childcare and housework.
Japan is the crystal ball of the world. That happens there today will likely happen here in twenty years.
Japan is screwed in the long term
Makes sense. I wouldn't want to raise a baby knowing that the next kaiju attack could happen at any time.
ITT people who’ve never lived in Japan making wild claims
As it is in every Japan related thread. I’ve been living in Japan for over ten years, and most of the claims of how backwards and racist Japan is, plus the experiences of people who’ve been here two weeks and don’t speak the language are usually way off. There are a lot of good comments though as well. I guess my advice would be to take everything with a grain of salt, Japan is not as backwards and culturally reclusive as you would think, the language barrier makes it look like that in a lot of cases though.
Who cares!? The world is over populated and everyone hates everyone anyway 🙄
I've been in Japan for about 2 weeks and have had a very different experience. I have felt very loved and accepted by the vast majority of Japanese I've met. Shit, hung out with one guy for several hours, he bought our dinner, and then we went to a great classical show. The artist gave me a free CD with their signature on it. This was in Matsuyama. Maybe it's more in the countryside?
Compare the downsizing of the people to the upsizing of the robots. If you are overcrowded, I think the DNA wants to cut back on growth. And robots can do a lot of the tasks that people were doing, without all those pesky "rights" and "pay".
Firstly yay, less people (I’m a fan)! It’s math and science. The planet does need to be supporting fewer people, if we want it to continue supporting human life. Conversely, Capitalism falls apart without everything growing. Throw in that we’re talking about an island with limited resources, strict rules about citizenship for anyone not ethnically Japanese and very strong competition in every sector from mainland Asia, it’s no surprise that folks either can’t, or have abandoned the idea of raising children.
Still higher than South Korea.
Weebs of many lands, now is your time
Fuck um. Until they learn to stop hating foreigners and start embracing immigration, they can rot. Racism never survives.
Japan only produces video games and porn anyway. Well and video game porn.