I am married to a Japanese and live here right now, so I can only comment on the situation of the country. I will try to give an economical assessment of the si

I am married to a Japanese and live here right now, so I can only comment on the situation of the country. I will try to give an economical assessment of the situation. As you might be aware Japan had a “lost decade” during the 90s. It experienced almost no growth of the GDP. There are many theories as to why, but the most convincing one is: The Japanese “Baby Boomers” retired during this decade. In fact the percentage of workers in the population (age 15-64) decreased by 5.6% during this time, as the number of retirees increased by 10.7%. http://goo.gl/kVZxB http://goo.gl/kVZxB What does this have to do with anything? / What happens when you have fewer people in the expected working age? 2 things happen: 1. More people have to work 2. People have to work longer The official retirement age for Japanese is 63/61 (M/W), the effective retirement age is 69.5/66.5 http://goo.gl/s9slK http://goo.gl/s9slK (very interesting graph) My wife held a managerial position before our son was born, amongst her friends hardly any of them want to stay single, they simply don’t have a choice. If they want to sustain their current life standard, marriage would be impossible. One man working has a hard time providing for his wife, kids, paying for a decent home & the mandatory elderly taxes. The taxes are almost 2000 USD per person / year, no matter if employed, or not. And those are just to pay for the pensions; insurances, social etc. come on top of that. Many women still life / moved back in with their parents, even in their late 40es. It is not because they want to, or cannot find a partner (many of them look quite stunning). The pensions simply don’t suffice and they feel obliged to support their parents. The same holds true for many men. I very much disagree with the statement that women in Japan enjoy their single life so much, as they choose not to marry. I have yet to meet a Japanese woman, who will state this. Compared to Europe, where this kind of ideology is quite common. Edit: Japanese women are expected to do 90% of the housework, where as American women will “only” do 60% of the work. http://goo.gl/qj64W http://goo.gl/qj64W This fact and the very big distance Japanese develop for their spouses are certainly not helping. http://goo.gl/QlAfx http://goo.gl/QlAfx Surprisingly no women I ever conversed with, complained about this lack of love between a married couple, on the contrary it is expected by the women. And it often leads to problems in marriages with foreigners. Edit #2: If my experience with the Japanese Culture is in any way representative employing more men in the military will be the worst thing imaginable. The country has a deficit of 180% /GDP and every person in the army is one person less doing productive work to keep country afloat. Edit #3: When the "Baby Boom" generation will retire in the United states, do you expect the country to sustain a positive GDP? This would mean that every person working will have to work harder and produce more just to reach 0 growth. Something the Japanese managed to do. The only solution to this is immigration, something Japan is battling against.