23 ms·

Japan’s business owners can’t find successors – one man is giving his away

163 points by krn 4y ago

CobaltFire 4y ago
My FiL shut down his multigenerational business in Japan for exactly this reason. I was not in a position to take it over and no-one else in the family wanted it. It was a very successful shop with a built in client base and hugely recognizable name in that community. Culturally the lack of children means there are fewer chances for someone to want to take over a family business, so the likelihood of someone taking it over drops every generation.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Are the children shying away from it because whatever business it is just isn't something they like (i.e. vegans not wanting to take over a butcher's shop), are they finding better offers outside of the family business (i.e. the businesses aren't making money), do they just not need to work because the business have made the family wealth (which is what I see a lot in Germany), or is it something else entirely?
  - jakzurr 4y ago
    My impression is, most of them want better pay. (And probably better hours, as some of these business owners wear many hats, and work very long days.)
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      And if they are in the Japanese career system, likely more stability and less uncertainty. Owning even a self-sustaining small business isn't always that great style of living.
  - CobaltFire 4y ago
    I’m this case no one had the interest in it. The family is very well off by Japanese standards but they all work.
  - dagw 4y ago
    Having seen this happen a few times (although in Europe) it is almost always that simply no one wanted to work in that sector. It is a lot more common these days that children have gone off to university and gotten an education in something that actually interests them, and then naturally they want to work in the field instead. It doesn't even have to be as extreme as "vegans not wanting to take over a butcher's shop", but simply "I'd rather be an architect than sell farming equipment", even if selling farming equipment might pay better.
    - nelgaard 4y ago
      Yes, also traditionally the business would go to the eldest son. He then knew all his life that it would become his business and prepared for it. Now it can go to all sons and daughters. That means that the one best suited can be chosen. But all the children will have to build a career. And none of them feel particular responsible for continuing the business.
  - selfmodruntime 4y ago
    Exactly. I could either take over a back breaking plumbing business and kiss my knees goodbye at 45 or take a cushy software job for a relatively small pay cut.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  Japan has a very service oriented business culture and from what I can tell a lot of the loyalty is based on knowing the owner and their family. Is it possible so many Japanese are unwilling to take over a business because they predict that the longtime customers will feel alienated and underwhelmed by the relationship with the new owner? In other words, do potential buyers purposefully avoid taking over business because they know they cannot live up to expectations in the same way a family member can?
  - CobaltFire 4y ago
    This is accurate; no one outside the family would have been able to use the client base.
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      The usual approach is to effectively “apprentice” under the old owner as they increasingly hand over responsibility and retire. No matter what you’ll lose clients, but lose a lot less than if Alice disappears one day and Bob magically appears the next with little handover. Dunno if that could work in Japan.
      - phnofive 4y ago
        It's a thing: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-rates-majority-adult-men-a7524301.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-r...
        pessimizer 4y ago
        It's a thing everywhere, and doesn't require adoption (or making one of your child's spouses your successor.) I know a printer right now where the owner has been working towards retiring and selling the business to his now-manager eventual-successor for a few years. The owner has reduced his work responsibilities to sales only at this point, and the goal has been to make his networks comfortable with his successor as he slips away (to live closer to his grandchildren, I bet.)
- abledon 4y ago
  Elon's twitter feed is 5% about this issue lol
  - nequo 4y ago
    He does have nine[1] living children though. [1] https://archive.ph/20220707002423/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/elon-musk-had-twins-with-one-of-his-executives-kzph2nrc5 https://archive.ph/20220707002423/https://www.thetimes.co.uk...
    - abledon 4y ago
      oh yeah, i was saying he was advocating _for_ more children to replace population
      - ilyt 4y ago
        Gotta get that cheap workforce from somewhere, can't let the tech progress help the little guy work less!
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  This seems like a startup opportunity. Even if risking outsider status of seeking foreigners and finding a way to transition continuity of a particular shop's philosophy, it's terrible when a good business, like a living organism, is killed unnecessarily. Certainly there are highly-motivated foreigners who would migrate from places like Africa, Eastern Europe, and SE Asia who would leap to "rescue" a viable business in some manner. The business afterwards would not be the same, but it would be better than destroying all that hard work (and value) and the customers' delight. The culture and language would need to be learned and customers' convinced of the new owner's business skills, but these are not impossible barriers. I hate to see value thrown away, be it small-time manufacturing of specialized art, food, or equipment or even a corner grocery store... value thrown away is setting fire to money.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    In Japan, forget about it. The business will sooner shut down than be given away to some filthy gaijin.
  - nullsense 4y ago
    >The culture and language would need to be learned and customers' convinced of the new owner's business skills, but these are not impossible barriers. ...I would put it in the realm of pretty unrealistic. Curious if you're fluent in Japanese and familiar with Japanese culture or not?
  - JCharante 4y ago
    If customers aren't fond of new owners I doubt they'd be fond of foreigners
- random314 4y ago
  As the population shrinks, the businesses too have to shut down :( The inevitable in action.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  In this story and in yours both had children
- Finnucane 4y ago
  It happens here in the US too--family businesses that have no one to take over when the owners retire or die. If they haven't prepared a successor--whether a next-gen family member or employee, few may be willing to step in. So the business will just close.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    It does. It often also happens even when there are people to take over, like in my families case. My dad didn't want me to inherit my parents business, in his words I would be inheriting debt.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > no-one else in the family wanted it This is really the key part. A business can be successful yet soul crushing or not making financial sense compared to other jobs. In France bakeries are facing this same issue: one can support the whole community and be wildly popular while being a losing proposition for the owning family, and it’s becoming a real issue to find a better balance and people to keep the traditions alive.
  - tw98521358 4y ago
    Yeah bakery business is soul crushing. You have to work night shift without the pay differential. Way too much competition, labor of love
  - caseyross 4y ago
    I think this gets to the core of it. It's just not economic anymore. My sense is that most of these family shops were started during the mid-20th century when the economy in developed countries was more accommodating to small business. Through decades of ever-increasing pricing pressure from giant multinationals, the most successful family operations could still keep their doors open because of the trusted reputation they had earned in their communities. But even that lifeline is increasingly imperiled as their best, longest customers age out and die, and are not replaced by younger customers because of constantly falling wages in real terms.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      Also to note: older generations were more used to crappy work conditions. They didn’t enjoy it, oh no, and we saw the endless battles to get rid of dangerous and body crushing jobs, all the fight for unions, workers getting shot during strikes etc. And many traditional jobs were just a step below in terms of pressure and work hours. In a way, their wish for a better future for their children mostly got realized, and a lot of traditional occupations didn’t or couldn’t adapt to that mindset. The family business in the article is a farmer in the north, and by today’s standard it’s usually a brutal job, “work life balance” is basically an imaginary concept, there’s little leeway for error (forget to turn some knob just once in the dozens of time you do it in a day, and you have a month worth of production gone away), and you’re facing enough natural and economic odds that investment is basically akin to gambling.
- tkgally 4y ago
  A related problem is when a child is available to take over the company but turns out not to be competent and the company ends up failing. I’ve been living in Japan for forty years, and I’ve known a half dozen such cases personally. Several failed when the succession reached the third generation: the founder had been talented and ambitious and made the company a success; his son was less talented but, having been mentored by his father, worked hard and kept the company going reasonably well; and the grandson was a spoiled goof-off who didn’t take the job seriously. In one case I know, several dozen employees lost their lifelong jobs as a result.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    The blame is a bit on the first and second generation as well though. Ideally, once a company grows large enough, there should be a layer of upper management as well that has both the competence and the freedom to make actual decisions... meaning that even in the case the company owners end up being dumb-as-rocks spoiled morons, the company survives. However, many on the smaller side go the way that the old 80+ generation keeps on micromanaging decades after their children have taken charge - a real problem in the German Mittelstand, because these fossils grew up with faxes and simply don't get the requirements of the modern age. They simply can't accept the idea that they have done their part once they reached retirement age and it is a natural requirement for them to actually retire so that the younger generations can learn and rise!
  - blisterpeanuts 4y ago
    Not only in Japan; there have been many similar cases in the U.S. as well. Family businesses rarely do as well when the children or grandchildren take over. Though, of course, there are a few exceptions.
  - steve_gh 4y ago
    Where I come from there is a saying "Clogs to clogs in 3 generations"
mistrial9 4y ago
typical business press doublespeak -- "can't means won't".
rr888 4y ago
I heard in the West its similar, lots of baby boomers want to retire with small businesses that no one wants to take over.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  I looked at a few and even took over 1 from someone retiring; the amount they want to sell for here in the west is often too high for all the risk involved in taking something over you have less experience with than the retiring founder. Valuations are interesting but for many small businesses, it is not very clear if it’s worthwhile unless you have extensive experience in that market/area or yourself a company that benefits from taking over the other company.
- otoburb 4y ago
  >>I heard in the West its similar, lots of baby boomers want to retire with small businesses that no one wants to take over. Yes[1], and this becomes even more complicated when these baby boomer small business owners are/were planning on the sale of their business as a way to (partially) fund their retirement, whether in future cash flows as a residual equity owner or lump-sum with (too) high valuations. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhall/2022/01/25/unsexy-but-thriving-businesses-the-hidden-opportunity-gifted-to-us-by-baby-boomers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhall/2022/01/25/unsexy-but-...
- raincom 4y ago
  A small business owner will say he makes $400K profit a year, but wants to sell it for $2M (5 times $400K). What he doesn't tell you is that $400K includes his salary. As an owner, one needs to spend 60 hrs a week to run such a business. Here, $400k is just the salary for oneself to run that business. No profit left. The people who have means to buy such a business (like the bay area tech people), don't want to buy such businesses, because there is no upside. The people who want to run such a business (say, a security guard working for Pinkerton), don't have the means to buy such a business.
  - Danieru 4y ago
    You've hit the nail on the head. Small business valuation is hard and surprising. Almost by definition a small business has not been systematized and abstracted. The owner is vital to the operations. This is in strong contrast with medium or large businesses where a professional management layer exists. Thus allowing the owner, even if nominally the CEO, to relax and ignore day to day operations. Thus small business are best through of as a job, not an asset.
Barrin92 4y ago
Here in Germany I heard this a lot too as our economy is highly reliant on small family business and there's a lot of succession questions coming up as a huge chunk of the workforce ages into retirement. Despite lots of political kerfuffle a few years ago immigration has been a huge boon. I can't tell you how often I've personally heard how people were ready to close down long existing family businesses because they had nobody to take over until they got immigrants into vocational programs who now look like they may continue the business in the future. It's not just numbers either. A lot of domestic younger people were so set on going to uni and going to work for large firms that they just didn't want to take over their parents agricultural, trades or crafts business. In particular talking to Syrians this always stood out to me. A lot of them just seemed thankful for the stability and security that comes from our Mittelstand that we tend to take for granted.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  If businesses close down, eventually the remaining ones become profitable enough that new people (genuine middle class with ambitions) flock in.
  - andix 4y ago
    Im working in IT (kind of obvious on HN) and I’m playing with the thought of buying some kind of business from someone who is retiring. Something completely different (like plumbing or electrician), where my knowledge is close to zero. It would be quite a risk, but in IT we are used to learning a lot of new things quickly. And I would need to have employees who are experts in that field anyway. A lot of those professions became way more complicated in the last years (smart homes, computerized appliances, …), and many people who stepped up their career from being craftsmen have trouble running those businesses nowadays.
    - FredPret 4y ago
      I did exactly this. Bought a tiny zero-tech business from an old guy. He wants to retire and nobody wants his business, so I got a steal of a deal. My plan is to turn off the fax machines, start using email and see if I can automate parts of it or combine with another similar acquisition in a couple of years. Just beware that buying a business is complicated and you need to keep your end clean, legally speaking.
jakzurr 4y ago
Interesting article. Of course, the business comes with half a million dollars debt, as well. So he's sort of selling it for about $500,000. I didn't see details, but I would guess the new owner probably is required to wait a certain period (of years?) before liquidating the business?
debacle 4y ago
A friend of mine (not in Japan) took over the family business. Previous to this, he was a "second chef" (is that a thing?) at a relatively well known restaurant regionally. He took a ~25% paycut, he works harder and longer than he did before (as a chef, mind you, regularly known for 100+ hour weeks), spends close to half of that time driving, and often sleeps in the office. He went from probably being a few years away from running his own three star restaurant to running an unsalable, shrinking business, owns 400k worth of similarly unsalable equipment, in a slowly dwindling industry (dry cleaning). His marriage has fallen apart (did I mention he moved 3 hours away from his wife + children to run the business), his mental health seems atrocious, and the only thing the future seems to hold for him is a piece of a slowly shrinking pie. His father built a burgeoning postwar business that gave his family a good life, but markets change, and businesses that once made sense no longer do.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  A second chef is probably a sous-chef. A fairly typical role, they’re basically the Will Riker of the kitchen. FWIW: “…running his own three star restaurant…” often has just as fraught a story attached to it.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Dry cleaning business? Shudder. I spent some time over the holidays clearing out stuff and, even though I don't still own a lot of suits and jackets these days, I still have a lot of "business casual" I bought because I would "always use it some point." I'll probably donate a lot of it even the stuff that's never been opened. This isn't true everywhere of course but a long time ago I worked at a company that had dry cleaning collection of premises. This was a computer company. That would be laughable today.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    A bunch of the wool stuff that's so trendy among HN-reader sorts the last few years is supposed to be dry-clean only. Though I think some folks just rarely wash it, and hand-wash in a sink or something on the rare occasions that they do.
mustafabisic1 4y ago
Low birth rates are definitely becoming a mainstream problem. I wouldn't discount us from finding a solution, but looks like a tough one.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  The underlying problem is that having kids is sort of irrational, and the strong cultural pressure to do so anyway that used to be there is gone (there's still some pressure, but a far cry from what it used to be). I say this as a dad: having a kid, especially the first few years, is like having the world's worst second job. You get paid? No, you pay to have the job! Set hours? No, you're always on call! You might get an occasional break for a few hours, if you pay up for it! Decent working conditions? How does constantly cleaning up shit and piss sound? Ah, but you could get out of it if you change your mind, right? Sure...after your 18 year long contract is up. Obviously I'm glossing over the emotional angle, but yeah, from a material perspective having kids is fucking dumb, and for all you know spending that time and money with existing friends and family would've actually left you happier overall. It's a big irrational gamble in a lot of ways. Anyway, you can't fix all of that, but it would be possible for society, via the government, to fix some of it. For example, you could implement subsidies to the point where having kids had a net zero impact on your finances, so that you wouldn't be looking at lowered standard of living or reduced retirement savings from having children. Of course many would object to this, because culturally we believe that parents should be people who accept a worse standard of living with a smile on their face. That's stupid, of course, which is exactly why birth rates are below replacement in pretty much all the developed world, and beyond. People may be okay with the emotional effort involved in raising children, but telling them to throw away going out as a couple, abandon most of their nicer vacations, blah blah blah isn't gonna sell the idea.
  - toyg 4y ago
    But in the great scheme of things, that's fine: because developing nations crank out many, many more bodies than they could ever feed. The worldwide rate of population growth is still massive, the only way to make things stable is to allow countries to slow down once they're wealthy enough.
thriftwy 4y ago
In post-soviet countries and especially Russia, there are virtually no businesses older than 30 years (communism means no business to speak of), and most of them are quite new still, since there were a few different epochs already and every one had its own mass extinction event at the end. The upside is that almost everything is run by people who are not old, hence not stuck in the past. Also, gravitate towards hiring instead of famity ties, and towards horizontal growth instead of forever keeping a single store or eatery.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  The downside being that most places/services simply suck due to incompetence and cynicism. Corners cut, rules frequently disobeyed, mediocrity wins, and worker frustration means a revolving door. This is exacerbated by a stingy consumer base with no sense of loyalty. No thanks. I don’t know which post-Soviet reality you come from but the one I live in has a reputation for miraculous economic recovery. And even here most people aspire to leave and succeed elsewhere.
  - tw98521358 4y ago
    Hard to run a business when everyone is a “distruptor”
- rieTohgh6 4y ago
  It is not the same scale but the same issue as in article happens here. There is huge meat-processing plant next town, build from nothing in those 30 years and owner had to sell it to some big corporation since his children didn't want to take over. And that is would be management job, not crazy overworking yourself for pennies, like those examples from japan.
andix 4y ago
The same thing is happening all over Western Europe too. There are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first or second generation immigrants, that are lacking the needed skills/knowledge to run a business.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  That's interesting that that's a quality of immigrants. I feel like that's actually just everyone who doesn't own a business.
  - andix 4y ago
    A lot of the immigrants don’t speak the language at all (and no other European language), or not very well, which is kind of a show stopper.
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      In full immersion it only takes a few months to know enough of a language to be autonomous in a country. The hardest part is to find trustable lawyers that can translate for you the most complicated bits.
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities On top of self-selection, they are also selected by the immigration system, which is... not a neutral force.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/5gIu2 https://archive.ph/5gIu2
mshake2 4y ago
Isn't this the natural progression of a shrinking population? If you don't want this to happen, have lots of children.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Society at large benefits from a stable, ongoing population. But the burden of keeping that going obviously falls much moreso on parents than non-parents. You can try to even things out more via subsidies, but non-parents will quickly start objecting, even if they're materially still better off than parents. It used to be cultural pressure, combined with kids being not as materially demanding, meant that people had kids anyway. Obviously less true today.
dadjoker 4y ago
[flagged]
- paxys 4y ago
  You are assuming that people not wanting to have kids has to do with some worldwide sentiment rather than the simple reality on the ground – it is just not financially viable anymore. Costs like housing, healthcare and college tuition have risen thousands of percent more than inflation and wage growth in the last few decades. More and more households have both spouses working full time and still not able to afford a decent house or minor luxuries. Add in childcare, education, supplies and more for 1-2 kids and the math simply doesn't add up.
  - andix 4y ago
    Also an issue is, that most newly constructed apartments are just one bedroom, the ones with two or three bedrooms are mostly unaffordable, so where to put the kids?
  - rthomas6 4y ago
    I think this way of looking at things is rather recent historically speaking, and may in fact be part of the antinatalist sentiment you are trying to refute. Globally, improved standards of living have decreased birthrates, not increased them. If the real reason was finances, this would not happen. I think you have to consider peoples' shifting priorities, and look at what is expected culturally. Look at our recent ancestors. There was a baby boom after WWII when times were good, but before then in the 1930s, people still had a net positive birthrate. This was true throughout our history except in the very worst of times. People simply prioritized having children. Children were the luxury. People were willing to have leaner times in order to have children. They were not considered a burden or a drain. They were a gift, for which a temporary sacrifice of small luxuries was considered worth it. One could argue that the increased availability of contraception was a big part of the cause, and that people wanted less children but couldn't achieve that. But really contraception was available long before birthrates started declining, and what changed most of all was cultural attitudes towards contraception.
robertwt7 4y ago
this is quite a hard problem for Japan to solve tbh. it's a beautiful country, however originally they're not immigrant friendly, you can't even get a citizenship back then. Because of the working culture, many of the younger generations are reluctant to have family, apart from that the stagflation is getting worse and hardly solved. I'm not really sure what to do as a leader of Japan as well tbh, hopefully they find out what to do before all is too late
- thefounder 4y ago
  Giving people more free time might help along with ecouraging families through social programs
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    From the (few) Japanese people I know, the workplace culture can be grim - long hours and crushing hierarchy. It sounds all consuming. Time is very much lacking.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  The workforce that should be technically literate that would have been hired in the 90's, suffered that whole decade and couldn't get hired because the bubble popped and the companies kept on current workers and didn't hire. So now they have a lot of really old tech illiterate workers and younger ones that have to do the technical work (basic computer work for the old workers) and suffer long hours due to inefficiencies. They need to off load any older worker who can't keep up and that is also keeping the younger generations locked down to working 12 hours a day and modernize.
ta-old-company 4y ago
In the next years I’ll have to face the same question. One of my parents manages and also own a part of a century old company, I’m sure must be one of the oldest continually running companies in my country. After a century though, the percentage of the company that we actually own is smallish, perhaps about 20%, and the rest is owned by more distant relatives not involved in the administration. One part of me would like to continue running the company, even though I’d have to take a pay cut. But it would only make sense if I owned a larger part of the business, which would be by its own an expensive thing to do.
- raincom 4y ago
  If your distant relatives don't have smarts to run that business, just buy them out at discount.
  - dagw 4y ago
    Why would they accept a discount over what they could get if they just sold the whole company? In my experience of these situations it has little to do with the lack of "smarts" and everything to do with the lack of time and interest. In fact in many cases the 'smart' thing to do is to just sell and walk away, and the decision to keep going is more based on various notions of family 'loyalty' and tradition and responsibility, rather than actual "business smarts".
- human_person 4y ago
  Have you mentioned that to your distant relatives? They might be more interested in x/2% (or even x/4%) of something, instead of x% of nothing. I guess worse case they would try to help with admin.
- simne 4y ago
  > But it would only make sense if I owned a larger part of the business Co-owned companies are not easy to run, but when You have more than 10% of shares, You already have hard matter, which You could use as foundations for future grow of Your shares, if other coowners are not smart/experienced enough. And You don't need to make deal with daemon, in most cases You just need to know very well, what You really want in Your life and what You want to pay for it.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Oddly enough, I talked to a college friend on Sunday (our yearly tradition), and he has a thriving business helping buyers of such businesses! (Not in Japan, though.) There are a lot of older people who used to own businesses, and are looking for something new to run in their semi-retirement years. Once they find one, he helps them complete the sale. I wouldn't have thought there was a business there, but apparently there is.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  If you find a field that you enjoy and don't mind the entrepreneur lifestyle of working 26 hours a day, it's a perfect match.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Some people do, apparently. Getting started in business can require finding a niche that no one else is serving, and "not minding working 26 hours a day" is one of them.
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      If I wouldn't have seen two people close to me get absolutely crushed by starting a business in their childhood dream job, I might be a startup CEO too. Now I just work for other people for salary and have very little stress in my life.
8bitsrule 4y ago
Reminds me of a different but somewhat similar situation faced in the US by the Gamble-Skogmo holdings [0] - 4300 stores - back in the 1970s. The complex lashup (dozens of store names) was decades old, the aging owner wanted out, the purchaser went bankrupt in two years. Some of the pieces survived (Red Owl to SuperValu), the rest fell apart. Maybe a co-op could work. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamble-Skogmo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamble-Skogmo
- mcv 4y ago
  For companies that provide a service that the community depends on, I think a co-op is indeed the way to go.
  - shellfishgene 4y ago
    Especially as it seems in this case the customers are all local farmer who probably know each other. They would save the 30% profit the company apparently makes. However if the current owner really works 15 hours a day and sleeps in the office to keep the place running he might have to be replaced by two employees, and with the 500k debt the whole thing may not even be worth it as a co-op.
totetsu 4y ago
I sometimes see ads here in Japan for a baton pass company that specializes in helping older people sell their businesses to young people.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
Japan desperately needs immigration and desperately doesn't want any.
- somebodythere 4y ago
  Japan is pretty difficult to integrate into. Aside from the language issue, it is also difficult to integrate socially if you are a foreigner. It's also not the most attractive destination for skilled foreigners to immigrate to given that wages are much better elsewhere. Fixing these issues is more complex than simply increasing visa quotas.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    That's not a counterargument to not needing immigration. Immigration would buffer their population decline and help them to loosen up some of the calcified structures in the society or at least ameliorate their negative consequences. Of course it's not just about visas. If there is a way and a reason to immigrate, people will do so, even illegally. Japan can't even benefit from illegal immigration because its geographic properties isolate it so well.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        That is also not a counterargument to not needing immigration, just a reiteration of not wanting immigration. You hand-wave over what actually constitutes "too much immigration", and any evidence that more immigration leads to more "fascism" or even just hatred against immigrants. Hungary has hardly any immigration but manages to motivate fascism through fear of immigration. On the other hand, more contact with immigrants often leads to less fear of immigrants (has been shown in many studies). The sentiment is stronger for example in Eastern Germany vs Western Germany and guess where there are almost no immigrants. Limiting immigration to keep nutjobs and evil people happy seems like a dangerous argument.
spike021 4y ago
Watched a video recently with a similar situation in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qApr4UmCGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qApr4UmCGY It seems that sometimes clients who have enjoyed the business for a long time will offer to take it over. But they usually need to have that "passion" to do it.
nitwit005 4y ago
An aging population and fewer children may be issues, but when zero family members and zero employees want to rub the business, they don't seem like the main problem. It's a country with 92% of people living in cities, despite government intervention to support rural areas. People keep making the choice to leave.
- brozaman 4y ago
  If 92% of the people live in the city this means the country side are only 8% of votes. If your goal is to be in the power rather than making good decisions in the long term you do decisions that will be popular in the short term at any cost. Extend it to other large groups and you end up with a recipe for disaster. If politicians are conditioned like this (and I believe this has to be the situation for most developed countries even if it's with different topics), there is no way we can work well in the long term. This is a massive problem with democracy... I want to clarify that I'm not advocating for dictatorships at all, period. I think that democracy is actually the best system that mankind has had so far.
  - TexanFeller 4y ago
    In America we solve this problem with the much maligned electoral college. Keeps the folks in highly populated coastal cities from controlling the whole country.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Suuuure, works soooooo well
    - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
      I’d respect that argument if states were forced not to allocate their electors in a winner-takes-all manner.
    - helen___keller 4y ago
      Correction, it’s not the electoral college itself but the senate primarily that favors representatives from the countryside (and not really countryside so much as low population states. Voters in states with both countryside and huge cities, say Texas, are also underrepresented in the Senate) Electoral college votes for a state are senate seats plus house seats. House is roughly population based. Senate is 2 per state and constitutes half the legislative branch. So it very heavily favors representation for low-population states. House has significantly more seats than senate (4X), so electoral college only slightly favors low population states. My issue with electoral college isn’t the weighting but the voting. First past the post is idiotic; every democrat in a red state gets their vote ignored and every Republican in a blue state gets their vote ignored, meanwhile purple states are chucked marketing funds by the boatload. It’s inherently divisive because there’s no political reason for a candidate to unite a state that’s already won or lost, like California or Texas.
Hani1337 4y ago
Stop discriminating at the border on who can become a resident and I would make Japan #1 on my moving destinations list.
- nullsense 4y ago
  Doesn't it follow a points system + length of time?
- doctorwho42 4y ago
  You can't have dual citizenship with Japan. As much as they are a great country, there is a level of xenophobia there still. Even in the major cities. To clarify, if you are not Japanese they will be courteous to you but you will still be classified as an other. Take this however you will, but I have a sibling who works there, has a wife (Japanese citizen) and two kids there, and it is definitely one of the aspects that sounds the most grating. Especially when it comes to the potential, but subtle, ostracization of the kids when they are going through school
  - chrisdhal 4y ago
    Resident is not the same as citizen, which is what OP mentioned. Having "resident" status in a country generally gives you many perks of being a citizen without actually becoming one. Usually things like being able to open a bank account, working legally, getting a drivers license, etc. with the "liability" of possibly having to pay into the equivalent of social security (and other things, can't vote for example). This does not change any citizenship status on either side.
happyjack 4y ago
Lot of great comments here. Couple things I've seen in America talking to Boomers who are (trying) to sell their business. 1) the owner is absolutely integral for day to day ops. These businesses in all practicality are people who are self employed at a high level (if owner isn't there, the place doesn't run). 2) the asking price for some of these businesses can be absurd, mostly due to the Boomer needing it to fund retirement, or a large injection of capital late in their life. They have a mentality that this is America, and it's our god given birth rite to grow indefinitely, etc. they've put their life and soul into it and sometimes don't see economic realities. Also, they cook the hell out of their books. A lot of this passes through the cracks because no accountant or tax person even understands the business or expenses.
- doctorwho42 4y ago
  (2) is definitely a regular occurrence in my experience talking with retirement age or older business owners. There is this inherent misjudgement of value, the only way to describe it is to compare it to car owners who put $X into their car to modify it or repair it. Then turning around and saying the cost to buy is (stock price) + $X. And there is no bargaining with them, their way or the highway. They especially don't want to hear cost versus ROI based on profits of the past 5 years. So honestly, in my experience - start your own small company and keep an eye out for when their business folds because no one will buy at inflated prices... Then buy what you need from the auction they eventually have to recoup some money from their shuttered business.
  - happyjack 4y ago
    You're spot on. At the end of the day there really isn't any bargaining with them. They either forcibly sell to deal with bills or they literally die with it. "But you can make money look at all the money I made in the past" while you look at their last 3 sales years and it was abysmal because they started to slow down / retire themselves.
simne 4y ago
As very experienced in such matters (self run few businesses, startup exp, lot of consulting), must say, "business is profitable" is not enough. We name this trend - non-system business, when business closely tied to owner/founder, so it will disappear when for some reason owner/founder will not work. And in many cases I seen, these ties are not naturally defined by market or other natural causes, but are integral part of behavior of owner, mean, he made this business defective. For example, in ex-USSR countries, MOST businesses intentionally made non-systematic, because our law enforcement is not working good, and owners are fear, if business will not closely tied to owner, some criminals will take it away. And other must say, there are also many cases, where it is too expensive, to fix such business. Just, it's owner gather all cream in past, and have not bother about make healthy systematic business, and now cry. And finally must say, I know many cases, when LOCAL community depend on such non-system business. What to do? Unfortunately, it is problem of this local community and this community most probably, will be subject, deeply interested to solve problem (nobody else). In such case, local community must be ready, and take over business if owner give away, or do alternative quickly, to fill market gap, if owner will decide to just close business.
Kaibeezy 4y ago
https://archive.ph/q4SyZ https://archive.ph/q4SyZ Question: Could this be a path to a visa for someone who wants to immigrate?
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - user-extended 4y ago
    For that plot to be "movie-able", you also need to add the Gaijin marrying the Japanese Business Owner's Daughter. Small addendum to make it a box office success :) I'm sure some YouTube channels could pull this off too.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Thanks, I'll add that. Do I need to research a lot on Japanese culture, or nah?
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  Eventually, developed and aging countries like Japan or South Korea have to import immigrants or simply die away gradually. Either way, their cultures are going to cease the way they are today.
  - onepointsixC 4y ago
    So what happens when the whole world becomes developed? Immigration as a solution to population decline seems like a temporary fix.
    - dropit_sphere 4y ago
      https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1609972258725892097 https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1609972258725892097

163 points by krn 4y ago

My FiL shut down his multigenerational business in Japan for exactly this reason. I was not in a position to take it over and no-one else in the family wanted it. It was a very successful shop with a built in client base and hugely recognizable name in that community. Culturally the lack of children means there are fewer chances for someone to want to take over a family business, so the likelihood of someone taking it over drops every generation.

luckylion 4y ago
Are the children shying away from it because whatever business it is just isn't something they like (i.e. vegans not wanting to take over a butcher's shop), are they finding better offers outside of the family business (i.e. the businesses aren't making money), do they just not need to work because the business have made the family wealth (which is what I see a lot in Germany), or is it something else entirely?
- jakzurr 4y ago
  My impression is, most of them want better pay. (And probably better hours, as some of these business owners wear many hats, and work very long days.)
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    And if they are in the Japanese career system, likely more stability and less uncertainty. Owning even a self-sustaining small business isn't always that great style of living.
- CobaltFire 4y ago
  I’m this case no one had the interest in it. The family is very well off by Japanese standards but they all work.
- dagw 4y ago
  Having seen this happen a few times (although in Europe) it is almost always that simply no one wanted to work in that sector. It is a lot more common these days that children have gone off to university and gotten an education in something that actually interests them, and then naturally they want to work in the field instead. It doesn't even have to be as extreme as "vegans not wanting to take over a butcher's shop", but simply "I'd rather be an architect than sell farming equipment", even if selling farming equipment might pay better.
  - nelgaard 4y ago
    Yes, also traditionally the business would go to the eldest son. He then knew all his life that it would become his business and prepared for it. Now it can go to all sons and daughters. That means that the one best suited can be chosen. But all the children will have to build a career. And none of them feel particular responsible for continuing the business.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  Exactly. I could either take over a back breaking plumbing business and kiss my knees goodbye at 45 or take a cushy software job for a relatively small pay cut.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
Japan has a very service oriented business culture and from what I can tell a lot of the loyalty is based on knowing the owner and their family. Is it possible so many Japanese are unwilling to take over a business because they predict that the longtime customers will feel alienated and underwhelmed by the relationship with the new owner? In other words, do potential buyers purposefully avoid taking over business because they know they cannot live up to expectations in the same way a family member can?
- CobaltFire 4y ago
  This is accurate; no one outside the family would have been able to use the client base.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    The usual approach is to effectively “apprentice” under the old owner as they increasingly hand over responsibility and retire. No matter what you’ll lose clients, but lose a lot less than if Alice disappears one day and Bob magically appears the next with little handover. Dunno if that could work in Japan.
    - phnofive 4y ago
      It's a thing: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-rates-majority-adult-men-a7524301.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-r...
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        It's a thing everywhere, and doesn't require adoption (or making one of your child's spouses your successor.) I know a printer right now where the owner has been working towards retiring and selling the business to his now-manager eventual-successor for a few years. The owner has reduced his work responsibilities to sales only at this point, and the goal has been to make his networks comfortable with his successor as he slips away (to live closer to his grandchildren, I bet.)
abledon 4y ago
Elon's twitter feed is 5% about this issue lol
- nequo 4y ago
  He does have nine[1] living children though. [1] https://archive.ph/20220707002423/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/elon-musk-had-twins-with-one-of-his-executives-kzph2nrc5 https://archive.ph/20220707002423/https://www.thetimes.co.uk...
  - abledon 4y ago
    oh yeah, i was saying he was advocating _for_ more children to replace population
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Gotta get that cheap workforce from somewhere, can't let the tech progress help the little guy work less!
sacnoradhq 4y ago
This seems like a startup opportunity. Even if risking outsider status of seeking foreigners and finding a way to transition continuity of a particular shop's philosophy, it's terrible when a good business, like a living organism, is killed unnecessarily. Certainly there are highly-motivated foreigners who would migrate from places like Africa, Eastern Europe, and SE Asia who would leap to "rescue" a viable business in some manner. The business afterwards would not be the same, but it would be better than destroying all that hard work (and value) and the customers' delight. The culture and language would need to be learned and customers' convinced of the new owner's business skills, but these are not impossible barriers. I hate to see value thrown away, be it small-time manufacturing of specialized art, food, or equipment or even a corner grocery store... value thrown away is setting fire to money.
- xwdv 4y ago
  In Japan, forget about it. The business will sooner shut down than be given away to some filthy gaijin.
- nullsense 4y ago
  >The culture and language would need to be learned and customers' convinced of the new owner's business skills, but these are not impossible barriers. ...I would put it in the realm of pretty unrealistic. Curious if you're fluent in Japanese and familiar with Japanese culture or not?
- JCharante 4y ago
  If customers aren't fond of new owners I doubt they'd be fond of foreigners
random314 4y ago
As the population shrinks, the businesses too have to shut down :( The inevitable in action.
ipaddr 4y ago
In this story and in yours both had children
Finnucane 4y ago
It happens here in the US too--family businesses that have no one to take over when the owners retire or die. If they haven't prepared a successor--whether a next-gen family member or employee, few may be willing to step in. So the business will just close.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  It does. It often also happens even when there are people to take over, like in my families case. My dad didn't want me to inherit my parents business, in his words I would be inheriting debt.
makeitdouble 4y ago
> no-one else in the family wanted it This is really the key part. A business can be successful yet soul crushing or not making financial sense compared to other jobs. In France bakeries are facing this same issue: one can support the whole community and be wildly popular while being a losing proposition for the owning family, and it’s becoming a real issue to find a better balance and people to keep the traditions alive.
- tw98521358 4y ago
  Yeah bakery business is soul crushing. You have to work night shift without the pay differential. Way too much competition, labor of love
- caseyross 4y ago
  I think this gets to the core of it. It's just not economic anymore. My sense is that most of these family shops were started during the mid-20th century when the economy in developed countries was more accommodating to small business. Through decades of ever-increasing pricing pressure from giant multinationals, the most successful family operations could still keep their doors open because of the trusted reputation they had earned in their communities. But even that lifeline is increasingly imperiled as their best, longest customers age out and die, and are not replaced by younger customers because of constantly falling wages in real terms.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    Also to note: older generations were more used to crappy work conditions. They didn’t enjoy it, oh no, and we saw the endless battles to get rid of dangerous and body crushing jobs, all the fight for unions, workers getting shot during strikes etc. And many traditional jobs were just a step below in terms of pressure and work hours. In a way, their wish for a better future for their children mostly got realized, and a lot of traditional occupations didn’t or couldn’t adapt to that mindset. The family business in the article is a farmer in the north, and by today’s standard it’s usually a brutal job, “work life balance” is basically an imaginary concept, there’s little leeway for error (forget to turn some knob just once in the dozens of time you do it in a day, and you have a month worth of production gone away), and you’re facing enough natural and economic odds that investment is basically akin to gambling.
tkgally 4y ago
A related problem is when a child is available to take over the company but turns out not to be competent and the company ends up failing. I’ve been living in Japan for forty years, and I’ve known a half dozen such cases personally. Several failed when the succession reached the third generation: the founder had been talented and ambitious and made the company a success; his son was less talented but, having been mentored by his father, worked hard and kept the company going reasonably well; and the grandson was a spoiled goof-off who didn’t take the job seriously. In one case I know, several dozen employees lost their lifelong jobs as a result.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  The blame is a bit on the first and second generation as well though. Ideally, once a company grows large enough, there should be a layer of upper management as well that has both the competence and the freedom to make actual decisions... meaning that even in the case the company owners end up being dumb-as-rocks spoiled morons, the company survives. However, many on the smaller side go the way that the old 80+ generation keeps on micromanaging decades after their children have taken charge - a real problem in the German Mittelstand, because these fossils grew up with faxes and simply don't get the requirements of the modern age. They simply can't accept the idea that they have done their part once they reached retirement age and it is a natural requirement for them to actually retire so that the younger generations can learn and rise!
- blisterpeanuts 4y ago
  Not only in Japan; there have been many similar cases in the U.S. as well. Family businesses rarely do as well when the children or grandchildren take over. Though, of course, there are a few exceptions.
- steve_gh 4y ago
  Where I come from there is a saying "Clogs to clogs in 3 generations"

mistrial9 4y ago

typical business press doublespeak -- "can't means won't".

rr888 4y ago

I heard in the West its similar, lots of baby boomers want to retire with small businesses that no one wants to take over.

tluyben2 4y ago
I looked at a few and even took over 1 from someone retiring; the amount they want to sell for here in the west is often too high for all the risk involved in taking something over you have less experience with than the retiring founder. Valuations are interesting but for many small businesses, it is not very clear if it’s worthwhile unless you have extensive experience in that market/area or yourself a company that benefits from taking over the other company.
otoburb 4y ago
>>I heard in the West its similar, lots of baby boomers want to retire with small businesses that no one wants to take over. Yes[1], and this becomes even more complicated when these baby boomer small business owners are/were planning on the sale of their business as a way to (partially) fund their retirement, whether in future cash flows as a residual equity owner or lump-sum with (too) high valuations. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhall/2022/01/25/unsexy-but-thriving-businesses-the-hidden-opportunity-gifted-to-us-by-baby-boomers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhall/2022/01/25/unsexy-but-...
raincom 4y ago
A small business owner will say he makes $400K profit a year, but wants to sell it for $2M (5 times $400K). What he doesn't tell you is that $400K includes his salary. As an owner, one needs to spend 60 hrs a week to run such a business. Here, $400k is just the salary for oneself to run that business. No profit left. The people who have means to buy such a business (like the bay area tech people), don't want to buy such businesses, because there is no upside. The people who want to run such a business (say, a security guard working for Pinkerton), don't have the means to buy such a business.
- Danieru 4y ago
  You've hit the nail on the head. Small business valuation is hard and surprising. Almost by definition a small business has not been systematized and abstracted. The owner is vital to the operations. This is in strong contrast with medium or large businesses where a professional management layer exists. Thus allowing the owner, even if nominally the CEO, to relax and ignore day to day operations. Thus small business are best through of as a job, not an asset.

Barrin92 4y ago

Here in Germany I heard this a lot too as our economy is highly reliant on small family business and there's a lot of succession questions coming up as a huge chunk of the workforce ages into retirement. Despite lots of political kerfuffle a few years ago immigration has been a huge boon. I can't tell you how often I've personally heard how people were ready to close down long existing family businesses because they had nobody to take over until they got immigrants into vocational programs who now look like they may continue the business in the future. It's not just numbers either. A lot of domestic younger people were so set on going to uni and going to work for large firms that they just didn't want to take over their parents agricultural, trades or crafts business. In particular talking to Syrians this always stood out to me. A lot of them just seemed thankful for the stability and security that comes from our Mittelstand that we tend to take for granted.

thriftwy 4y ago
If businesses close down, eventually the remaining ones become profitable enough that new people (genuine middle class with ambitions) flock in.
- andix 4y ago
  Im working in IT (kind of obvious on HN) and I’m playing with the thought of buying some kind of business from someone who is retiring. Something completely different (like plumbing or electrician), where my knowledge is close to zero. It would be quite a risk, but in IT we are used to learning a lot of new things quickly. And I would need to have employees who are experts in that field anyway. A lot of those professions became way more complicated in the last years (smart homes, computerized appliances, …), and many people who stepped up their career from being craftsmen have trouble running those businesses nowadays.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    I did exactly this. Bought a tiny zero-tech business from an old guy. He wants to retire and nobody wants his business, so I got a steal of a deal. My plan is to turn off the fax machines, start using email and see if I can automate parts of it or combine with another similar acquisition in a couple of years. Just beware that buying a business is complicated and you need to keep your end clean, legally speaking.

jakzurr 4y ago

Interesting article. Of course, the business comes with half a million dollars debt, as well. So he's sort of selling it for about $500,000. I didn't see details, but I would guess the new owner probably is required to wait a certain period (of years?) before liquidating the business?

debacle 4y ago

A friend of mine (not in Japan) took over the family business. Previous to this, he was a "second chef" (is that a thing?) at a relatively well known restaurant regionally. He took a ~25% paycut, he works harder and longer than he did before (as a chef, mind you, regularly known for 100+ hour weeks), spends close to half of that time driving, and often sleeps in the office. He went from probably being a few years away from running his own three star restaurant to running an unsalable, shrinking business, owns 400k worth of similarly unsalable equipment, in a slowly dwindling industry (dry cleaning). His marriage has fallen apart (did I mention he moved 3 hours away from his wife + children to run the business), his mental health seems atrocious, and the only thing the future seems to hold for him is a piece of a slowly shrinking pie. His father built a burgeoning postwar business that gave his family a good life, but markets change, and businesses that once made sense no longer do.

Waterluvian 4y ago
A second chef is probably a sous-chef. A fairly typical role, they’re basically the Will Riker of the kitchen. FWIW: “…running his own three star restaurant…” often has just as fraught a story attached to it.
ghaff 4y ago
Dry cleaning business? Shudder. I spent some time over the holidays clearing out stuff and, even though I don't still own a lot of suits and jackets these days, I still have a lot of "business casual" I bought because I would "always use it some point." I'll probably donate a lot of it even the stuff that's never been opened. This isn't true everywhere of course but a long time ago I worked at a company that had dry cleaning collection of premises. This was a computer company. That would be laughable today.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  A bunch of the wool stuff that's so trendy among HN-reader sorts the last few years is supposed to be dry-clean only. Though I think some folks just rarely wash it, and hand-wash in a sink or something on the rare occasions that they do.

mustafabisic1 4y ago

Low birth rates are definitely becoming a mainstream problem. I wouldn't discount us from finding a solution, but looks like a tough one.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
The underlying problem is that having kids is sort of irrational, and the strong cultural pressure to do so anyway that used to be there is gone (there's still some pressure, but a far cry from what it used to be). I say this as a dad: having a kid, especially the first few years, is like having the world's worst second job. You get paid? No, you pay to have the job! Set hours? No, you're always on call! You might get an occasional break for a few hours, if you pay up for it! Decent working conditions? How does constantly cleaning up shit and piss sound? Ah, but you could get out of it if you change your mind, right? Sure...after your 18 year long contract is up. Obviously I'm glossing over the emotional angle, but yeah, from a material perspective having kids is fucking dumb, and for all you know spending that time and money with existing friends and family would've actually left you happier overall. It's a big irrational gamble in a lot of ways. Anyway, you can't fix all of that, but it would be possible for society, via the government, to fix some of it. For example, you could implement subsidies to the point where having kids had a net zero impact on your finances, so that you wouldn't be looking at lowered standard of living or reduced retirement savings from having children. Of course many would object to this, because culturally we believe that parents should be people who accept a worse standard of living with a smile on their face. That's stupid, of course, which is exactly why birth rates are below replacement in pretty much all the developed world, and beyond. People may be okay with the emotional effort involved in raising children, but telling them to throw away going out as a couple, abandon most of their nicer vacations, blah blah blah isn't gonna sell the idea.
- toyg 4y ago
  But in the great scheme of things, that's fine: because developing nations crank out many, many more bodies than they could ever feed. The worldwide rate of population growth is still massive, the only way to make things stable is to allow countries to slow down once they're wealthy enough.

thriftwy 4y ago

In post-soviet countries and especially Russia, there are virtually no businesses older than 30 years (communism means no business to speak of), and most of them are quite new still, since there were a few different epochs already and every one had its own mass extinction event at the end. The upside is that almost everything is run by people who are not old, hence not stuck in the past. Also, gravitate towards hiring instead of famity ties, and towards horizontal growth instead of forever keeping a single store or eatery.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
The downside being that most places/services simply suck due to incompetence and cynicism. Corners cut, rules frequently disobeyed, mediocrity wins, and worker frustration means a revolving door. This is exacerbated by a stingy consumer base with no sense of loyalty. No thanks. I don’t know which post-Soviet reality you come from but the one I live in has a reputation for miraculous economic recovery. And even here most people aspire to leave and succeed elsewhere.
- tw98521358 4y ago
  Hard to run a business when everyone is a “distruptor”
rieTohgh6 4y ago
It is not the same scale but the same issue as in article happens here. There is huge meat-processing plant next town, build from nothing in those 30 years and owner had to sell it to some big corporation since his children didn't want to take over. And that is would be management job, not crazy overworking yourself for pennies, like those examples from japan.

andix 4y ago

The same thing is happening all over Western Europe too. There are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first or second generation immigrants, that are lacking the needed skills/knowledge to run a business.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
That's interesting that that's a quality of immigrants. I feel like that's actually just everyone who doesn't own a business.
- andix 4y ago
  A lot of the immigrants don’t speak the language at all (and no other European language), or not very well, which is kind of a show stopper.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    In full immersion it only takes a few months to know enough of a language to be autonomous in a country. The hardest part is to find trustable lawyers that can translate for you the most complicated bits.
- Taniwha 4y ago
  You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities On top of self-selection, they are also selected by the immigration system, which is... not a neutral force.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/5gIu2 https://archive.ph/5gIu2

mshake2 4y ago

Isn't this the natural progression of a shrinking population? If you don't want this to happen, have lots of children.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Society at large benefits from a stable, ongoing population. But the burden of keeping that going obviously falls much moreso on parents than non-parents. You can try to even things out more via subsidies, but non-parents will quickly start objecting, even if they're materially still better off than parents. It used to be cultural pressure, combined with kids being not as materially demanding, meant that people had kids anyway. Obviously less true today.

dadjoker 4y ago

[flagged]

paxys 4y ago
You are assuming that people not wanting to have kids has to do with some worldwide sentiment rather than the simple reality on the ground – it is just not financially viable anymore. Costs like housing, healthcare and college tuition have risen thousands of percent more than inflation and wage growth in the last few decades. More and more households have both spouses working full time and still not able to afford a decent house or minor luxuries. Add in childcare, education, supplies and more for 1-2 kids and the math simply doesn't add up.
- andix 4y ago
  Also an issue is, that most newly constructed apartments are just one bedroom, the ones with two or three bedrooms are mostly unaffordable, so where to put the kids?
- rthomas6 4y ago
  I think this way of looking at things is rather recent historically speaking, and may in fact be part of the antinatalist sentiment you are trying to refute. Globally, improved standards of living have decreased birthrates, not increased them. If the real reason was finances, this would not happen. I think you have to consider peoples' shifting priorities, and look at what is expected culturally. Look at our recent ancestors. There was a baby boom after WWII when times were good, but before then in the 1930s, people still had a net positive birthrate. This was true throughout our history except in the very worst of times. People simply prioritized having children. Children were the luxury. People were willing to have leaner times in order to have children. They were not considered a burden or a drain. They were a gift, for which a temporary sacrifice of small luxuries was considered worth it. One could argue that the increased availability of contraception was a big part of the cause, and that people wanted less children but couldn't achieve that. But really contraception was available long before birthrates started declining, and what changed most of all was cultural attitudes towards contraception.

robertwt7 4y ago

this is quite a hard problem for Japan to solve tbh. it's a beautiful country, however originally they're not immigrant friendly, you can't even get a citizenship back then. Because of the working culture, many of the younger generations are reluctant to have family, apart from that the stagflation is getting worse and hardly solved. I'm not really sure what to do as a leader of Japan as well tbh, hopefully they find out what to do before all is too late

thefounder 4y ago
Giving people more free time might help along with ecouraging families through social programs
- lostlogin 4y ago
  From the (few) Japanese people I know, the workplace culture can be grim - long hours and crushing hierarchy. It sounds all consuming. Time is very much lacking.
downrightmike 4y ago
The workforce that should be technically literate that would have been hired in the 90's, suffered that whole decade and couldn't get hired because the bubble popped and the companies kept on current workers and didn't hire. So now they have a lot of really old tech illiterate workers and younger ones that have to do the technical work (basic computer work for the old workers) and suffer long hours due to inefficiencies. They need to off load any older worker who can't keep up and that is also keeping the younger generations locked down to working 12 hours a day and modernize.

ta-old-company 4y ago

In the next years I’ll have to face the same question. One of my parents manages and also own a part of a century old company, I’m sure must be one of the oldest continually running companies in my country. After a century though, the percentage of the company that we actually own is smallish, perhaps about 20%, and the rest is owned by more distant relatives not involved in the administration. One part of me would like to continue running the company, even though I’d have to take a pay cut. But it would only make sense if I owned a larger part of the business, which would be by its own an expensive thing to do.

raincom 4y ago
If your distant relatives don't have smarts to run that business, just buy them out at discount.
- dagw 4y ago
  Why would they accept a discount over what they could get if they just sold the whole company? In my experience of these situations it has little to do with the lack of "smarts" and everything to do with the lack of time and interest. In fact in many cases the 'smart' thing to do is to just sell and walk away, and the decision to keep going is more based on various notions of family 'loyalty' and tradition and responsibility, rather than actual "business smarts".
human_person 4y ago
Have you mentioned that to your distant relatives? They might be more interested in x/2% (or even x/4%) of something, instead of x% of nothing. I guess worse case they would try to help with admin.
simne 4y ago
> But it would only make sense if I owned a larger part of the business Co-owned companies are not easy to run, but when You have more than 10% of shares, You already have hard matter, which You could use as foundations for future grow of Your shares, if other coowners are not smart/experienced enough. And You don't need to make deal with daemon, in most cases You just need to know very well, what You really want in Your life and what You want to pay for it.

AlbertCory 4y ago

Oddly enough, I talked to a college friend on Sunday (our yearly tradition), and he has a thriving business helping buyers of such businesses! (Not in Japan, though.) There are a lot of older people who used to own businesses, and are looking for something new to run in their semi-retirement years. Once they find one, he helps them complete the sale. I wouldn't have thought there was a business there, but apparently there is.

theshrike79 4y ago
If you find a field that you enjoy and don't mind the entrepreneur lifestyle of working 26 hours a day, it's a perfect match.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Some people do, apparently. Getting started in business can require finding a niche that no one else is serving, and "not minding working 26 hours a day" is one of them.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    If I wouldn't have seen two people close to me get absolutely crushed by starting a business in their childhood dream job, I might be a startup CEO too. Now I just work for other people for salary and have very little stress in my life.

8bitsrule 4y ago

Reminds me of a different but somewhat similar situation faced in the US by the Gamble-Skogmo holdings [0] - 4300 stores - back in the 1970s. The complex lashup (dozens of store names) was decades old, the aging owner wanted out, the purchaser went bankrupt in two years. Some of the pieces survived (Red Owl to SuperValu), the rest fell apart. Maybe a co-op could work. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamble-Skogmo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamble-Skogmo

mcv 4y ago
For companies that provide a service that the community depends on, I think a co-op is indeed the way to go.
- shellfishgene 4y ago
  Especially as it seems in this case the customers are all local farmer who probably know each other. They would save the 30% profit the company apparently makes. However if the current owner really works 15 hours a day and sleeps in the office to keep the place running he might have to be replaced by two employees, and with the 500k debt the whole thing may not even be worth it as a co-op.

totetsu 4y ago

I sometimes see ads here in Japan for a baton pass company that specializes in helping older people sell their businesses to young people.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

Japan desperately needs immigration and desperately doesn't want any.

somebodythere 4y ago
Japan is pretty difficult to integrate into. Aside from the language issue, it is also difficult to integrate socially if you are a foreigner. It's also not the most attractive destination for skilled foreigners to immigrate to given that wages are much better elsewhere. Fixing these issues is more complex than simply increasing visa quotas.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  That's not a counterargument to not needing immigration. Immigration would buffer their population decline and help them to loosen up some of the calcified structures in the society or at least ameliorate their negative consequences. Of course it's not just about visas. If there is a way and a reason to immigrate, people will do so, even illegally. Japan can't even benefit from illegal immigration because its geographic properties isolate it so well.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      That is also not a counterargument to not needing immigration, just a reiteration of not wanting immigration. You hand-wave over what actually constitutes "too much immigration", and any evidence that more immigration leads to more "fascism" or even just hatred against immigrants. Hungary has hardly any immigration but manages to motivate fascism through fear of immigration. On the other hand, more contact with immigrants often leads to less fear of immigrants (has been shown in many studies). The sentiment is stronger for example in Eastern Germany vs Western Germany and guess where there are almost no immigrants. Limiting immigration to keep nutjobs and evil people happy seems like a dangerous argument.

spike021 4y ago

Watched a video recently with a similar situation in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qApr4UmCGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qApr4UmCGY It seems that sometimes clients who have enjoyed the business for a long time will offer to take it over. But they usually need to have that "passion" to do it.

nitwit005 4y ago

An aging population and fewer children may be issues, but when zero family members and zero employees want to rub the business, they don't seem like the main problem. It's a country with 92% of people living in cities, despite government intervention to support rural areas. People keep making the choice to leave.

brozaman 4y ago
If 92% of the people live in the city this means the country side are only 8% of votes. If your goal is to be in the power rather than making good decisions in the long term you do decisions that will be popular in the short term at any cost. Extend it to other large groups and you end up with a recipe for disaster. If politicians are conditioned like this (and I believe this has to be the situation for most developed countries even if it's with different topics), there is no way we can work well in the long term. This is a massive problem with democracy... I want to clarify that I'm not advocating for dictatorships at all, period. I think that democracy is actually the best system that mankind has had so far.
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  In America we solve this problem with the much maligned electoral college. Keeps the folks in highly populated coastal cities from controlling the whole country.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Suuuure, works soooooo well
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    I’d respect that argument if states were forced not to allocate their electors in a winner-takes-all manner.
  - helen___keller 4y ago
    Correction, it’s not the electoral college itself but the senate primarily that favors representatives from the countryside (and not really countryside so much as low population states. Voters in states with both countryside and huge cities, say Texas, are also underrepresented in the Senate) Electoral college votes for a state are senate seats plus house seats. House is roughly population based. Senate is 2 per state and constitutes half the legislative branch. So it very heavily favors representation for low-population states. House has significantly more seats than senate (4X), so electoral college only slightly favors low population states. My issue with electoral college isn’t the weighting but the voting. First past the post is idiotic; every democrat in a red state gets their vote ignored and every Republican in a blue state gets their vote ignored, meanwhile purple states are chucked marketing funds by the boatload. It’s inherently divisive because there’s no political reason for a candidate to unite a state that’s already won or lost, like California or Texas.

Hani1337 4y ago

Stop discriminating at the border on who can become a resident and I would make Japan #1 on my moving destinations list.

nullsense 4y ago
Doesn't it follow a points system + length of time?
doctorwho42 4y ago
You can't have dual citizenship with Japan. As much as they are a great country, there is a level of xenophobia there still. Even in the major cities. To clarify, if you are not Japanese they will be courteous to you but you will still be classified as an other. Take this however you will, but I have a sibling who works there, has a wife (Japanese citizen) and two kids there, and it is definitely one of the aspects that sounds the most grating. Especially when it comes to the potential, but subtle, ostracization of the kids when they are going through school
- chrisdhal 4y ago
  Resident is not the same as citizen, which is what OP mentioned. Having "resident" status in a country generally gives you many perks of being a citizen without actually becoming one. Usually things like being able to open a bank account, working legally, getting a drivers license, etc. with the "liability" of possibly having to pay into the equivalent of social security (and other things, can't vote for example). This does not change any citizenship status on either side.

happyjack 4y ago

Lot of great comments here. Couple things I've seen in America talking to Boomers who are (trying) to sell their business. 1) the owner is absolutely integral for day to day ops. These businesses in all practicality are people who are self employed at a high level (if owner isn't there, the place doesn't run). 2) the asking price for some of these businesses can be absurd, mostly due to the Boomer needing it to fund retirement, or a large injection of capital late in their life. They have a mentality that this is America, and it's our god given birth rite to grow indefinitely, etc. they've put their life and soul into it and sometimes don't see economic realities. Also, they cook the hell out of their books. A lot of this passes through the cracks because no accountant or tax person even understands the business or expenses.

doctorwho42 4y ago
(2) is definitely a regular occurrence in my experience talking with retirement age or older business owners. There is this inherent misjudgement of value, the only way to describe it is to compare it to car owners who put $X into their car to modify it or repair it. Then turning around and saying the cost to buy is (stock price) + $X. And there is no bargaining with them, their way or the highway. They especially don't want to hear cost versus ROI based on profits of the past 5 years. So honestly, in my experience - start your own small company and keep an eye out for when their business folds because no one will buy at inflated prices... Then buy what you need from the auction they eventually have to recoup some money from their shuttered business.
- happyjack 4y ago
  You're spot on. At the end of the day there really isn't any bargaining with them. They either forcibly sell to deal with bills or they literally die with it. "But you can make money look at all the money I made in the past" while you look at their last 3 sales years and it was abysmal because they started to slow down / retire themselves.

simne 4y ago

As very experienced in such matters (self run few businesses, startup exp, lot of consulting), must say, "business is profitable" is not enough. We name this trend - non-system business, when business closely tied to owner/founder, so it will disappear when for some reason owner/founder will not work. And in many cases I seen, these ties are not naturally defined by market or other natural causes, but are integral part of behavior of owner, mean, he made this business defective. For example, in ex-USSR countries, MOST businesses intentionally made non-systematic, because our law enforcement is not working good, and owners are fear, if business will not closely tied to owner, some criminals will take it away. And other must say, there are also many cases, where it is too expensive, to fix such business. Just, it's owner gather all cream in past, and have not bother about make healthy systematic business, and now cry. And finally must say, I know many cases, when LOCAL community depend on such non-system business. What to do? Unfortunately, it is problem of this local community and this community most probably, will be subject, deeply interested to solve problem (nobody else). In such case, local community must be ready, and take over business if owner give away, or do alternative quickly, to fill market gap, if owner will decide to just close business.

Kaibeezy 4y ago

https://archive.ph/q4SyZ https://archive.ph/q4SyZ Question: Could this be a path to a visa for someone who wants to immigrate?

AlbertCory 4y ago
[flagged]
- user-extended 4y ago
  For that plot to be "movie-able", you also need to add the Gaijin marrying the Japanese Business Owner's Daughter. Small addendum to make it a box office success :) I'm sure some YouTube channels could pull this off too.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Thanks, I'll add that. Do I need to research a lot on Japanese culture, or nah?
RestlessMind 4y ago
Eventually, developed and aging countries like Japan or South Korea have to import immigrants or simply die away gradually. Either way, their cultures are going to cease the way they are today.
- onepointsixC 4y ago
  So what happens when the whole world becomes developed? Immigration as a solution to population decline seems like a temporary fix.
  - dropit_sphere 4y ago
    https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1609972258725892097 https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1609972258725892097