34 ms·

Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past

245 points by ZeljkoS 4y ago

jb1991 4y ago
This article is well-written and really paints a broad picture in the beginning so well. I'd be curious to hear from those living in Japan what they think.
- bcherny 4y ago
  As a foreigner living in Japan (similar situation to the author), this article hits the nail on the head.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >This article is well-written Considering the bleedingly obvious political slant fueled by feel-goodism, especially towards the end of the article: No. This is just another make-readers-angry hit piece. Among many egregious errors and ignorances: No, the LDP has not "ruled ever since". There have been a number of times the LDP was not in power, including most recently when the Fukushima #1 power plant underwent a meltdown because the Democrat Party (not to be confused with the LDP) government at the time was utterly inept. Rivers are "walled with grey concrete" because to not do so means the rivers flood uncontrolled during the rainy seasons leading to washed out towns and villages which fucking nobody reasonable wants. The coasts are "blighted by tetra pods" because high tides, waves, and fucking tsunamis are commonplace. Japan absolutely faces many big problems as it moves forward, but this article serves to help precisely nothing. The author might as well have wasted his 10 years in Japan if this is truly all he could write.
  - jb1991 4y ago
    > make-readers-angry I read it and did not get angry.
  - gramie 4y ago
    > There have been a number of times the LDP was not in power The LDP has been in power since 1955, except for two periods (1993-94 and 2009-12). That's roughly 61/67 years. > rivers flood uncontrolled during the rainy seasons Not all rivers flood, but almost all have been lined with concrete. OP's article definitely reminds me of some of Alex Kerr's writing (a good interview at https://www.kyotojournal.org/kyoto-interview/concretizing-the-japanese-dream-alex-kerr-on-state-sponsored-vandals-true-romance-and-contemporary-genii https://www.kyotojournal.org/kyoto-interview/concretizing-th...). He defined some of the issues facing Japan, including the concretization of coasts and waterways.
- majikaja 4y ago
  I'm not surprised that wage growth in Japan stagnated considering the limited size of the domestic market, lack of English proficiency and little import of foreign talent via immigration. Regarding fertility rate, I don't know the projections for the younger generation, but 27% of 50 year old women here have never had children. It's hard to convince the remaining women and their partners to make big sacrifices to have three or more kids in order to make up for the perceived freeloaders (the never-married ~28% of men and ~18% of women that have no interest in each other). Without the government somehow brainwashing the population, any real solution would likely result in opposition from large parts of society, so the can gets kicked down the road...
- ntech 4y ago
  One thing that I can comment on is that Japan has drastically changed its immigration policies and opened its doors to workers from overseas. A decade or so so ago you needed to have lived in the country for more than ten years to gain permanent residence, but now you can get it in as little as 3 years. English is much more common especially in major cities, partly thanks to the preparation for the Tokyo Olympics. Support for foreigners living there has increased likewise. But yes, still a long way to go until you see immigrants take on top roles in major corporations or even the government.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >but now you can get it in as little as 3 years. Incorrect: it's 1 year if you score 80 points on the point list for the HSP visa, and 3 years if you score 70 points. As far as I can tell, Japan has the easiest and most permissive immigration policies among developed nations, bar none. Compare with the "pro-immigration" US where there's strict limits on worker visas, H1-B holders have to leave the country very quickly (a week?) if they lose their job and can't find a new sponsor fast, there's strict limits on green cards (PR) with a lottery of all things, etc.
chimineycricket 4y ago
What can a country do to get birth rates up? I'm sure there are analyses out there about why Japan's is low, but what can they (or other countries) do to pump birth rates up?
- akg_67 4y ago
  Is there any developed country that has been able to increase birth rate? Declining birth rate is a feature of developed countries with large middle class, only very rich or very poor people want to have more kids in such countries.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Israel. https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/why-are-there-so-many-children-in-israel/ https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/why-are-there-so-m...
    - sph 4y ago
      Is that a trend or a blip?
      - twelve40 4y ago
        it seems consistent and steady for a few decades (consistently high, not growing), but it's a small country that developed under very special conditions
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        That special condition being a decent size population of Haredi Jews and Muslims who have much higher fertility rates than other groups.
- throwuxiytayq 4y ago
  I’m not sure; it sure seems like women statistically aren’t too eager to make tons of babies when actually given a choice. Not a cat you’d want back in the bag either. Perhaps we really are screwed on that front.
stuckinthepast 4y ago
[flagged]
- astrange 4y ago
  Japan's median household PPP income is lower than the UK's, which is already too low. The depreciating houses thing he complains about is actually great policy, unlike the UK - recently I saw one of those "weird Japan" articles about how someone built an accurate English house in Japan, but UK planning is so strict it probably cost less than doing one in England. But for other reasons they're not that rich, not that productive, and it's not getting better.
akg_67 4y ago
Why are western media and people so infatuated with Japan? They admire it from far but as soon as they land in Japan, they criticize it. Japan works for Japan, it doesn’t need to try to pretend to be like another western country. That is what I took away from this article and the past musings of this writer.
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  For some people, the existence of a parallel system with significant differences that works very well for the people who live in it is the source of fascination.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Don't think much evidence is provided that it's working very well for them. Certainly it worked better in the 80s. Having to work with low pay to support a giant population of elderly people is not a great economic position.
    - Danieru 4y ago
      > Certainly it worked better in the 80s. This is such an American/Chinese perspective. Both countries where the growth and promising future gets people excited. You are being dazzled by the growth and bubble. Bubble era Japan indeed had that same appeal. In 1980s Japan young families were worried about ever being able to afford homes. Land and houses had been exploding in price since the 1970s. Yes everyone felt they were getting rich, but assets went up in price faster than wages. Japan now is indeed the anti-thesis to the bubble era you are glamourizing yes. Now homes are affordable. Jobs plentiful. Overtime has decreased massively. The 1980s had overtime common which would be illegal now. Train lines are plentiful. The bullet train network built, and paid for. You can get a taxi ride at anytime without the need to bribe drivers. The flash and dazzle of the bubble was fake. The practical affordability and livability of Japan now is real.
      - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
moandcompany 4y ago
Editorial opinion regarding "whys" for low-birth rates in Japan and what we'd typically call "household formation" in the United States: Japan had a giant property bubble and economic collapse a few decades ago, creating a "lost generation." Off-topic, it is an interesting way to see aspects of America's future with many common factors. Socially: From the Japanese men side the picture, there are many news stories of "herbivore men" that are not initiating or engaging women for dating, sex, etc. Women that can afford to do so, end up hiring male "hosts" at host bars for their (non-sexual) social company. Culturally: Many Japanese women would prefer to be full-time parents and homemakers, exiting the workforce after having children. This requires a husband/partner with stable employment and income. Many Japanese women would also prefer partners to be at home more often than the well-known grueling "salaryman" experience in Japanese corporate business culture. Economically: Japan recently reported record inflation levels over several decades where wages have not kept up. In some cases companies will be raising salary levels in response, but the vast majority of people working are not in roles or at companies to see this. The minimum wage level in Tokyo is approximately 1,070 yen/hr or around $8.25 USD/hr. Basic hourly wages at a common ramen or gyu-don type restaurant in Tokyo pay around 1,200 yen/hr. The impact of the lot generation weighs in heavily here. Demographically: If you walk around the streets of Tokyo, you'll probably observe that there are many people of older age working simple jobs marshaling car traffic from garages, street crossings, street/utility maintenance, and cleaning sidewalks, streets, train stations. There often appears to be many more people working than the minimum needed. Automation technology in areas, such as food production, end ip creating a surplus of labor elsewhere. TL;DR: Dating as a whole is occurring less often between Japanese men and women. Economically, traditional households are not forming because people cannot afford to support the traditionally desired lifestyle where Japanese women become full-time parents and homemakers after parenthood.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >Many Japanese women would prefer to be full-time parents and homemakers, exiting the workforce after having children. This also plays a significant negative role in women workforce share. In Japan, it is customary for full-time employees to work their entire career through retirement at a single company. Companies in turn invest in their employees, expecting them to return that investment over the coming 50~60 years. Men are generally fine with this arrangement, even today, but this throws a spanner when it comes to women. As far as companies are concerned, if a woman is going to leave in less than 10 years, maybe even just a few years, after the company invested time and resources training them, then they would rather hire a man who will stay with them for his entire career. So this results in two things: Women continue to form a small minority of the workforce, and the women who do manage to stay are either single or otherwise managed to find a precarious balance between work and private life. Maybe Japan needs working reform, but working women aren't entirely compatible with being a good Japanese housewife.
barrenko 4y ago
I don't know - personally if I see this kind of headline about X, makes me think X is doing just fine. No way I'm clicking on the link itself.
- stuckinthepast 4y ago
  Typical BBC political recipees which worked wonders in UK
Red_Tarsius 4y ago
The Western media loves to nitpick on Japan because it puts us to shame on almost every front. The country is clean, safe, efficient beyond anything the average Joe can imagine. Let me spell it out for you: Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan. The issues the author wrote down pale in comparison to what we're dealing with. I just can't take this kind of criticism seriously with the sheer amount of filth, crime and misery that's part of any major Western city. I had the privilege to live in Japan for one year, the real culture shock was coming back home to what we call normal.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  I doubt it puts us to shame on how failure is dealt with within Japanese culture. Or how kids from gaijins keep being one for their whole life, even if born and raised in Japan. Or work to death culture.
  - Melting_Harps 4y ago
    > Or work to death culture. Which leads to the freeta era post bubble economy for so any who didn't want the fate of a salaryman, and the subsequent population collapse and herbivore men. Not exactly what I'd all a stellar record, when the ethnicity itself is at risk of phasing itself out due to the 'great society they've created. Im bi fan of Japanese culture, but tier society is nearly dystopic because of the social pressures, forced suppression, and ambivalence (if not outright xenophobia) towards anything they see as a threat to the established order of things: be it work related or otherwise. Still, it's quite a rich culture with lots of to offer to the modern World, but I fear South Korea has surpassed them in everything they resoundingly dominated in the 90s.
  - eska 4y ago
    You write this while in most Western countries.. ..many people who fail (lose a job, divorce, illness, accident) become drug addicted, homeless, mentally ill and are left to their own devices. ..people are still referred to as “Black Americans” and “Asian Americans” instead of just “Americans” (similar in other countries) although they have lived there for generations, while there simply aren’t many non-Asian looking foreigners living in Japan for a long time. ..a barrage of articles on this site reports tens of thousands of workers being laid off, who worked hard and still got no job security. I give Japan its fair share of criticism, but your take is easily dismissed as naive.
Incipient 4y ago
Blimey that was a sombre read. I thoroughly like Japan, the impeccable cleanliness and politeness, stiff and formal on the outside, but on the inside quite caring. I haven't spent nearly as much time there as I'd like. 3 weeks/year or so for the last 10-15 years. But this article is not wrong on at least some accounts. The one super obvious thing is their aging population, and shrinking farming life. Towns are shadows of their former selves, and outside of tourism, you ask what people do, and you get mumbles about "not much", vague gestures towards the farms, or simple silence.
henearkr 4y ago
I've been living in Tokyo for many years, and this article is completely spot on. And no it is not "the same in many other countries" like some HN comments would like you to believe.
throwaway4good 4y ago
The article could do with a bit about the Plaza Accord, the US assault on the Japanese chip sector or something about the short stint where LDP was not in power and instead Japan was ruled by party that had promised to close US bases on Okinawa.
StevePerkins 4y ago
These Japan threads are always so fascinating to read. When pressed, everyone seems to roughly agree on two main ideas: 1. Japan has extremely low levels of many of the problems that we have in Western nations. 2. The reason WHY they're so unaffected by problems that arise in racially-divided societies with fluctuating gender roles, is because they are a deeply xenophobic monoculture society that restricts immigration and promotes traditional gender roles. #1 plays into the common impulse on HN, Reddit, etc to dunk on the U.S. and the West in general. But #2 undercuts that, because Japan is far WORSE than us on many of the factors for which people dunk on us. They're MAGA Republicans with Pokemon! People tiptoe around this without really engaging with it in depth. Either because the cognitive dissonance is too strong, or else they're afraid of what people will think if they look at it directly rather than askance from the corner of their eye. For what it's worth, I'll take the messiness of modern Western society. Extreme fasciation with the Japanese way of life has always struck me as roundabout white supremacy or misogyny cloaked in a cosmopolitan facade.
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  The argument that Japan is successful because its a monoculture is absurd. Some of the most corrupt or impoverished countries are also monocultural.
  - manuel_w 4y ago
    > Some of the most corrupt or impoverished countries are also monocultural. Which ones are you talking about? Are you sure they just didn't end up being monocultural ones just because their impoverishedness contributed to a former multicultural country disintegrating along cultural lines? Not a historian, but that would make sense to me.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  > because they are a deeply xenophobic monoculture society that restricts immigration and promotes traditional gender roles. I think far more people than you’re probably comfortable with would say that’s a feature, not a bug.
k__ 4y ago
"your new home is worth less than what you paid for it and after you've finished paying off your mortgage in 40 years, it is worth almost nothing" Isn't this a good thing?
- deergomoo 4y ago
  Yeah, my first thought on the article opening with that was “wow, exactly how it should work then?” I’ve always found the idea of property as an investment to be deeply entitled. IMO there is no morally justifiable reason why the price of housing in many western nations has skyrocketed over the past several decades, we’ve just artificially constrained supply by failing to build enough houses to match demand. Now more than ever it’s having a crippling effect on so many folks’ ability to lead a comfortable and happy life.
  - anon291 4y ago
    Perhaps we should just let people who want to build a house for their family go and do so. Have you ever attempted such a thing? In the past, it was easy. You bought wood and some nails and started. Today, it involves more trips to city hall than the hardware store, unfortunately.
- Seb-C 4y ago
  Not only it's a good thing, but it's bad faith anyway because it's not telling the whole story. Houses are seen as pretty-much worthless overall, and many people would decide to destroy and build a new house rather than fix and maintain a 20 years-old one. There are many reasons to this, both cultural and practical. The good consequence is that the prices here are relatively stable and does not inflate like in the west. It is possible to buy an individual house in Tokyo for the average resident, you don't need to be rich. But the elephant in the room that the article forgets to tell is that while houses become worthless quickly, land does not. When you buy a property, about 80% of it's price is the value of the land itself, not the house. And while it can fluctuate depending on the area and it's surroundings, it does not degrade much over time.
  - 4y ago
honeybadger1 4y ago
Japan is superior in almost every way compared to most western countries.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  I also wish for an ethnostate.
  - honeybadger1 4y ago
    Sounds like you have never been to Japan.
  - fckthatblsls 4y ago
    [dead]
- anthk 4y ago
  Ah yes, the plutocracy with a Minister of Cyber Security with 0 knowledge on IT. So superior. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026
snozolli 4y ago
They are works of art. But each one costs up to $900. Well, yeah, it's a completely domestically designed and produced item. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9OYPWgzDBxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9OYPWgzDBxE The manhole covers in my Oregon city are boring and say "made in India". I'd bet their per-unit cost is still in the several hundreds of dollars. Japan's "lost decade" is a myth: https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/08/11/now-for-the-truth-the-story-of-japans-lost-decades-is-the-worlds-most-absurd-media-myth/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/08/11/now-... The examples given in this article are a bit silly. In Japan, the land has value, not the home. The examples in the article compare prices during an insane bubble to present-day prices. You could do that with any free-market county to make things look bad, except I don't know if any county has ever experienced a real estate bubble on par with Japan in the late 70s - 80s.
- type-r 4y ago
  The only part that's a myth is that it's only a single decade. Japan's GDP has been flat for over 30 years now. USA's has tripled during the same time period.
  - snozolli 4y ago
    Do some research. Japan's population in 1980 was 116.8 million. 126.3 million in 2020. That's an 8% increase. The USA experienced nearly a 50% increase over that same period. Meanwhile, Japan's GDP went from 1.105 trillion to 5.04 trillion, all while reporting greater well-being among the population. It's a myth.
    - georgeecollins 4y ago
      Some research. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263596/gross-domestic-product-gdp-per-capita-in-japan/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263596/gross-domestic-pr...
nubinetwork 4y ago
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34467416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34467416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34473182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34473182
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pvg 4y ago
  It takes more comments than that to make an HN dupe. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20discussion%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
ydnaclementine 4y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Nikkei 225 (Japan's equivalent to the S&P500) hasn't recovered since the crash of 89: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EN225/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EN225/. Which I think is interesting comparatively, because the S&P/DOW has had decently substantial downturns multiple times, but always recovered++ historically.
- mariojv 4y ago
  I think you'd come out ahead reinvesting dividends (play with a calculator like https://dqydj.com/nikkei-return-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/nikkei-return-calculator/), but yeah, the returns are abysmal even accounting for that. They've had low to no inflation for decades but even the nominal returns aren't good. I am not sure how the returns look if you account for cost averaging vs. lump sum investing.
wrp 4y ago
Counter to the trend of comments here, I found the article uninsightful and without focus. He has vague gripes, but no apparent understanding of (or empathy for) Japan's social drivers. It's hard to respond to the article as a whole, so I'll just focus on one misconception, about "stagnant" living standards. My Japan was Tokyo and Kanagawa of the 1980s-90s. It was brilliant and daring. It was the future. It was darn expensive. I was both in awe and angered by it, because life there was terribly unfair for the Japanese. Quality of life for individuals was always sacrificed for the good of the state and big companies. All of the wonderful things you hear about 1980s Japan were in the public space. In the private space, life was pretty miserable, as in nearly-3rd-world-slum level of miserable. Housing, though expensive, was shoddy and uncomfortable. Workers suffered long hours and harsh management. Prices for relatively poor quality consumer goods were kept high to support lower prices for higher quality exported goods. Dental care was abysmal quality. I could go on. Private life in Japan today is hardly recognizable. My impression is that quality of daily life is now equivalent to the nicer Western countries. I think this is primarily due to changing social attitudes over the 1990s. Japanese traveled a lot and saw how much better life was in other countries, and decided to demand the same of life at home. I really miss 1980s Japan (it was great for me), but life for the average person there is vastly better now than it was then.

245 points by ZeljkoS 4y ago

jb1991 4y ago

This article is well-written and really paints a broad picture in the beginning so well. I'd be curious to hear from those living in Japan what they think.

bcherny 4y ago
As a foreigner living in Japan (similar situation to the author), this article hits the nail on the head.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>This article is well-written Considering the bleedingly obvious political slant fueled by feel-goodism, especially towards the end of the article: No. This is just another make-readers-angry hit piece. Among many egregious errors and ignorances: No, the LDP has not "ruled ever since". There have been a number of times the LDP was not in power, including most recently when the Fukushima #1 power plant underwent a meltdown because the Democrat Party (not to be confused with the LDP) government at the time was utterly inept. Rivers are "walled with grey concrete" because to not do so means the rivers flood uncontrolled during the rainy seasons leading to washed out towns and villages which fucking nobody reasonable wants. The coasts are "blighted by tetra pods" because high tides, waves, and fucking tsunamis are commonplace. Japan absolutely faces many big problems as it moves forward, but this article serves to help precisely nothing. The author might as well have wasted his 10 years in Japan if this is truly all he could write.
- jb1991 4y ago
  > make-readers-angry I read it and did not get angry.
- gramie 4y ago
  > There have been a number of times the LDP was not in power The LDP has been in power since 1955, except for two periods (1993-94 and 2009-12). That's roughly 61/67 years. > rivers flood uncontrolled during the rainy seasons Not all rivers flood, but almost all have been lined with concrete. OP's article definitely reminds me of some of Alex Kerr's writing (a good interview at https://www.kyotojournal.org/kyoto-interview/concretizing-the-japanese-dream-alex-kerr-on-state-sponsored-vandals-true-romance-and-contemporary-genii https://www.kyotojournal.org/kyoto-interview/concretizing-th...). He defined some of the issues facing Japan, including the concretization of coasts and waterways.
majikaja 4y ago
I'm not surprised that wage growth in Japan stagnated considering the limited size of the domestic market, lack of English proficiency and little import of foreign talent via immigration. Regarding fertility rate, I don't know the projections for the younger generation, but 27% of 50 year old women here have never had children. It's hard to convince the remaining women and their partners to make big sacrifices to have three or more kids in order to make up for the perceived freeloaders (the never-married ~28% of men and ~18% of women that have no interest in each other). Without the government somehow brainwashing the population, any real solution would likely result in opposition from large parts of society, so the can gets kicked down the road...
ntech 4y ago
One thing that I can comment on is that Japan has drastically changed its immigration policies and opened its doors to workers from overseas. A decade or so so ago you needed to have lived in the country for more than ten years to gain permanent residence, but now you can get it in as little as 3 years. English is much more common especially in major cities, partly thanks to the preparation for the Tokyo Olympics. Support for foreigners living there has increased likewise. But yes, still a long way to go until you see immigrants take on top roles in major corporations or even the government.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >but now you can get it in as little as 3 years. Incorrect: it's 1 year if you score 80 points on the point list for the HSP visa, and 3 years if you score 70 points. As far as I can tell, Japan has the easiest and most permissive immigration policies among developed nations, bar none. Compare with the "pro-immigration" US where there's strict limits on worker visas, H1-B holders have to leave the country very quickly (a week?) if they lose their job and can't find a new sponsor fast, there's strict limits on green cards (PR) with a lottery of all things, etc.

chimineycricket 4y ago

What can a country do to get birth rates up? I'm sure there are analyses out there about why Japan's is low, but what can they (or other countries) do to pump birth rates up?

akg_67 4y ago
Is there any developed country that has been able to increase birth rate? Declining birth rate is a feature of developed countries with large middle class, only very rich or very poor people want to have more kids in such countries.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Israel. https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/why-are-there-so-many-children-in-israel/ https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/why-are-there-so-m...
  - sph 4y ago
    Is that a trend or a blip?
    - twelve40 4y ago
      it seems consistent and steady for a few decades (consistently high, not growing), but it's a small country that developed under very special conditions
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        That special condition being a decent size population of Haredi Jews and Muslims who have much higher fertility rates than other groups.
throwuxiytayq 4y ago
I’m not sure; it sure seems like women statistically aren’t too eager to make tons of babies when actually given a choice. Not a cat you’d want back in the bag either. Perhaps we really are screwed on that front.

stuckinthepast 4y ago

[flagged]

astrange 4y ago
Japan's median household PPP income is lower than the UK's, which is already too low. The depreciating houses thing he complains about is actually great policy, unlike the UK - recently I saw one of those "weird Japan" articles about how someone built an accurate English house in Japan, but UK planning is so strict it probably cost less than doing one in England. But for other reasons they're not that rich, not that productive, and it's not getting better.

akg_67 4y ago

Why are western media and people so infatuated with Japan? They admire it from far but as soon as they land in Japan, they criticize it. Japan works for Japan, it doesn’t need to try to pretend to be like another western country. That is what I took away from this article and the past musings of this writer.

i_am_proteus 4y ago
For some people, the existence of a parallel system with significant differences that works very well for the people who live in it is the source of fascination.
- astrange 4y ago
  Don't think much evidence is provided that it's working very well for them. Certainly it worked better in the 80s. Having to work with low pay to support a giant population of elderly people is not a great economic position.
  - Danieru 4y ago
    > Certainly it worked better in the 80s. This is such an American/Chinese perspective. Both countries where the growth and promising future gets people excited. You are being dazzled by the growth and bubble. Bubble era Japan indeed had that same appeal. In 1980s Japan young families were worried about ever being able to afford homes. Land and houses had been exploding in price since the 1970s. Yes everyone felt they were getting rich, but assets went up in price faster than wages. Japan now is indeed the anti-thesis to the bubble era you are glamourizing yes. Now homes are affordable. Jobs plentiful. Overtime has decreased massively. The 1980s had overtime common which would be illegal now. Train lines are plentiful. The bullet train network built, and paid for. You can get a taxi ride at anytime without the need to bribe drivers. The flash and dazzle of the bubble was fake. The practical affordability and livability of Japan now is real.
    - ThrowawayR2 4y ago

moandcompany 4y ago

Editorial opinion regarding "whys" for low-birth rates in Japan and what we'd typically call "household formation" in the United States: Japan had a giant property bubble and economic collapse a few decades ago, creating a "lost generation." Off-topic, it is an interesting way to see aspects of America's future with many common factors. Socially: From the Japanese men side the picture, there are many news stories of "herbivore men" that are not initiating or engaging women for dating, sex, etc. Women that can afford to do so, end up hiring male "hosts" at host bars for their (non-sexual) social company. Culturally: Many Japanese women would prefer to be full-time parents and homemakers, exiting the workforce after having children. This requires a husband/partner with stable employment and income. Many Japanese women would also prefer partners to be at home more often than the well-known grueling "salaryman" experience in Japanese corporate business culture. Economically: Japan recently reported record inflation levels over several decades where wages have not kept up. In some cases companies will be raising salary levels in response, but the vast majority of people working are not in roles or at companies to see this. The minimum wage level in Tokyo is approximately 1,070 yen/hr or around $8.25 USD/hr. Basic hourly wages at a common ramen or gyu-don type restaurant in Tokyo pay around 1,200 yen/hr. The impact of the lot generation weighs in heavily here. Demographically: If you walk around the streets of Tokyo, you'll probably observe that there are many people of older age working simple jobs marshaling car traffic from garages, street crossings, street/utility maintenance, and cleaning sidewalks, streets, train stations. There often appears to be many more people working than the minimum needed. Automation technology in areas, such as food production, end ip creating a surplus of labor elsewhere. TL;DR: Dating as a whole is occurring less often between Japanese men and women. Economically, traditional households are not forming because people cannot afford to support the traditionally desired lifestyle where Japanese women become full-time parents and homemakers after parenthood.

Dalewyn 4y ago
>Many Japanese women would prefer to be full-time parents and homemakers, exiting the workforce after having children. This also plays a significant negative role in women workforce share. In Japan, it is customary for full-time employees to work their entire career through retirement at a single company. Companies in turn invest in their employees, expecting them to return that investment over the coming 50~60 years. Men are generally fine with this arrangement, even today, but this throws a spanner when it comes to women. As far as companies are concerned, if a woman is going to leave in less than 10 years, maybe even just a few years, after the company invested time and resources training them, then they would rather hire a man who will stay with them for his entire career. So this results in two things: Women continue to form a small minority of the workforce, and the women who do manage to stay are either single or otherwise managed to find a precarious balance between work and private life. Maybe Japan needs working reform, but working women aren't entirely compatible with being a good Japanese housewife.

barrenko 4y ago

I don't know - personally if I see this kind of headline about X, makes me think X is doing just fine. No way I'm clicking on the link itself.

stuckinthepast 4y ago
Typical BBC political recipees which worked wonders in UK

Red_Tarsius 4y ago

The Western media loves to nitpick on Japan because it puts us to shame on almost every front. The country is clean, safe, efficient beyond anything the average Joe can imagine. Let me spell it out for you: Western countries are kind of a shithole compared to Japan. The issues the author wrote down pale in comparison to what we're dealing with. I just can't take this kind of criticism seriously with the sheer amount of filth, crime and misery that's part of any major Western city. I had the privilege to live in Japan for one year, the real culture shock was coming back home to what we call normal.

pjmlp 4y ago
I doubt it puts us to shame on how failure is dealt with within Japanese culture. Or how kids from gaijins keep being one for their whole life, even if born and raised in Japan. Or work to death culture.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > Or work to death culture. Which leads to the freeta era post bubble economy for so any who didn't want the fate of a salaryman, and the subsequent population collapse and herbivore men. Not exactly what I'd all a stellar record, when the ethnicity itself is at risk of phasing itself out due to the 'great society they've created. Im bi fan of Japanese culture, but tier society is nearly dystopic because of the social pressures, forced suppression, and ambivalence (if not outright xenophobia) towards anything they see as a threat to the established order of things: be it work related or otherwise. Still, it's quite a rich culture with lots of to offer to the modern World, but I fear South Korea has surpassed them in everything they resoundingly dominated in the 90s.
- eska 4y ago
  You write this while in most Western countries.. ..many people who fail (lose a job, divorce, illness, accident) become drug addicted, homeless, mentally ill and are left to their own devices. ..people are still referred to as “Black Americans” and “Asian Americans” instead of just “Americans” (similar in other countries) although they have lived there for generations, while there simply aren’t many non-Asian looking foreigners living in Japan for a long time. ..a barrage of articles on this site reports tens of thousands of workers being laid off, who worked hard and still got no job security. I give Japan its fair share of criticism, but your take is easily dismissed as naive.

Incipient 4y ago

Blimey that was a sombre read. I thoroughly like Japan, the impeccable cleanliness and politeness, stiff and formal on the outside, but on the inside quite caring. I haven't spent nearly as much time there as I'd like. 3 weeks/year or so for the last 10-15 years. But this article is not wrong on at least some accounts. The one super obvious thing is their aging population, and shrinking farming life. Towns are shadows of their former selves, and outside of tourism, you ask what people do, and you get mumbles about "not much", vague gestures towards the farms, or simple silence.

henearkr 4y ago

I've been living in Tokyo for many years, and this article is completely spot on. And no it is not "the same in many other countries" like some HN comments would like you to believe.

throwaway4good 4y ago

The article could do with a bit about the Plaza Accord, the US assault on the Japanese chip sector or something about the short stint where LDP was not in power and instead Japan was ruled by party that had promised to close US bases on Okinawa.

StevePerkins 4y ago

These Japan threads are always so fascinating to read. When pressed, everyone seems to roughly agree on two main ideas: 1. Japan has extremely low levels of many of the problems that we have in Western nations. 2. The reason WHY they're so unaffected by problems that arise in racially-divided societies with fluctuating gender roles, is because they are a deeply xenophobic monoculture society that restricts immigration and promotes traditional gender roles. #1 plays into the common impulse on HN, Reddit, etc to dunk on the U.S. and the West in general. But #2 undercuts that, because Japan is far WORSE than us on many of the factors for which people dunk on us. They're MAGA Republicans with Pokemon! People tiptoe around this without really engaging with it in depth. Either because the cognitive dissonance is too strong, or else they're afraid of what people will think if they look at it directly rather than askance from the corner of their eye. For what it's worth, I'll take the messiness of modern Western society. Extreme fasciation with the Japanese way of life has always struck me as roundabout white supremacy or misogyny cloaked in a cosmopolitan facade.

kjkjadksj 4y ago
The argument that Japan is successful because its a monoculture is absurd. Some of the most corrupt or impoverished countries are also monocultural.
- manuel_w 4y ago
  > Some of the most corrupt or impoverished countries are also monocultural. Which ones are you talking about? Are you sure they just didn't end up being monocultural ones just because their impoverishedness contributed to a former multicultural country disintegrating along cultural lines? Not a historian, but that would make sense to me.
nemo44x 4y ago
> because they are a deeply xenophobic monoculture society that restricts immigration and promotes traditional gender roles. I think far more people than you’re probably comfortable with would say that’s a feature, not a bug.

k__ 4y ago

"your new home is worth less than what you paid for it and after you've finished paying off your mortgage in 40 years, it is worth almost nothing" Isn't this a good thing?

deergomoo 4y ago
Yeah, my first thought on the article opening with that was “wow, exactly how it should work then?” I’ve always found the idea of property as an investment to be deeply entitled. IMO there is no morally justifiable reason why the price of housing in many western nations has skyrocketed over the past several decades, we’ve just artificially constrained supply by failing to build enough houses to match demand. Now more than ever it’s having a crippling effect on so many folks’ ability to lead a comfortable and happy life.
- anon291 4y ago
  Perhaps we should just let people who want to build a house for their family go and do so. Have you ever attempted such a thing? In the past, it was easy. You bought wood and some nails and started. Today, it involves more trips to city hall than the hardware store, unfortunately.
Seb-C 4y ago
Not only it's a good thing, but it's bad faith anyway because it's not telling the whole story. Houses are seen as pretty-much worthless overall, and many people would decide to destroy and build a new house rather than fix and maintain a 20 years-old one. There are many reasons to this, both cultural and practical. The good consequence is that the prices here are relatively stable and does not inflate like in the west. It is possible to buy an individual house in Tokyo for the average resident, you don't need to be rich. But the elephant in the room that the article forgets to tell is that while houses become worthless quickly, land does not. When you buy a property, about 80% of it's price is the value of the land itself, not the house. And while it can fluctuate depending on the area and it's surroundings, it does not degrade much over time.
- 4y ago

honeybadger1 4y ago

Japan is superior in almost every way compared to most western countries.

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
I also wish for an ethnostate.
- honeybadger1 4y ago
  Sounds like you have never been to Japan.
- fckthatblsls 4y ago
  [dead]
anthk 4y ago
Ah yes, the plutocracy with a Minister of Cyber Security with 0 knowledge on IT. So superior. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026

snozolli 4y ago

They are works of art. But each one costs up to $900. Well, yeah, it's a completely domestically designed and produced item. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9OYPWgzDBxE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9OYPWgzDBxE The manhole covers in my Oregon city are boring and say "made in India". I'd bet their per-unit cost is still in the several hundreds of dollars. Japan's "lost decade" is a myth: https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/08/11/now-for-the-truth-the-story-of-japans-lost-decades-is-the-worlds-most-absurd-media-myth/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/08/11/now-... The examples given in this article are a bit silly. In Japan, the land has value, not the home. The examples in the article compare prices during an insane bubble to present-day prices. You could do that with any free-market county to make things look bad, except I don't know if any county has ever experienced a real estate bubble on par with Japan in the late 70s - 80s.

type-r 4y ago
The only part that's a myth is that it's only a single decade. Japan's GDP has been flat for over 30 years now. USA's has tripled during the same time period.
- snozolli 4y ago
  Do some research. Japan's population in 1980 was 116.8 million. 126.3 million in 2020. That's an 8% increase. The USA experienced nearly a 50% increase over that same period. Meanwhile, Japan's GDP went from 1.105 trillion to 5.04 trillion, all while reporting greater well-being among the population. It's a myth.
  - georgeecollins 4y ago
    Some research. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263596/gross-domestic-product-gdp-per-capita-in-japan/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263596/gross-domestic-pr...

nubinetwork 4y ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34467416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34467416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34473182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34473182

deleted 4y ago
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pvg 4y ago
It takes more comments than that to make an HN dupe. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20discussion%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

ydnaclementine 4y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Nikkei 225 (Japan's equivalent to the S&P500) hasn't recovered since the crash of 89: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EN225/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EN225/. Which I think is interesting comparatively, because the S&P/DOW has had decently substantial downturns multiple times, but always recovered++ historically.

mariojv 4y ago
I think you'd come out ahead reinvesting dividends (play with a calculator like https://dqydj.com/nikkei-return-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/nikkei-return-calculator/), but yeah, the returns are abysmal even accounting for that. They've had low to no inflation for decades but even the nominal returns aren't good. I am not sure how the returns look if you account for cost averaging vs. lump sum investing.

wrp 4y ago

Counter to the trend of comments here, I found the article uninsightful and without focus. He has vague gripes, but no apparent understanding of (or empathy for) Japan's social drivers. It's hard to respond to the article as a whole, so I'll just focus on one misconception, about "stagnant" living standards. My Japan was Tokyo and Kanagawa of the 1980s-90s. It was brilliant and daring. It was the future. It was darn expensive. I was both in awe and angered by it, because life there was terribly unfair for the Japanese. Quality of life for individuals was always sacrificed for the good of the state and big companies. All of the wonderful things you hear about 1980s Japan were in the public space. In the private space, life was pretty miserable, as in nearly-3rd-world-slum level of miserable. Housing, though expensive, was shoddy and uncomfortable. Workers suffered long hours and harsh management. Prices for relatively poor quality consumer goods were kept high to support lower prices for higher quality exported goods. Dental care was abysmal quality. I could go on. Private life in Japan today is hardly recognizable. My impression is that quality of daily life is now equivalent to the nicer Western countries. I think this is primarily due to changing social attitudes over the 1990s. Japanese traveled a lot and saw how much better life was in other countries, and decided to demand the same of life at home. I really miss 1980s Japan (it was great for me), but life for the average person there is vastly better now than it was then.