9 ms·

It’s sad to see a country just fade away. I hope they can convince their people to breed more or let in more immigrants while still maintaining their culture.

mainpassathome 3y ago
what
- scottlawson 3y ago
  They are referring to: a) the fact that Japan's birthrate is below the number needed to sustain the current population b) the fact that Japan is ethnically homogenous (98.5% ethnically Japanese), and has very limited channels for immigration, meaning that japan, with the policies that exist today, will not be able to significantly mitigate the population decline by accepting immigrants. Japan takes a very different approach compared to countries like Canada, which is a melting pot of cultures and which has an increasing population largely due to immigration
  - I_am_uncreative 3y ago
    Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration. Japan is going to have to be more welcoming of non-Japanese people.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      None of the countries you mention have ages old strong own culture to preserve really (except first nations but for various reasons their culture is not US or Canada culture). So Japan's policy is not unreasonable. You can become a proper Japanese if you want to (are willing to culturally integrate), it's just that not many people do. Without it you'd be trading off death of country for death of culture. Contrast to China or Thailand where AFAIK you are always second class citizen legally if you are "wrong" ethnicity.
      - kanbara 3y ago
        this isnt true at all, in practice. there’s so much onerous bureacracy, kafkaesque visa policies, and the fact that even naturalised individuals will still be othered. japanese nationality is tied to ethnicity so much due to how homogenous the society is
        throwaway290 3y ago
        "othering" at social level probably exists, but you are mixing up culture and ethnicity, there is division and kind of caste system within "homogenous" Japan too, see burakumin issue for eg. so legally for a foreigner the policy seems reasonable, just there is a lot of FUD spread by people who felt entitled to become Japanese with little effort and suffered reality check, see eg. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj855k5066o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj855k5066o
      - ffgjgf1 3y ago
        > have ages old strong own culture Modern Japanese culture has its roots almost entirely in the 19th century and the post WW2 era.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        This is nonsense. "Post WW2" describes current modern Japanese culture, not its root. The root goes way back to hundreds/thousands of years BC, they continuously lived on those exact islands and spoke a similar language all that time. Unlike US or Canada which are a new amalgamation of English/French/Spanish/German/Jewish/AA/Native/whatever cultures without any single root. Not to say US or Canadian culture is worse or better, just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        > not its root You might as well say that US culture has its roots in ancient Greece or Rome, or Reformation age Europe and claim it’s hundreds or even thousands years old. It would be worth about as much. But yeah I agree with you in the sense that US/Canada are constantly affected by a constant influx of people belonging to different cultures. Had there been barely any immigration after ~1800 American culture would be effectively as old and unique as the Japanese one. Quebec for instance is kind of (but not quite) like that. > just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique. Well they already did during the Meiji period and subsequently, what remains is not that significant. Also what are your thoughts on Britain, Scandinavian and some other European countries? They would be effectively no different to Japan in this sense besides the fact that they have very large numbers immigrants.
    - skissane 3y ago
      > Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration. Australia's immigration rate, on a per capita basis, is more than double that of the US, and somewhat ahead of Canada's. [0] It has a lower total fertility rate [1] than the US (1.73 for Australia vs 1.84 for US), but still a higher TFR than Canada (1.57), and I suspect having double the immigration rate is probably going to make up for the somewhat lower fertility. And I think you are missing more countries than just Australia. While in absolute terms, the US accepts more immigrants than any other country in the world, on a per capita basis, its net immigration rate isn't particularly high, and is below that of many Western European countries. Likewise, US total fertility, while high by Western standards, is not the highest in the Western world; France is significantly higher at 2.02; Ireland and Iceland also beat the US at fertility, and Norway is only just behind the US. [0] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/net-migration-rate/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/net-migration-r... [1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...
      - I_am_uncreative 3y ago
        And yet, Australia's population is slated to decline, while the US is not.
        skissane 3y ago
        > And yet, Australia's population is slated to decline, while the US is not. Slated to decline according to whom? According to the most recent projections published by Australia's national statistics agency, [0] Australia's population is projected to continuously increase through 2066, ending up at somewhere between 37 and 49 million (compared to around 26 million today). The only projection of theirs according to which it will decline is the highly unrealistic "zero net migration" scenario. [0] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/population-projections-australia/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/populati...
  - Tor3 3y ago
    Japan has a way to go, but gradually they're thinking more about immigration as a necessity, which was pretty much never an issue before. In those Japanese newspapers I read there are more and more articles about how local governments and also the national government are (economically) supporting companies giving language training to immigrant workers, with the idea that they want them to stay. Similarly, some cities are setting up programs which try to get foreign students to stay after graduation. There's still much which has to change (see comments by others). But it's still a bit behind and the population will almost certainly continue to decline for some years, as it has for a decade now.
rayiner 3y ago
> let in more immigrants while still maintaining their culture. Impossible.
- Tor3 3y ago
  Not impossible. Other countries could. Also remember that culture is a living thing, it's not static. It changes and adjusts and adapts and incorporates. My little hometown was just us "natives" in my childhood, now at the other end of time it has people and languages from more than a hundred countries, and we're all "natives" to this town. Very different from before, but much more interesting and I don't feel we have lost anything, culturally, from before.
  - ddd00001 3y ago
    I don't have a dog in this fight, but you just said "not impossible", then admitted that culture would change with influx of migrants.
    - Tor3 3y ago
      I didn't first realize that you were commenting my post - but I did say two things: 1) There's no such thing as a culture which doesn't change. Culture is a living thing. It changes, even if you never have a single immigrant. My parent's culture wasn't the same as mine, even back when there were no immigrants and hardly anyone coming from elsewhere in the country. 2) I also clarified in a later post that to me the culture is enhanced, i.e. there's more to it than before. I definitely don't have any feeling of loss of culture, I guess that's my point.
      - ddd00001 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - ddd00001 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - 3y ago
willcipriano 3y ago
In the long term human populations have fluctuated wildly. As demographics get bad and Japan gets poorer I'd bet they will start having more children.
- Tor3 3y ago
  You have to look at why the birthrate is low. People are working themselves to (nearly) death, and the worsening demographics is not helping. It's hard to commit to have three children (which is what everybody will have to aim for if the birthrate is to hold or grow) when you go to work in the early hours and come home after ten PM (or later, as people I know do), and when salaries haven't actually increased since forever. Japan getting poorer doesn't look like it would help. One thing which probably could help would be companies and the public system (e.g. schools) stopping ordering employees to suddenly move to some other city every few years. That's hard for aspiring families.
  - 0dayz 3y ago
    Japan's issue isn't even just working which only happens in so called black companies, the real issue(s) are tied to archaic tradions, norms and attitude. Like how japan like most of Asia is so fixated on materialism with even marriage still being heavily influenced by it (hence why theres a lot of dysfunctional marriages in japan).
    - Tor3 3y ago
      The people I know who would come home way after dark never worked for black companies, it's common to work that way in almost every area. And in education too - at my stepson's university the students were expected to stay in the lab until midnight, just to "show effort". Totally crazy. Anyway, I'm glad to say that both my stepchildren married for love, not for anything parent/family-related. As far as I can tell the younger generation is quite different from earlier generations - which weren't all that bad everywhere either. However, the working conditions have not changed as much.
skeuomorphism 3y ago
I hope they make a success story of what a stable country with a reasonable population can look like, although its incredibly complex to tell without the years to measure it
givemeethekeys 3y ago
Their culture is the reason that they're fading away. Perhaps it's time to change some parts in big ways in order to protect other parts.
- suction 3y ago
  [dead]
- jesterson 3y ago
  Perhaps you can enlighten what part of their culture makes them "fade away"?
  - Cymrukicks 3y ago
    Well the lack of focus on family and making it economically, culturally and politically beneficial to younger people especially women to have children would be an extremely obvious one.
    - tjpnz 3y ago
      What do you mean by lack of focus on family? Having lived here for the better part of a decade I've seen the opposite and tend to view it as one of the defining characteristics of Japanese culture. Things are changing policy-wise to make it easier to raise a family. They're moving fast in that regard and I've witnessed many of these changes firsthand since becoming a father, especially where paternity leave and childcare payments are concerned.
      - jesterson 3y ago
        Exactly my question as well. Rarely you can find a country on world map where family values are cherished more. Luckily Japan has none of feminism, pronouns and related stuff.
srsqsonyl 3y ago
Wacky take since every country is a Ship of Theseus. Japan of today is nothing like Japan of 100 years ago. Every nation has already faded away multiple times.
- filoleg 3y ago
  > Wacky take since every country is a Ship of Theseus. Yes and no. It is one thing where that ship is uses immigration as a source of "replacement parts", and another thing when it doesn't. The immigration method replaces old parts of the ship with different kinds of parts, the non-immigration method replaces old parts with just more modern/slightly different versions of the same parts. US and the likes are absolutely a ship of theseus in my book, but Japan doesn't feel like it would be the same "kind" of a ship of theseus, given how ethnically homogenous and anti-immigration it is. Disclaimer: I am not trying to argue here for which approach is "better" (considering that one approach being objectively better than the other in absolute terms is probably not even a thing). Gotta keep in mind that the originally immigrant-based ship that is the US isn't the same as the heavily homogenous ship that is Japan at all. Frankly, I don't know the answer to this, and neither was that the point of my reply. I just don't want the comment section to devolve into arguing which is better (immigration-based ship of theseus vs. a ship that is not affected by immigration almost at all). My original point was that "not all ships of theseus are the same kind", so one approach would likely not work the same way when applied to two radically different types of a ship.
jesterson 3y ago
[flagged]
- Crusoe123 3y ago
  Nice xenophobia there buddy
  - jesterson 3y ago
    Glad you liked it - albeit not sure where you pulled xenophobia from.
  - zpeti 3y ago
    Japan's culture is 8000 years old. They are f**g amazing at so many things, from pottery to knives to amazing food. Why shouldn't they be allowed to protect that culture if they want? Why does every country have to standardised down to some global culture that is all the same? Of course we know the answer, that makes for a great global market and government, but it's amazing how it's the left that's actually advocating for this these days.
  - zo1 3y ago
    Have you not noticed the issues Europe is having? And no one is even studying or discussing it, it's too taboo. The West is in decline, and they're sealing their own fate because they're allowing themselves to be bullied, turning the other cheek out of politeness.
    - mortureb 3y ago
      The issues in Europe seem to be caused by Russia. What’s your point?
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        Europe in many parts seem to have failed to integrate many of the newer groups. Some have integrated well enough to be noticed. But Sweden well known for inclusivity have strange things happening in certain parts of country.

mainpassathome 3y ago

what

scottlawson 3y ago
They are referring to: a) the fact that Japan's birthrate is below the number needed to sustain the current population b) the fact that Japan is ethnically homogenous (98.5% ethnically Japanese), and has very limited channels for immigration, meaning that japan, with the policies that exist today, will not be able to significantly mitigate the population decline by accepting immigrants. Japan takes a very different approach compared to countries like Canada, which is a melting pot of cultures and which has an increasing population largely due to immigration
- I_am_uncreative 3y ago
  Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration. Japan is going to have to be more welcoming of non-Japanese people.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    None of the countries you mention have ages old strong own culture to preserve really (except first nations but for various reasons their culture is not US or Canada culture). So Japan's policy is not unreasonable. You can become a proper Japanese if you want to (are willing to culturally integrate), it's just that not many people do. Without it you'd be trading off death of country for death of culture. Contrast to China or Thailand where AFAIK you are always second class citizen legally if you are "wrong" ethnicity.
    - kanbara 3y ago
      this isnt true at all, in practice. there’s so much onerous bureacracy, kafkaesque visa policies, and the fact that even naturalised individuals will still be othered. japanese nationality is tied to ethnicity so much due to how homogenous the society is
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        "othering" at social level probably exists, but you are mixing up culture and ethnicity, there is division and kind of caste system within "homogenous" Japan too, see burakumin issue for eg. so legally for a foreigner the policy seems reasonable, just there is a lot of FUD spread by people who felt entitled to become Japanese with little effort and suffered reality check, see eg. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj855k5066o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj855k5066o
    - ffgjgf1 3y ago
      > have ages old strong own culture Modern Japanese culture has its roots almost entirely in the 19th century and the post WW2 era.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        This is nonsense. "Post WW2" describes current modern Japanese culture, not its root. The root goes way back to hundreds/thousands of years BC, they continuously lived on those exact islands and spoke a similar language all that time. Unlike US or Canada which are a new amalgamation of English/French/Spanish/German/Jewish/AA/Native/whatever cultures without any single root. Not to say US or Canadian culture is worse or better, just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique.
        ffgjgf1 3y ago
        > not its root You might as well say that US culture has its roots in ancient Greece or Rome, or Reformation age Europe and claim it’s hundreds or even thousands years old. It would be worth about as much. But yeah I agree with you in the sense that US/Canada are constantly affected by a constant influx of people belonging to different cultures. Had there been barely any immigration after ~1800 American culture would be effectively as old and unique as the Japanese one. Quebec for instance is kind of (but not quite) like that. > just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique. Well they already did during the Meiji period and subsequently, what remains is not that significant. Also what are your thoughts on Britain, Scandinavian and some other European countries? They would be effectively no different to Japan in this sense besides the fact that they have very large numbers immigrants.
  - skissane 3y ago
    > Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration. Australia's immigration rate, on a per capita basis, is more than double that of the US, and somewhat ahead of Canada's. [0] It has a lower total fertility rate [1] than the US (1.73 for Australia vs 1.84 for US), but still a higher TFR than Canada (1.57), and I suspect having double the immigration rate is probably going to make up for the somewhat lower fertility. And I think you are missing more countries than just Australia. While in absolute terms, the US accepts more immigrants than any other country in the world, on a per capita basis, its net immigration rate isn't particularly high, and is below that of many Western European countries. Likewise, US total fertility, while high by Western standards, is not the highest in the Western world; France is significantly higher at 2.02; Ireland and Iceland also beat the US at fertility, and Norway is only just behind the US. [0] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/net-migration-rate/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/net-migration-r... [1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility...
    - I_am_uncreative 3y ago
      And yet, Australia's population is slated to decline, while the US is not.
      - skissane 3y ago
        > And yet, Australia's population is slated to decline, while the US is not. Slated to decline according to whom? According to the most recent projections published by Australia's national statistics agency, [0] Australia's population is projected to continuously increase through 2066, ending up at somewhere between 37 and 49 million (compared to around 26 million today). The only projection of theirs according to which it will decline is the highly unrealistic "zero net migration" scenario. [0] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/population-projections-australia/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/populati...
- Tor3 3y ago
  Japan has a way to go, but gradually they're thinking more about immigration as a necessity, which was pretty much never an issue before. In those Japanese newspapers I read there are more and more articles about how local governments and also the national government are (economically) supporting companies giving language training to immigrant workers, with the idea that they want them to stay. Similarly, some cities are setting up programs which try to get foreign students to stay after graduation. There's still much which has to change (see comments by others). But it's still a bit behind and the population will almost certainly continue to decline for some years, as it has for a decade now.

rayiner 3y ago

> let in more immigrants while still maintaining their culture. Impossible.

Tor3 3y ago
Not impossible. Other countries could. Also remember that culture is a living thing, it's not static. It changes and adjusts and adapts and incorporates. My little hometown was just us "natives" in my childhood, now at the other end of time it has people and languages from more than a hundred countries, and we're all "natives" to this town. Very different from before, but much more interesting and I don't feel we have lost anything, culturally, from before.
- ddd00001 3y ago
  I don't have a dog in this fight, but you just said "not impossible", then admitted that culture would change with influx of migrants.
  - Tor3 3y ago
    I didn't first realize that you were commenting my post - but I did say two things: 1) There's no such thing as a culture which doesn't change. Culture is a living thing. It changes, even if you never have a single immigrant. My parent's culture wasn't the same as mine, even back when there were no immigrants and hardly anyone coming from elsewhere in the country. 2) I also clarified in a later post that to me the culture is enhanced, i.e. there's more to it than before. I definitely don't have any feeling of loss of culture, I guess that's my point.
    - ddd00001 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - ddd00001 3y ago
      [flagged]
- 3y ago

willcipriano 3y ago

In the long term human populations have fluctuated wildly. As demographics get bad and Japan gets poorer I'd bet they will start having more children.

Tor3 3y ago
You have to look at why the birthrate is low. People are working themselves to (nearly) death, and the worsening demographics is not helping. It's hard to commit to have three children (which is what everybody will have to aim for if the birthrate is to hold or grow) when you go to work in the early hours and come home after ten PM (or later, as people I know do), and when salaries haven't actually increased since forever. Japan getting poorer doesn't look like it would help. One thing which probably could help would be companies and the public system (e.g. schools) stopping ordering employees to suddenly move to some other city every few years. That's hard for aspiring families.
- 0dayz 3y ago
  Japan's issue isn't even just working which only happens in so called black companies, the real issue(s) are tied to archaic tradions, norms and attitude. Like how japan like most of Asia is so fixated on materialism with even marriage still being heavily influenced by it (hence why theres a lot of dysfunctional marriages in japan).
  - Tor3 3y ago
    The people I know who would come home way after dark never worked for black companies, it's common to work that way in almost every area. And in education too - at my stepson's university the students were expected to stay in the lab until midnight, just to "show effort". Totally crazy. Anyway, I'm glad to say that both my stepchildren married for love, not for anything parent/family-related. As far as I can tell the younger generation is quite different from earlier generations - which weren't all that bad everywhere either. However, the working conditions have not changed as much.

skeuomorphism 3y ago

I hope they make a success story of what a stable country with a reasonable population can look like, although its incredibly complex to tell without the years to measure it

givemeethekeys 3y ago

Their culture is the reason that they're fading away. Perhaps it's time to change some parts in big ways in order to protect other parts.

suction 3y ago
[dead]
jesterson 3y ago
Perhaps you can enlighten what part of their culture makes them "fade away"?
- Cymrukicks 3y ago
  Well the lack of focus on family and making it economically, culturally and politically beneficial to younger people especially women to have children would be an extremely obvious one.
  - tjpnz 3y ago
    What do you mean by lack of focus on family? Having lived here for the better part of a decade I've seen the opposite and tend to view it as one of the defining characteristics of Japanese culture. Things are changing policy-wise to make it easier to raise a family. They're moving fast in that regard and I've witnessed many of these changes firsthand since becoming a father, especially where paternity leave and childcare payments are concerned.
    - jesterson 3y ago
      Exactly my question as well. Rarely you can find a country on world map where family values are cherished more. Luckily Japan has none of feminism, pronouns and related stuff.

srsqsonyl 3y ago

Wacky take since every country is a Ship of Theseus. Japan of today is nothing like Japan of 100 years ago. Every nation has already faded away multiple times.

filoleg 3y ago
> Wacky take since every country is a Ship of Theseus. Yes and no. It is one thing where that ship is uses immigration as a source of "replacement parts", and another thing when it doesn't. The immigration method replaces old parts of the ship with different kinds of parts, the non-immigration method replaces old parts with just more modern/slightly different versions of the same parts. US and the likes are absolutely a ship of theseus in my book, but Japan doesn't feel like it would be the same "kind" of a ship of theseus, given how ethnically homogenous and anti-immigration it is. Disclaimer: I am not trying to argue here for which approach is "better" (considering that one approach being objectively better than the other in absolute terms is probably not even a thing). Gotta keep in mind that the originally immigrant-based ship that is the US isn't the same as the heavily homogenous ship that is Japan at all. Frankly, I don't know the answer to this, and neither was that the point of my reply. I just don't want the comment section to devolve into arguing which is better (immigration-based ship of theseus vs. a ship that is not affected by immigration almost at all). My original point was that "not all ships of theseus are the same kind", so one approach would likely not work the same way when applied to two radically different types of a ship.

jesterson 3y ago

[flagged]

Crusoe123 3y ago
Nice xenophobia there buddy
- jesterson 3y ago
  Glad you liked it - albeit not sure where you pulled xenophobia from.
- zpeti 3y ago
  Japan's culture is 8000 years old. They are f**g amazing at so many things, from pottery to knives to amazing food. Why shouldn't they be allowed to protect that culture if they want? Why does every country have to standardised down to some global culture that is all the same? Of course we know the answer, that makes for a great global market and government, but it's amazing how it's the left that's actually advocating for this these days.
- zo1 3y ago
  Have you not noticed the issues Europe is having? And no one is even studying or discussing it, it's too taboo. The West is in decline, and they're sealing their own fate because they're allowing themselves to be bullied, turning the other cheek out of politeness.
  - mortureb 3y ago
    The issues in Europe seem to be caused by Russia. What’s your point?
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Europe in many parts seem to have failed to integrate many of the newer groups. Some have integrated well enough to be noticed. But Sweden well known for inclusivity have strange things happening in certain parts of country.