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Nearly everyone I know wants children but some can't for purely practical, not at all cultural reasons. It's just incredibly expensive and time consuming. The Japanese education system is expensive and bad, daycare services are not always available and mothers see it as the end of their career, so understandably people are hesitant to have children. Dumb western websites usually talk about it with a picture of a guy with a realdoll though and make it look like the country is full of girlshy nerds.
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Aug 25, 2017 08:15
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Shibawanko posted:Nearly everyone I know wants children but some can't for purely practical, not at all cultural reasons. It's just incredibly expensive and time consuming. I think it's part xenophobia, part upholding the inane stereotype they've developed about Japanese people, and part not wanting to admit that the west might be suffering from some of the same problems.
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Aug 25, 2017 09:10
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Yeah a lot of it is media sensationalism but at the same time, you can't really minimize the fact that 40% of millennials in Japan are virgins.
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Aug 25, 2017 11:53
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shrike82 posted:Yeah a lot of it is media sensationalism but at the same time, you can't really minimize the fact that 40% of millennials in Japan are virgins. You can, because it's not true. Also meaningless without similar statistics from other countries, especially ones similar in education and economy; Singapore, HK, South Korea, etc.
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Aug 25, 2017 12:01
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I don't think anyone would be surprised if Japan is as bad as other Asian countries like SK or Singapore. Again, the question is whether is Western countries are in the same bucket.
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Aug 25, 2017 12:13
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Cicero posted:Speaking as a parent: not having kids is highly rational because kids are an enormous time and money and energy sink. It's like having a second job that you carry around with you all the time, except worse because instead of paying you money the job actually just costs you money instead. Speaking as a not parent in a european country, I'm never going to have kids for exactly these reasons.
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Aug 25, 2017 12:15
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shrike82 posted:I don't think anyone would be surprised if Japan is as bad as other Asian countries like SK or Singapore. Even then there are definitely European nations with lower birth rates. So even if western nations had massively higher rates of sexual activity, it doesn't translate to children. It's economic factors. In first world nations, for the large party it's when people can afford it that they have kids, absent other major factors like religion.
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Aug 25, 2017 12:39
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Except Japan's xenophobia makes its TFR problem much more threatening than it does for Italy or Germany
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Aug 25, 2017 12:41
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shrike82 posted:Except Japan's xenophobia makes its TFR problem much more threatening than it does for Italy or Germany The number of migrants coming to Germany isn't nearly enough to make up for the birthrate. It might slow the effects down slightly, but over a 30 year timeframe or so you're talking basically 75% of the effects Japan will see. And that's not even talking about places with even lower birthrates and that are poorer, that nobody wants to move to, like Poland/Greece/Spain/Taiwan/South Korea The idea that Japan's low migrant numbers is because of some sort of inherent hive-mind xenophobia is also dumb, because Europeans are also super racist (ever heard of Zwarte Piet?). Japan has low migrant flows because it has no political integration with its neighboring countries like Germany does with the EU (it used to, from about 1900-1945). About half of non-Germans in Germany are citizens of other EU countries, mostly poor ones like Poland and Romania. Japan also doesn't have a nightmarish hellscape warzone with a few hundred million people trying to flee not far away, like Germany does (it also used to, lets say between 1960-1975. Japan had a high birthrate and lots of workers back then though) Public opinion and polling numbers on immigration in Japan are actually pretty much identical to the USA. If you ask people in a survey "do you want to replace this country's population with third-world migrants on a 30-year timeframe", basically no country anywhere will agree, not in Europe, not in the US, not in Japan Here are some polls from Google on public opinion. Americans as of early 2015 were only 15% in favor of increasing numbers of immigrants, Germans were 18% Japanese were 40% (although that's 2010, before the current crisis). Not sure how the methodologies compare, but it seems like a reasonable rough comparison http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/chapter-4-u-s-public-has-mixed-views-of-immigrants-and-immigration/ https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/92877/1/766845818.pdf https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/12/germans-attitudes-immigration-harden-following-col/ This article says what's actually unique about Japan is how nobody in third world countries wants to move there http://www.international.ucla.edu/japan/article/165406 quote:Roger Waldinger of UCLA’s Department of Sociology provided comments to these papers while also highlighting the many kinds of migration that exist in the world—for example, mass migrations of rural residents to urban areas in their own country. In a global context, he argued, Japan appears to be “the great exception” to the narrative that residents of developing nations immigrate to developed nations. Yet, public opinion polling data from 2013 does not in fact appear any more “restrictionist.” The surprising data, he argued, was that so few foreigners—only 2%—wanted to immigrate to Japan. Not sure what the source is for that, I can't find it through that site As for Italy, just lol. That place is a borderline failed state. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 26, 2017 |
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Aug 26, 2017 01:01
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Also lol I just remembered this http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/swedish-minister-of-culture-slammed-for-racist-797906 
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Aug 26, 2017 |
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Aug 26, 2017 01:06
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icantfindaname posted:And that's not even talking about places with even lower birthrates and that are poorer, that nobody wants to move to, like Poland/Greece/Spain/Taiwan/South Korea I can only speak for Korea (although I'd be super surprised if it's any different in the other places), but the place isn't at all hurting on people wanting to move to it. It's just generally immigrants from developing countries like the Philippines rather than from other developed countries. in general I doubt any moderately wealthy developed country would have a hard time bringing in enough immigration to keep up population growth, it's just the political impetus / infrastructure to open things up to that degree normally isn't there. quote:(it used to, from about 1900-1945) lol
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Aug 26, 2017 01:18
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Koramei posted:I can only speak for Korea (although I'd be super surprised if it's any different in the other places), but the place isn't at all hurting on people wanting to move to it. It's just generally immigrants from developing countries like the Philippines rather than from other developed countries. Well, SK is probably the least lovely country on that list. Maybe Spain as well. A country like Poland is probably grimmer though. I do feel like you might have a problem finding skilled and educated labor in particular in a country like that Koramei posted:lol Yeah I've literally seen people in multiple different places say why haven't Japan and SK made up and moved toward political integration, like Germany and France have? And it's like, ffs, I don't even know what to say to that icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Aug 26, 2017 |
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Aug 26, 2017 01:36
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icantfindaname posted:Also lol I just remembered this 
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Aug 26, 2017 01:48
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13% of Germany's population are foreign residents. It's slightly above 1% for Japan. And LOL at the excuse that "Japan really wouldn't mind more foreign immigrants, it's just no one wants to go there".
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Aug 26, 2017 02:17
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shrike82 posted:13% of Germany's population are foreign residents. It's slightly above 1% for Japan. Germany is in the middle of Europe and close to the Middle East, it can be reached on foot, and the government actively tried to recruit workers from low income countries to put pressure on its own labor unions, of course it has more immigrants as a percentage of the population. Japan is a loving island on the edge of a continent dominated by China, without the kind of economic integration Europe has. You can walk or drive from Syria to Germany, you can't get to Japan unless you take a boat or plane. It's not the kind of place that attracts immigrants. Its immigration laws are similar to European countries. I've lived here for more than 2 years and never noticed any of the supposed hostility to immigration. Nobody even talks about it, if you ask people they give you nuanced answers not very different from what you'd hear in Europe.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:13
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Yah, no surprise that you as a presumably white, white-collar worker don't notice xenophobia. It'd be like a white American in France or Germany dismissing local attitudes towards 2nd generation blacks or turkish workers. The biggest potential source of immigration to Japan isn't the West but China and SE Asian countries like the Philippines so Westerner experiences aren't really relevant here. If the argument people are making is "Japan isn't uniquely bad, Europeans at their worst do the same poo poo (e.g., burakumin = gypsies)", fine but that strain of whataboutism doesn't make for discussion.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:42
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In other news, no sitting cabinet member visited Yasukuni on the anniversary of the war's end, apparently the first time since 1980 https://twitter.com/MichaelTCucek/status/897671377339207680 Also, the NHK ran a documentary about Unit 731 on the same day I guess all the op-eds written about Abe's fascism and the death of Japanese liberal democracy (which was always a sham anyways) have to go to the trash now? They won't, of course, they'll just be filed away to break out in 15 years when they get another right-wing PM. But it is good to see the Abe Era seemingly wrapping up
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Aug 26, 2017 11:05
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icantfindaname posted:Also lol I just remembered this that's really disturbing
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Aug 26, 2017 11:11
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Kurtofan posted:that's really disturbing Try to track down the video. It's the sounds that really make it.
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Aug 26, 2017 12:21
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Shibawanko posted:Germany is in the middle of Europe and close to the Middle East, it can be reached on foot, and the government actively tried to recruit workers from low income countries to put pressure on its own labor unions, of course it has more immigrants as a percentage of the population. Japan is a loving island on the edge of a continent dominated by China, without the kind of economic integration Europe has. You can walk or drive from Syria to Germany, you can't get to Japan unless you take a boat or plane. It's not the kind of place that attracts immigrants. Its immigration laws are similar to European countries. I don't live in Japan, but from my understanding of Japanese culture, interaction with Japanese clients, and just conversation with Japanese friend, Japanese in general are very peculiar about their traditions and history, there's a lot of social pressure where you are expected to talk in a certain way, dress in similar manner, and even write emails in a certain format. Nuances that are difficult to pick up unless you are raised in this society. Xenophobia in Asia is less angry mob beating down your door for lynching, but more "there's an important golf game with a local client, don't invite Daniel san because he's a gaijin and will say something stupid. As for the other Asian immigrants, particularly the ones from SE Asia, I believe the expectation was that they are here to perform the menial jobs that the local don't want to do, they were not expected to remain in Japan and fully integrate. Here in HK we have tons of SE domestic helpers on a special working VISA. They cannot stay if they are not employed by a host family, they do not get resident status after 7 years that normal VISA holder are entitled to. It's a system where they will tolerate immigrant because they do something we cannot, but we really don't want to integrate you into our society because of the disruption you will bring to our nice little society. And since Asian are so into the face saving things, their response most likely be less in your face, but more polite stone walling about why the system is this way.
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Aug 27, 2017 06:35
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Japan loves to talk the talk about an open liberal society but you will see the reality if go there and try to rent an apartment or get a credit card.
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Aug 27, 2017 07:29
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EasternBronze posted:Japan loves to talk the talk about an open liberal society but you will see the reality if go there and try to rent an apartment or get a credit card. It's definitely an experience to be talking with a real estate agent and them casually dropping, "That is a nice location, but the landlord won't rent to foreigners."
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Aug 27, 2017 12:57
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Racist landlords are definitely a thing, but credit card companies profiling foreigners is reasonable. Most foreigners are short-timers and the risks of lending to them outweigh the benefits. See also: foreigners running out on unpaid cellphone bills when they go home. Definitely a tiny minority ruining it for everyone else, but I understand the calculation that the credit card companies are making. Once you've established some credit, you can get as many cards and other credit as you want with minimal trouble. I recommend Rakuten as a good gateway card since they don't ask for immigration status. Probably helps to use a driver's license instead of residency cars too.
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Aug 27, 2017 14:05
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I'm not a Japanese expert, but as an American with a Japanese mom who's been to Japan several times and has read a bunch about Japan/has average weeb knowledge (including the requisite couple semesters of college Japanese classes), and who currently lives in Germany, Japan definitely seems more insular and xenophobic than Germany to me.
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Aug 27, 2017 18:03
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I'd love to learn more about international and intra-national racial or nationalist sentiments in Japan and the surrounding region. I'm profoundly ignorant of the history of the area. I have no clue, for instance, why there's negative perception of SK in Japan. Where's a good place to get some infoposting (or a good nonfiction book) on these issues?
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Aug 27, 2017 19:26
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Mr. Fix It posted:See also: foreigners running out on unpaid cellphone bills when they go home. 14 years and that was the parting gift. I paid it. But, ah, I wouldn't hold it against anyone who just said "gently caress this, you can't withdraw a bogus penalty from a bank account with no money in it - catch ya later, dickheads!" Kilroy fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Aug 27, 2017 |
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Aug 27, 2017 19:41
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Kilroy posted:Funny story: I was a customer of NTT Docomo for nearly 14 years. When I moved back to the US and canceled my phone with them they charged me a ¥30,000 penalty for ending my contract early. Their rationale was that I had switched from the medium plan for minutes to the lower one, about 18 months earlier, so that counted as a new contract which I was breaking. (The contracts are for two years, but I think they are rolling and no matter what you're violating the terms of the agreement unless you cancel right at the end of the two years.) Never made a late payment, paid a shitload of money each month for unlimited data which is still like a novelty over there. Also, I wasn't on the hook for a phone or anything either, because I'd been using the same Nexus 4 for years, which I shipped from US. Lol and goondolences. I bet talk about "excellent Japanese customer service" triggers you to this day. Company (and government) policies that refuse to consider the plight of folks that might leave the country one day are definitely a thing here.
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Aug 27, 2017 21:59
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Discendo Vox posted:I'd love to learn more about international and intra-national racial or nationalist sentiments in Japan and the surrounding region. I'm profoundly ignorant of the history of the area. I have no clue, for instance, why there's negative perception of SK in Japan. Where's a good place to get some infoposting (or a good nonfiction book) on these issues? The negative perception of South Korea stems from Koreas time as effectively a colony under Imperial Japan. Imperial Japan had, as part of its ideology, a concept of east asian racial hierarchy with the Japanese at the top with a mission to civilize their less fortunate and less developed cousins through east asia.
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Aug 27, 2017 22:06
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Cicero posted:I'm not a Japanese expert, but as an American with a Japanese mom who's been to Japan several times and has read a bunch about Japan/has average weeb knowledge (including the requisite couple semesters of college Japanese classes), and who currently lives in Germany, Japan definitely seems more insular and xenophobic than Germany to me. I think that's fair. The problem comes when you try to explain this as being a result of some intrinsic and essential Asian or Japanese pathology, instead of being the result of there just not being as many non-Japanese people in Japan as compared to non-Germans in Germany, and a normal part of the normal course of economic and social development Speaking of economic development, I've been reading a lot of economic history, and I realized that Japan as late as 1960 was on the development/wealth/GDP level of Mexico and Russia, and that in 1948 half of Japanese workers worked in agriculture (still a quarter by 1964), a point that Germany passed in like 1900 and the US in the 1880s. That seems like it would have a pretty enormous impact on people's social attitudes and culture, having grown up as a third-world rice farmer instead of a first-world middle class. Lots of old people in Japan are literally third-world peasants in a way that German old people aren't. This is basically never mentioned in middlebrow writing on the country, though, and Japan's postwar growth is elided into the same category as France's and Germany's
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Aug 27, 2017 22:26
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Discendo Vox posted:I'd love to learn more about international and intra-national racial or nationalist sentiments in Japan and the surrounding region. I'm profoundly ignorant of the history of the area. I have no clue, for instance, why there's negative perception of SK in Japan. Where's a good place to get some infoposting (or a good nonfiction book) on these issues? Here are two books on diplomatic relations between Japan and SK and Japan and China. I read the one on China, not the Korea one, but it looks interesting https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-japan-south-korea-identity-clash/9780231171700 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/middle-kingdom-and-empire-of-the-rising-sun-9780195375664?cc=us&lang=en&
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Aug 27, 2017 22:35
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icantfindaname posted:I think that's fair. The problem comes when you try to explain this as being a result of some intrinsic and essential Asian or Japanese pathology, instead of being the result of there just not being as many non-Japanese people in Japan as compared to non-Germans in Germany, and a normal part of the normal course of economic and social development. I think what a lot of people are taking issue with is exactly this. How exactly is Japan’s xenophobia a “normal part of the normal course of economic and social development’. Up-thread, you argue in passing that the Japanese are equally open to immigration as Americans by linking to a survey - that’s ludicrous to me. There’s an argument to be made that Japan isn’t “uniquely Japanese” in its social mores but I’m seeing people bend over backwards to excuse stuff because of a dislike for the other extreme which is orientalism. And excusing the Japanese for their racism because there aren’t as many non-Japanese in Japan as in other countries is hilarious. Anti-foreigner sentiment in Japan has increased dramatically over the past decade with the slight influx of Chinese migrant workers in the country if you look at any survey about Chinese.
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Aug 28, 2017 00:15
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Captain Oblivious posted:The negative perception of South Korea stems from Koreas time as effectively a colony under Imperial Japan. Imperial Japan had, as part of its ideology, a concept of east asian racial hierarchy with the Japanese at the top with a mission to civilize their less fortunate and less developed cousins through east asia. The colonial authorities in Korea went further because officials found that Korean culture was so similar to Japanese culture that Korean culture should be destroyed and Koreans forcibly assimilated. Taiwan, Chinese and Polynesian cultures, were found to be too different to assimilate and they were just given the role of "noble savages" within the empire. It's one of the reasons colonial rule there was relatively benign, it was far from that and incredibly brutal during the early periods when not compared to Korea, and the colonial legacy in Taiwan is more mixed than in Korea.
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Aug 28, 2017 00:33
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shrike82 posted:I think what a lot of people are taking issue with is exactly this. How exactly is Japan’s xenophobia a “normal part of the normal course of economic and social development’. Up-thread, you argue in passing that the Japanese are equally open to immigration as Americans by linking to a survey - that’s ludicrous to me. Yeah, that was probably too sanguine a way to phrase it. You know what I mean though. I don't feel like you get to dismiss the concern about orientalism, either. There's an enormous amount of orientalist racism and xenophobia towards East Asians in general in the Western popular consciousness. It's unfortunate, and it is frustrating to see Japan apparently getting off without criticism for fear of being racist or orientalist, but given the way Japan and Asia is seen by middlebrow white people in the West, I don't really see any simple resolution RocknRollaAyatollah posted:The colonial authorities in Korea went further because officials found that Korean culture was so similar to Japanese culture that Korean culture should be destroyed and Koreans forcibly assimilated. Taiwan, Chinese and Polynesian cultures, were found to be too different to assimilate and they were just given the role of "noble savages" within the empire. It's one of the reasons colonial rule there was relatively benign, it was far from that and incredibly brutal during the early periods when not compared to Korea, and the colonial legacy in Taiwan is more mixed than in Korea. Did that apply to Taiwanese Han, or just to the aborigines? What was the empire's policy towards the Han there? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 01:31
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Taiwan was the model colony, their first real acquisition and treated fairly well all in all. Hence why Taiwan is still kind of a Chinese-Japanese mix in a lot of ways and doesn't have any real issues with Japan today. They technically dispute the Senkakus but don't seem to care that much, certainly not like the PRC does.
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Aug 28, 2017 04:02
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It's quite common to see older Taiwanese speak fluent Japanese and speak fondly of the occupation. Thailand is another odd example where history has bled into the present, and the two countries have good relations at the institutional as well as individual level.
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Aug 28, 2017 04:14
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Mr. Fix It posted:Lol and goondolences. I bet talk about "excellent Japanese customer service" triggers you to this day. Company (and government) policies that refuse to consider the plight of folks that might leave the country one day are definitely a thing here.
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Aug 28, 2017 05:28
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Pretty much everything in japan is designed with the assumption that everyone lives the exact same narrowly defined lifestyle. If you are living with your family into your thirties and dad has worked for the same company for twenty plus years, what problem is there with a three year phone contract?
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Aug 28, 2017 07:13
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I believe the "any change to contract=new two year contract" is a pretty recent development. In the early days of number portability I switched companies several times with no penalties before they changed the rules. Now with all the low cost options available, those ridiculous fees are the only thing keeping people with the three main companies. My contract is up next month, and Softbank is blowing up my phone like a jealous boyfriend trying to hook me in for another 2 years before I have the chance to move.
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Aug 28, 2017 09:37
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LyonsLions posted:I believe the "any change to contract=new two year contract" is a pretty recent development. In the early days of number portability I switched companies several times with no penalties before they changed the rules. Now with all the low cost options available, those ridiculous fees are the only thing keeping people with the three main companies. My contract is up next month, and Softbank is blowing up my phone like a jealous boyfriend trying to hook me in for another 2 years before I have the chance to move. Cancelling on those fuckers is going to be the most satisfying thing I've done in ages.
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Aug 28, 2017 09:43
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icantfindaname posted:Did that apply to Taiwanese Han, or just to the aborigines? What was the empire's policy towards the Han there? It applied to both but the Japanese favored the aborigines in a British or French colonial style. There was a Chinese literature movement there in the 20's and 30's and it was tolerated to a degree. Grand Fromage posted:Taiwan was the model colony, their first real acquisition and treated fairly well all in all. Hence why Taiwan is still kind of a Chinese-Japanese mix in a lot of ways and doesn't have any real issues with Japan today. They technically dispute the Senkakus but don't seem to care that much, certainly not like the PRC does. Taiwan was also administered by civilian authorities. Korea was always administered by the military and any attempts to introduce a civilian administration were shot down.
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Aug 28, 2017 12:57
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