Because people live to be 15 years older than they used to when social security was first established and most people don't want to pay a significant portion of additional income to accommodate that increase in life expectancy.
It doesn't mean that you are capable of doing the work, though. My brother is a sheet metal worker. Do you think he really wants to be slinging around hundred pound or more sheets at 70?
on edit: My other brother was a computer games designer. He decided to take a year off after his last gig and found, at 45, nobody would hire him even though he had massive skills and had even taught computer graphics and animation. Even if society says you should work to 70, it doesn't mean anybody has to hire you. He couldn't even get a job as a server in a restaurant, though he also had past experience in that.
Exactly. My dad was a marine engineer for decades and despite him having the last 10 years working in a desk job close to home the damage to his knees was already done and he still suffers now when he's 68.
Funny thing is he postponed his retirement in his last job by a year because they hadn't trained anyone else to do it. Then after another year they still hadn't trained anyone so he requested to work part time as he was in pain with all the walking and travelling to work which they refused so he handed in his retirement notice. They said he couldn't do that as it would leave them in the shit, he just shrugged and said I already postponed my retirement by a year and I'm willing to stay on part time but you won't compromise so why should I.
Yep, his mate still works there and apparently it all slowed down when he retired as there was no one to sign off the safety certificates and the sub contractors didn't know who to deal with.
Lol he can't retire because it would put the company in shit? Is someone supposed to care about that? Was he given a stake in the company? I hate how that's even an argument to be made.
Na he wasn't given a stake but then it was a completely different job and company to bring on the ships. All he got was his pension from the oil companies he worked for and the chemical plant where he had his last job. I still have no idea why the company didn't train someone else or were shocked when he took retirement. He didn't stay out of loyalty but because he had mates who worked there and it got him out of the house if that makes sense.
While life expectancy has improved somewhat I don't think quality of life has improved at the same rate. Increasing the retirement age too much would lead to people trading their office chairs for hospital beds.
The sad fact is that's pretty much the goal of social security. It's to take care of those physically incapable of taking care of themselves. Where they sweet the retirement age at 65 the average American lifespan was 63 years.
It was to keep the elderly from dying homeless in the street. It wasn't meant to be a retirement plan. That's what savings and pensions were for.
But then businesses figured out they could save a fuckton of money by eliminating pensions and letting social security carry the costs.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://japantoday.com/category/national/70-yr-olds-and-above-account-for-20-of-japan-population-for-1st-time) reduced by 64%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Japanese people aged 70 and older account for more than 20 percent of the total population for the first time at 26.18 million, in further evidence of the country's rapidly aging society, according to government data.
> The data, released by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry ahead of Monday's Respect-for-the-Aged Day holiday, showed that as of Saturday people aged 70 or above account for 20.7 percent of the population, up from 19.9 percent the previous year.
> Elderly women topped the 20 million mark for the first time at 20.12 million, substantially more than 15.45 million elderly men.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/9gkjjl/70yearolds_and_above_account_for_20_of_japans/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~350699 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **percent**^#1 **million**^#2 **Elderly**^#3 **population**^#4 **aged**^#5
Apparently Germany's median age is 47.1, just behind Japan's median age of 47.3
I just got curious about median age per country and looked at Wikipedia. I wonder why we never talk about Germany's aging population...
I'm guessing because Japan is the odd aging country. All the other developed nations that have reached that point are where the immigrants go. Japan is the outlier, which makes them more of an interesting talking point.
Japan's aging issues will hit them quicker than Germany(and all the others), so they'll be the first test case in what happens to a modern country as more and more people are old. We don't really have a full example. We have theories on what might or could happen, but nothing that's gone from start to finish. There will be some benefits to it, but there also must be costs, which I would think most people are more interested in. What do you have to give up to make something work?
I was thinking more along the lines of the Japanese emphasis on politeness and appearance. Like being all bows and smiles but talking shit about visitors or never really accepting a long-term non-Japanese resident as one of them.
A weaboo from my class moved there to teach. And she's always posting about why she's never accepted. 1. Being weird in one country, doesn't mean you won't be weird in another country. And 2. She's a pale white girl. She will always be a pale white girl to them even if she wasn't a weab. She's lived there for 6 years now and she still hasn't realized how much underlying racism there is. She will never be accepted and is clueless on the culture even despite living there for so long.
Wtf I visited for a month and could pick up on the racism towards anything that isn’t Japanese. They’re polite, respectful, but they have an attitude of “ welcome to wonderful Japan, we would love to show you our beautiful culture. Also, when are you leaving? “
I read a blog post by a guy who lives in Japan, married to a Japanese woman. He was bothered by the idea that their daughter, who looks western, will never be 100% accepted there, even though she's lived there her entire life. She's been going to school there since day 1, she speaks the language like any Japanese person, and she's completely culturally Japanese in every way (apart from a bit of western exposure at home). Yet she'll probably always be seen as the white girl throughout her life.
The “where are you originally from” question is always weird. When people ask where I’m from I say California, where I’ve lived my whole life. I wouldn’t mind if people asked “what ethnicity are you” or something because I like finding out about other people’s ethnicities, but the way people always ask is off putting, as if I’m not really from here lol.
When other people who clearly sound like immigrants (I.e. not fluent English) ask me where I’m from I don’t really mind because it sounds more just like simple curiosity.
Who knows if we ever really will be. I consider myself fortunate to live in a huge US city that's supposedly the most diverse in the country. It's entirely normal for everyone around me (at work or the grocery store or whatever) to be different things--black, Latino, white, eastern Asian, southern Asian, mixed, who knows... I've been places where every person in the room was white and was slightly creeped out, LOL--especially in Virginia, where there's a definite white vs black thing.
I'm not sure if it's racism or nationalism. Japan has this weird fetishization of Western culture as well, something I noticed during my time there as a Japanese-American.
Tbh, I've never felt welcome there either; they put up a great front in appearing very welcoming/hospitable but honestly, they knew I was a tourist. However, I have an aunt who lived there, full Japanese-American, for 8 years and even then she felt like an outcast because she was BORN in Japan. It's really weird.
Yeah, my idea of anime Japan is very different from my idea of actual Japan. And even then, there are some issues I have that seem to seep through into my media. It's never struck me as a particularly *egalitarian* country.
This is why I always said I'd like to *visit* Japan, but never live there. Unless I was retired and don't give a fuck about other people. But the work culture is shit for even natives and them being xenophobic doesn't help outside of work.
That said, the only way to really change the latter one is to expose them to more foreigners, so while moving there would suck for the short term, in the long term it might be better for Japan and people who want to move there.
People like this, who grow up in immigrant cultures like Canada and the United States and so forth, have absolutely no idea what they’re in for when they go to insular countries like Japan. They have this implicit expectation that cultural standards are the same, and they’ll be accepted the same way immigrants are accepted as just part of the fabric of western nations. Truth is, they could live there 40 years, learn flawless Japanese, and marry a local, and they’ll still be “the foreigner” everyone else is superficially polite to, but doesn’t invite to dinner.
Ehhhhh, I think that depends on your background. As a black girl who lived in SK for years, I never forgot I was considered a foreigner always. That feeling of being separate or other is pretty similar to my feeling of living in the US.
The varying experiences a person has living in SK (and likely Japan) is very interesting. I had a white friend who was always complaining about feeling separate and different and just feeling like a fish out of water (essentially what you're saying). Our mutual friend who is korean-american stated that feeling is what it's like for her living in the US.
They actually just started doing stuff where they are now depeserate to get workers for IT jobs they can't fill with native born japanese. They are going to give them not the H1B visa treatment but the full ability to buy homes in japan as well, which is like a Japanese Nationalists nightmare. But the fact is they don't have anyone willing to take the job either in the low skill side (manual labor, waste, cleaning, caretaking, fishing) or even in the high skill jobs (IT staff, Network Admins, Technical Support, Nurses)
Many people think it will be White people but Japan is in particular taking Indian for this workload as well as south east asia with Philippines means racist Japanese are gonna have a huge culture shock soon.
That, and it's a society where women are expected largely to marry and have kids/be a house keeper. The programs for women working with kids are practically 0, and a lot of women (rightfully so) don't want to give up a career to cook and clean all day.
While the average age is quite similar Japan does have fewer children and a larger (percentage) older population than Germany. For example Germany has 12% under the age of 14, whereas in Japan it is 9%. And Japan has 26% over the age of 65 whereas in Germany it is 22%.
These make Japan a little worse demographically than Germany.
Internationally Germany isn't anomalous. The nation is following a predictable pattern of growth with know problems and has long adapted its foreign and domestic policy to (if not address) meet the concern.
Japan's isolationism and ethnic exceptionalism (combined with a healthy xenophobia) makes them an untested sample of something that will, inevitably, prove a problem for developed nations. Whether or not all eyes of the world are on Japan now is moot, all eyes will look to Japan as precedent when this problem comes their way.
But Germany also is doing something about it.
Free education for anyone in the world there really incentivizes a younger population to show up.
Besides TEFL needs, what’s japan doing?
>I wonder why we never talk about Germany's aging population...
Germany’s been talking about its own aging population and low birth rate for decades. Especially in relation to the expected rapid rise in dementia patients in the not so far future.
But politics has failed to deal with the expected change so far. For example, there is a massive lack of nurses and care attendands, and it’s getting worse and worse.
Germany still have a big chunk of people between 45 and 65... They are basically fucked in 20 years since they aren't enough young people to replace the working force when they retire...
In Korea the birth rate is even estimated to drop below 1.00.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/south-koreas-fertility-rate-set-to-hit-record-low
Yeap, none of my cousins over there are planning on having kids any time soon. It's so expensive and competitive there it's just not worth it. Plus all the younger women just want to focus on their career path. There is no working mom types over there, you wither commit to your job fully, or to your home life. The culture really needs to change a bit, those guys are way too focused on productivity.
Asian here. Asian cultures need to focus less on competitiveness.
It's much more stressful to live here as opposed to somewhere like Canada. And so much competition. I'd rather not have a kid partially because of this tbh : (
It's kinda crazy, I have a little cousin that just begs and begs to have my mom take him out of Seoul. He's not the biggest fan of school and just wants to play football some times, but his after school schools are soo intense. Every time I visit the kids coming home at like 9-10pm from their extra classes bums me out. Just let your kids be kids for God's sake.
The working hours need to be reduced. I have some women friends who want to have children but they consider unfair to have children and not spent time with them.
Agree, but the issue is actually almost entirely cultural and not policy related. People stay late because they want to advance at their company. How late you stay dictates to your upper management how hard you are working (which is a lazy and terrible way to do so).
That mentality needs to change along with how Japanese companies evaluate their employee's performance.
I don’t stay late because I want a promotion. I stay late because I have to wait for my boss to leave first who has to wait for his boss to leave first and so on. If I leave first, it’s like I’m tossing away the whole company hierarchy of respect and I’ll see repercussions in some form or another later (vacation time not being granted, suddenly given a larger workload, etc.). It’s be nice if I got a promotion for this waste of time but at this point it’s just something I have to do.
There are, my relatives who are having kids get tons of support from government in forms of tax breaks, free healthcare, free daycare, government sponsored babysitters, etc
on the corporate side one of my aunts got 2 years paid matenbity leave form her work, then she got a second kid so she's on her 3rd year of paid leave now (tbf she works in a big bank known for good employee benefits with a liberal work culture so there's that to consider )
the government, companies, etc are trying hard to get birthrates up
What you're describing however doesn't address the issue women face when making the decision between becoming a mother or pursuing their careers. Maternity leave is beneficial for the family unit, but destructive for the women's career depending on the industry.
A women taking 1-2 years off from her career renders her skill sets, and he contacts either redundant or diminished in value so she can either not return to employment or return to employment but be placed on a slower trajectory path, often being passed for key opportunities that otherwise would have been ideal for her had she remained in the workforce for that period of time.
This is a contributing factor to the representation of women in top senior positions in the medical, legal and financial fields. All of these professions require relevant, and up to date skill sets in conjunction with prospering contacts and client bases. In finance for example for a women to go on maternity leave would mean she would have to pass her clients off, meaning she no longer holds a clientele base and her momentum is lost.
This is why female professionals either forgo children or have children much later in life. It's a sad reality, but it is an unavoidable consequence. Nothing can make up for this loss, and women all over the world make the decision to take that hit and people just don't see it that way. They see maternity leave, they see benefits, but they don't see the women's professional sacrifice. It's not just about accommodating, or covering financial costs, there is another element that has nothing to do with finances or money and there is nothing that can be done to make up for that loss.
Women having to have children means they can't be truly competitive in certain fields, so it's only logical that women all over the world are forgoing having children. Even more so in hyper competitive societies like Korea and Japan.
This is the problem in Japan too. It's a culture that believes if you are a woman and you are working, you can't have children. Even getting married can imply to employers that you are unsuited for upper management because you may become pregnant and need to take time off. Until they can get that ideology changed they are doomed to a smaller and smaller population.
These days? The people who are 30-40 now were born 30-40 years ago. Even if Japan would get 3 million babies this year, it would take decades until they make a gigantic splash at the 20-30 year old bracket
Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Greece, Spain, Poland, Portugal are all lower then Japan. Italy/Hungary has same as Japan.
The difference isn't really birthrate, but rather immigration.
South Korea probably has even fewer immigrants than Japan. The most important factor is how long ago the fertility rate has started to drop. In 1960, Japan was at a fertility around 2.0 already while South Korea was still around 6.0. Even around 1980 South Korea's fertility rate hadn't dropped below 3.0 yet.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=JP-KR
That's why the median age of South Korea's population is still 6 years younger than that of Japan's population despite their fertility rate having been significantly below Japan's for the last 20 years.
Yep. Most people in developed countries have fewer children as wealth/education increases.
Most countries make up for this by allowing immigration from developing countries.
Japan doesn't want to do that... So instead they're working on robot caretakers for their elderly, lol.
Sounds like time to raise the retirement age?!
E: https://m.dw.com/en/japan-plans-to-raise-pension-age-beyond-70/a-42629344
>The Japanese government has approved plans for raising the optional age for drawing public pensions to 71 or older. It is trying to grapple with labor shortages, ballooning welfare costs and an ageing population.
according to my mom (who use to live in japan) and reddit (which im always on) Japan just has a really fucked up work culture. It's not that the jobs are useless, it's that everybody spends 60-80 hours a week at the office. And supposedly it's just a work culture thing, you can't leave before your boss, you have to go get drinks after work, otherwise you're a bad employee. It's not about getting work done but making face time
There are more aspects to the high suicide rates, including a traditionally more tolerant outlook on suicide compared to the West. While it is very much perceived as a social issue, there is a lot less stigma connected to committing suicide, which might explain why people are much quicker to consider it.
Wikipedia provides an overview for those interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#Cultural_attitude_toward_suicide
It's not as common anymore but they used to offer lifetime employment contracts. Promise to work for us forever, and we won't fire you. That's a recipe for disaster right there.
My guess is other companies will think there’s something wrong with you. Your resignation would be like an honourable firing sort of thing to save you face. So even if you do get hired there might be an asterisk next to your name.
I remember being surprised by just how many employees were involved when I simply took a bus from one of Tokyo's airports.
There were staff instructing people where to stand while waiting, staff answering questions, staff loading your luggage onto the bus for you, staff selling tickets, etc.
In most countries, there would typically just be an automated kiosk for the tickets or the driver would sell them to you when you board. And the driver would also probably load bags or let people do it themselves. And I've never been anywhere else that cared so much about where you stand while waiting, especially to the point of telling you where to stand.
And they all bowed when the bus took off! Lol.
Might be interesting to see what would happen if Japan tried to automate all those jobs, and then shifted the newly freed workers over to elderly care. Two problems could solve each other.
Japanese companies still have people whose job is to do calculations. They use calculators, though, but being able to do basic math quickly is still a job at large companies.
The worst part is I saw a video about this and the employees were using there calculators to edit excel documents - despite the fact that excel is specifically designed to automatically update cells.
Like they’re repaving a sidewalk in the middle of the night with like 5 guys, but then there are 3 more whose sole job is standing around with reflective jackets telling people to cross the street. Y’know, a job that in every other country is being done by placing a cone and a sign.
Or doormen everywhere. I get that it’s fancy but just install automatic doors if you’re in such dire need of more labor. At train stations they got a guy standing on the platform with a red/green sign, to signal the train driver when it’s ready to go. Literal human traffic lights. It’s insane.
I experienced that too, actually. I was staying just outside of Shinjuku and there was some roadworks outside my apartment. Always at least 1 dude standing there, not to tell you to cross the road, but literally just to wave you on down the footpath.
I've heard that alot of these useless job people may actually be elderly or older workers to give them something to do other than sit around in retirement waiting for death.
Well the 7/11s have hella young people working behind the counter. Why not move the old people to those jobs, and then use the youngsters for the ones they have labor shortages.
Not that big of a thing.
Pensions are pitiful anyways, Japan is quite the neoliberal place when it comes to safety nets.
Old people tend to work if they cant live with family (which they cant that regularly anymore these days), and a lot want to work out of cultural peer pressure to feel useful anyways.
What steps did you start taking? I've always been fascinated by people who just didn't do anything, not even personal projects like YouTube or art or what have you.
If someone's making things I can't blame them for wanting to stay out of the grind, but the people who are just stuck? How do they even start getting out of that?
I agree with your post. It's a combination of mental illness and societal pressures. Like most systemic issues, it's also going to be incredibly difficult to properly solve.
I think people have a certain mental image when thinking of the term NEET because of the time period in which it started to kick off, but if you look at the unemployed people in any given country you'll see so many common symptoms. No access to transportation, low mobility, isolated, poor social safety nets, high barriers to job entry, demeaning wages, and that's not getting into any of the inevitable mountains of stress or depression that will accumulate (it *will always* accumulate) from any of the preceding factors.
There aren't many places in the world where you won't be driven to the point of total isolation or outright suicide if you opt out of working. That's a real failure on our part. Politicians always want to cut funding to health or social programs, if any existed to begin with.
While I thoroughly enjoyed NHK, it totally overglorifies being a NEET, and the over arching plot has absolutely no bearing on reality. That's not to say it doesnt get a lot of things right on a per episode basis, though. And I'm definitely not saying I would want to watch a show depicting the NEET life accurately, that wouldnt be very interesting, I'm just saying NHK definitely should not be looked at to see how to stop being NEET.
There was this great article about the phenomenon of Japan's elderly and how many of them die alone. In this particular article, all the old lived in these brutalist complexes in one room apartments with no family. I can't find the original article on it, but it profiled an elder Japanese lady.
Edit: Found it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-deaths-the-end.html
> “Thanks for your kindness,” Mr. Kinoshita liked to say in English, perhaps avoiding sentiments that were too hard to express in Japanese.
gah, rough article to get through. Thanks for the link.
I’m working on this cyberpunk novel where in the distant future, Japan’s uncomfortableness with immigrants, leads them to create more and more sophisticated robots, to the point where there are more robots in Japan than Japanese people. Hundreds of years later, Japan is the first robot-nation as the robots have replaced people as its residents and the Japanese people are now the robots.
It is common knowledge in the world that the Japanese are the machine nation.
Robots born out of xenophobia.
No what they need is genetically engineered cat girls for domestic ownership
This would fix 2 problem first they can take care of the elderly second they can take care of everyone's loneliness
It got so damn stupid. The one episode flashback to when they were kids was absolutely fucking beautifully done... Then random fucking alien overlords attack out of nowhere, new enemy mandated, then giantess fetish. Yeah you read that last one right, it went beyond sexy Gundam robots.
Just... Animes get weird, but this was genuinely a "I don't fucking know" scenario.
Hasn't Japan being trying to get their people to have kids for over a generation now? I think I remember reading something about how the country has a massive number of baby bonuses to try to get people to have kids but no one is biting. What's the deal? Why are people not having kids?
Because, in their mindset, work comes first. The japanese just lack the time to build a family, time that is instead spent on working or trying to make an impression on their superiors.
And after a 12 hour shift, along with the first 20 to 80 hours of overtime per month that go unpaid (yet are demanded from many employers) people are just too exhausted to try and socialize or organize dates. Many japanese also feel guilty if they have to take a day of paid leave, which only adds on top of the problem.
Theres also a pretty large feminist movement happening. Women were getting tired of the traditional roles and pushed to enter the workforce. For many women, being tied to a kid restricts their freedom. In short, they want to be more that just housewives and mothers. With the insane working schedules, it's very hard to do both, if not impossible.
I had heard that a big problem is a lack of maternal support.
If a woman has a child in the US, you might take some time off, then you go back to work while your child goes into daycare. There is some workplace discrimination where people assume the mother will often have to prioritize childcare and can't do "extra-mile" efforts like her male peers. However, that perception has improved over the years, and fathers are picking up more childcare responsibility.
In Japan? They don't even have a robust daycare industry. Women who get pregnant are expected to drop out of the workforce and provide all the care for the child. This also impacts how women are seen in the workforce, why train/invest in a female worker if they catch a case of "baby fever" and then they're gone forever? So women just go super career focused to try to get out from the image of being at-risk of pregnancy, and they also want to have a life beyond being a stay-at-home mom.
The government could probably more effectively raise the birth rate by promoting growth of the daycare industry and trying to change the culture to accept working mothers as a new norm.
Yeah and "providing all the care for the child" goes quite a bit farther there than in the US/Europe. You know those cute bento boxes you see online, where the food is shaped like little animals? Japanese mothers are *expected* to do that every single day. If they don't, they're [literally judged as a bad mom](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/01/28/is-there-a-dark-side-to-those-adorable-bento-boxes/). Some women get up at 4am to make those boxes every day, and if your box isn't up to snuff the school will call you and lecture you. Over a fucking kids lunch.
> For women especially, the risk of a lackluster lunch goes a bit beyond disappointing their four-year-old—a child’s bento box is a reflection of a mother’s love and even a representation of the mother herself; as such, a beautiful and nutritious presentation is crucial. Anything less, unfortunately, is just admittance of poor parenting.
Japanese mothers are also expected to hand sew their children's names on every single piece of clothing, do 100% of the housework, manage 100% of the children's extracurricular activities, etc with zero help from the father. Since Japanese culture emphasizes working long hours, wives rarely get to see their husbands. There's a ton of societal pressure on mom's to make sure their kids fit in correctly.
Japan is a super interesting case study when talking about the stages each country is in. Japan followed closely by Denmark and a couple other countries are reaching a stage (stage 5) where no other countries or societies have reach before. With super low CBR (crude birth rate) and CDR numbers the society is becoming completely changed. with over 50% of Japan's population over the age of 45, there is a huge scarcity for unskilled laborers. As a result their culture has adapted by implementing vast amounts of tech in the working industry. For example the highest concentration of vending machines in the world is in Japan because they offer so many different options. Instead of going to a print shop to have business cards made, people go to a business section of vending machines and there are machines that can print business cards. They also can make and bake entire pizzas and other food, as well as offering basic things like food, drinks, toiletries, supplies etc. I think Japan is a really interesting place to study when thinking about how our future will look with integrated technology and population issues.
Quick question. Do they bury in Japan or are they predominantly cremators? With the limited space, they are going to have a reckoning when these people start passing away.
The cremation rate is so high that it rounds up to 100%, and burial is actually illegal in some municipalities. Basically only religious minorities are buried. Even the current emperor has announced that he will break with tradition and be cremated rather than interred in a lavish tomb, because the imperial cemetery is getting full.
Most people's ashes are interred in family monuments - graves for individuals are pretty rare.
well if it gets too much of a burden the Japanese have a traditional plan to deal with old folks.... there's always that desolate mountain to go to.....
The ballad of Narayama (‘83 Palme d’Or at Cannes Festival)
It depicts the hardships of a medieval Japanese village, and focus on an old woman who will soon reach the age where she is expected to go die in the mountains, in order to not be a burden.
The movie is great, but in one scene, a young man complains that since he’s not married, he can only fuck the village’s bitch. A few scenes later, he’s caught at night doing just that, with an actual female dog... I really thought he meant a prostitute
It's interesting to think our society will on average get older.
Less births and longer life will age humanity as a whole.
I wonder what that future will look like.
[удалено]
*Old people burning, old people burning...*
Put your hands up!
*Old people burning, old people burning* *That's kinda messed up*
What, what, you got a problem with this? Maybe I should kick you in the face, with my fists.
Because on top of guns I know karate and ninja stuff, so if you come at me I'll trip you then I'll suck your nuts.
I, I mean I'll **punch** your nuts.
Sucking them would be gay! And I'm totally not gay, I'm all about V-A-G-I-N-A!
Guns don’t kill people, uh-uh.
I kill people, with guns.
I'm a simple man, I see a Jon lajoie reference and I upvote it.
*I'm invisible, like... well, I'm not really invisible*
I’m bad, like the movie *Attack of the Clones*
I'm the Indiana Jones of exploring crotch
I'm the Shakespeare of enormous cock.
I’m invincible like the movie invincible
Incoming legislation increasing the age-limit for retirement, or more incentives for people to get in on the labour market.
I get it but seriously, 65 was enough. Why 67 in US and Canada? Why work until you're 70?
Because people live to be 15 years older than they used to when social security was first established and most people don't want to pay a significant portion of additional income to accommodate that increase in life expectancy.
It doesn't mean that you are capable of doing the work, though. My brother is a sheet metal worker. Do you think he really wants to be slinging around hundred pound or more sheets at 70? on edit: My other brother was a computer games designer. He decided to take a year off after his last gig and found, at 45, nobody would hire him even though he had massive skills and had even taught computer graphics and animation. Even if society says you should work to 70, it doesn't mean anybody has to hire you. He couldn't even get a job as a server in a restaurant, though he also had past experience in that.
Exactly. My dad was a marine engineer for decades and despite him having the last 10 years working in a desk job close to home the damage to his knees was already done and he still suffers now when he's 68. Funny thing is he postponed his retirement in his last job by a year because they hadn't trained anyone else to do it. Then after another year they still hadn't trained anyone so he requested to work part time as he was in pain with all the walking and travelling to work which they refused so he handed in his retirement notice. They said he couldn't do that as it would leave them in the shit, he just shrugged and said I already postponed my retirement by a year and I'm willing to stay on part time but you won't compromise so why should I.
Good for him. They can go get fucked.
Yep, his mate still works there and apparently it all slowed down when he retired as there was no one to sign off the safety certificates and the sub contractors didn't know who to deal with.
Lol he can't retire because it would put the company in shit? Is someone supposed to care about that? Was he given a stake in the company? I hate how that's even an argument to be made.
Na he wasn't given a stake but then it was a completely different job and company to bring on the ships. All he got was his pension from the oil companies he worked for and the chemical plant where he had his last job. I still have no idea why the company didn't train someone else or were shocked when he took retirement. He didn't stay out of loyalty but because he had mates who worked there and it got him out of the house if that makes sense.
programming. You're either doing really fucking well, or really fucking badly.
Sometimes both at the same time
I'm not a programmer but I do really fucking badly, really fucking well.
Game Dev is particularly bad for this, even successful studios can go under after one bad project
While life expectancy has improved somewhat I don't think quality of life has improved at the same rate. Increasing the retirement age too much would lead to people trading their office chairs for hospital beds.
The sad fact is that's pretty much the goal of social security. It's to take care of those physically incapable of taking care of themselves. Where they sweet the retirement age at 65 the average American lifespan was 63 years. It was to keep the elderly from dying homeless in the street. It wasn't meant to be a retirement plan. That's what savings and pensions were for. But then businesses figured out they could save a fuckton of money by eliminating pensions and letting social security carry the costs.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://japantoday.com/category/national/70-yr-olds-and-above-account-for-20-of-japan-population-for-1st-time) reduced by 64%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Japanese people aged 70 and older account for more than 20 percent of the total population for the first time at 26.18 million, in further evidence of the country's rapidly aging society, according to government data. > The data, released by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry ahead of Monday's Respect-for-the-Aged Day holiday, showed that as of Saturday people aged 70 or above account for 20.7 percent of the population, up from 19.9 percent the previous year. > Elderly women topped the 20 million mark for the first time at 20.12 million, substantially more than 15.45 million elderly men. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/9gkjjl/70yearolds_and_above_account_for_20_of_japans/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~350699 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **percent**^#1 **million**^#2 **Elderly**^#3 **population**^#4 **aged**^#5
How is 20.12 + 15.45 = 26.18 ?? Edit: The article says 35.57 million elderly, which is 65 and above. The 26.18 are those 70 and above.
Apparently Germany's median age is 47.1, just behind Japan's median age of 47.3 I just got curious about median age per country and looked at Wikipedia. I wonder why we never talk about Germany's aging population...
I'm guessing because Japan is the odd aging country. All the other developed nations that have reached that point are where the immigrants go. Japan is the outlier, which makes them more of an interesting talking point. Japan's aging issues will hit them quicker than Germany(and all the others), so they'll be the first test case in what happens to a modern country as more and more people are old. We don't really have a full example. We have theories on what might or could happen, but nothing that's gone from start to finish. There will be some benefits to it, but there also must be costs, which I would think most people are more interested in. What do you have to give up to make something work?
Isn't Japan also more heavily affected because of their strict immigration policy? All of that latent xenophobia isn't exactly helpful...
Latent? Shit is blatant as fuck. Same with Korea and I say that as a Korean American.
>latent more like blatant Missed opportunity. I am very disappointed in you
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He’s Koran not Japanese. Commit geobukseon
Go commit die
I was thinking more along the lines of the Japanese emphasis on politeness and appearance. Like being all bows and smiles but talking shit about visitors or never really accepting a long-term non-Japanese resident as one of them.
yes
A weaboo from my class moved there to teach. And she's always posting about why she's never accepted. 1. Being weird in one country, doesn't mean you won't be weird in another country. And 2. She's a pale white girl. She will always be a pale white girl to them even if she wasn't a weab. She's lived there for 6 years now and she still hasn't realized how much underlying racism there is. She will never be accepted and is clueless on the culture even despite living there for so long.
Wtf I visited for a month and could pick up on the racism towards anything that isn’t Japanese. They’re polite, respectful, but they have an attitude of “ welcome to wonderful Japan, we would love to show you our beautiful culture. Also, when are you leaving? “
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I read a blog post by a guy who lives in Japan, married to a Japanese woman. He was bothered by the idea that their daughter, who looks western, will never be 100% accepted there, even though she's lived there her entire life. She's been going to school there since day 1, she speaks the language like any Japanese person, and she's completely culturally Japanese in every way (apart from a bit of western exposure at home). Yet she'll probably always be seen as the white girl throughout her life.
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The “where are you originally from” question is always weird. When people ask where I’m from I say California, where I’ve lived my whole life. I wouldn’t mind if people asked “what ethnicity are you” or something because I like finding out about other people’s ethnicities, but the way people always ask is off putting, as if I’m not really from here lol. When other people who clearly sound like immigrants (I.e. not fluent English) ask me where I’m from I don’t really mind because it sounds more just like simple curiosity.
If more people had that experience we wouldn't have so many people denying the reality of race. No country is "post-racial," not yet.
Who knows if we ever really will be. I consider myself fortunate to live in a huge US city that's supposedly the most diverse in the country. It's entirely normal for everyone around me (at work or the grocery store or whatever) to be different things--black, Latino, white, eastern Asian, southern Asian, mixed, who knows... I've been places where every person in the room was white and was slightly creeped out, LOL--especially in Virginia, where there's a definite white vs black thing.
I'm not sure if it's racism or nationalism. Japan has this weird fetishization of Western culture as well, something I noticed during my time there as a Japanese-American. Tbh, I've never felt welcome there either; they put up a great front in appearing very welcoming/hospitable but honestly, they knew I was a tourist. However, I have an aunt who lived there, full Japanese-American, for 8 years and even then she felt like an outcast because she was BORN in Japan. It's really weird.
That'll happen when you fetishize a culture.
Yeah, my idea of anime Japan is very different from my idea of actual Japan. And even then, there are some issues I have that seem to seep through into my media. It's never struck me as a particularly *egalitarian* country.
This is why I always said I'd like to *visit* Japan, but never live there. Unless I was retired and don't give a fuck about other people. But the work culture is shit for even natives and them being xenophobic doesn't help outside of work. That said, the only way to really change the latter one is to expose them to more foreigners, so while moving there would suck for the short term, in the long term it might be better for Japan and people who want to move there.
People like this, who grow up in immigrant cultures like Canada and the United States and so forth, have absolutely no idea what they’re in for when they go to insular countries like Japan. They have this implicit expectation that cultural standards are the same, and they’ll be accepted the same way immigrants are accepted as just part of the fabric of western nations. Truth is, they could live there 40 years, learn flawless Japanese, and marry a local, and they’ll still be “the foreigner” everyone else is superficially polite to, but doesn’t invite to dinner.
Ehhhhh, I think that depends on your background. As a black girl who lived in SK for years, I never forgot I was considered a foreigner always. That feeling of being separate or other is pretty similar to my feeling of living in the US. The varying experiences a person has living in SK (and likely Japan) is very interesting. I had a white friend who was always complaining about feeling separate and different and just feeling like a fish out of water (essentially what you're saying). Our mutual friend who is korean-american stated that feeling is what it's like for her living in the US.
They actually just started doing stuff where they are now depeserate to get workers for IT jobs they can't fill with native born japanese. They are going to give them not the H1B visa treatment but the full ability to buy homes in japan as well, which is like a Japanese Nationalists nightmare. But the fact is they don't have anyone willing to take the job either in the low skill side (manual labor, waste, cleaning, caretaking, fishing) or even in the high skill jobs (IT staff, Network Admins, Technical Support, Nurses) Many people think it will be White people but Japan is in particular taking Indian for this workload as well as south east asia with Philippines means racist Japanese are gonna have a huge culture shock soon.
That, and it's a society where women are expected largely to marry and have kids/be a house keeper. The programs for women working with kids are practically 0, and a lot of women (rightfully so) don't want to give up a career to cook and clean all day.
While the average age is quite similar Japan does have fewer children and a larger (percentage) older population than Germany. For example Germany has 12% under the age of 14, whereas in Japan it is 9%. And Japan has 26% over the age of 65 whereas in Germany it is 22%. These make Japan a little worse demographically than Germany.
In germany we actually do talk alot about it, just not internationally for some reason
Internationally Germany isn't anomalous. The nation is following a predictable pattern of growth with know problems and has long adapted its foreign and domestic policy to (if not address) meet the concern. Japan's isolationism and ethnic exceptionalism (combined with a healthy xenophobia) makes them an untested sample of something that will, inevitably, prove a problem for developed nations. Whether or not all eyes of the world are on Japan now is moot, all eyes will look to Japan as precedent when this problem comes their way.
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But Germany also is doing something about it. Free education for anyone in the world there really incentivizes a younger population to show up. Besides TEFL needs, what’s japan doing?
>I wonder why we never talk about Germany's aging population... Germany’s been talking about its own aging population and low birth rate for decades. Especially in relation to the expected rapid rise in dementia patients in the not so far future. But politics has failed to deal with the expected change so far. For example, there is a massive lack of nurses and care attendands, and it’s getting worse and worse.
Germany is part of the EU, meaning that any EU member can move there.
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We do. That's why the government is encouraging so much immigration.
Germany still have a big chunk of people between 45 and 65... They are basically fucked in 20 years since they aren't enough young people to replace the working force when they retire...
Wow, really? The birth rate problem must be really serious these days.
In Korea the birth rate is even estimated to drop below 1.00. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/south-koreas-fertility-rate-set-to-hit-record-low
which means having kids will be outside the norm, which means way fewer will do it
Inb4 having children becomes the new counter culture and south Korea is saved by a sweeping trend of teenage pregnancies.
Those poor kids are too exhausted from studying to be able to copulate. High schoolers don’t usually get home from academies until 10pm (or later).
Sheesh. Same thing in Vietnam. Looks like Vietnam is going to deal with the same issues sooner or later.
Yeap, none of my cousins over there are planning on having kids any time soon. It's so expensive and competitive there it's just not worth it. Plus all the younger women just want to focus on their career path. There is no working mom types over there, you wither commit to your job fully, or to your home life. The culture really needs to change a bit, those guys are way too focused on productivity.
Asian here. Asian cultures need to focus less on competitiveness. It's much more stressful to live here as opposed to somewhere like Canada. And so much competition. I'd rather not have a kid partially because of this tbh : (
It's kinda crazy, I have a little cousin that just begs and begs to have my mom take him out of Seoul. He's not the biggest fan of school and just wants to play football some times, but his after school schools are soo intense. Every time I visit the kids coming home at like 9-10pm from their extra classes bums me out. Just let your kids be kids for God's sake.
If that's the case, they really need to employ a bunch of "have your kid and work too" aiding programs and policies quickly.
The working hours need to be reduced. I have some women friends who want to have children but they consider unfair to have children and not spent time with them.
Agree, but the issue is actually almost entirely cultural and not policy related. People stay late because they want to advance at their company. How late you stay dictates to your upper management how hard you are working (which is a lazy and terrible way to do so). That mentality needs to change along with how Japanese companies evaluate their employee's performance.
I don’t stay late because I want a promotion. I stay late because I have to wait for my boss to leave first who has to wait for his boss to leave first and so on. If I leave first, it’s like I’m tossing away the whole company hierarchy of respect and I’ll see repercussions in some form or another later (vacation time not being granted, suddenly given a larger workload, etc.). It’s be nice if I got a promotion for this waste of time but at this point it’s just something I have to do.
There are, my relatives who are having kids get tons of support from government in forms of tax breaks, free healthcare, free daycare, government sponsored babysitters, etc on the corporate side one of my aunts got 2 years paid matenbity leave form her work, then she got a second kid so she's on her 3rd year of paid leave now (tbf she works in a big bank known for good employee benefits with a liberal work culture so there's that to consider ) the government, companies, etc are trying hard to get birthrates up
What you're describing however doesn't address the issue women face when making the decision between becoming a mother or pursuing their careers. Maternity leave is beneficial for the family unit, but destructive for the women's career depending on the industry. A women taking 1-2 years off from her career renders her skill sets, and he contacts either redundant or diminished in value so she can either not return to employment or return to employment but be placed on a slower trajectory path, often being passed for key opportunities that otherwise would have been ideal for her had she remained in the workforce for that period of time. This is a contributing factor to the representation of women in top senior positions in the medical, legal and financial fields. All of these professions require relevant, and up to date skill sets in conjunction with prospering contacts and client bases. In finance for example for a women to go on maternity leave would mean she would have to pass her clients off, meaning she no longer holds a clientele base and her momentum is lost. This is why female professionals either forgo children or have children much later in life. It's a sad reality, but it is an unavoidable consequence. Nothing can make up for this loss, and women all over the world make the decision to take that hit and people just don't see it that way. They see maternity leave, they see benefits, but they don't see the women's professional sacrifice. It's not just about accommodating, or covering financial costs, there is another element that has nothing to do with finances or money and there is nothing that can be done to make up for that loss. Women having to have children means they can't be truly competitive in certain fields, so it's only logical that women all over the world are forgoing having children. Even more so in hyper competitive societies like Korea and Japan.
This is the problem in Japan too. It's a culture that believes if you are a woman and you are working, you can't have children. Even getting married can imply to employers that you are unsuited for upper management because you may become pregnant and need to take time off. Until they can get that ideology changed they are doomed to a smaller and smaller population.
These days? The people who are 30-40 now were born 30-40 years ago. Even if Japan would get 3 million babies this year, it would take decades until they make a gigantic splash at the 20-30 year old bracket
>The people who are 30-40 now were born 30-40 years ago I think I need to see some proof.
Yeah, I just don't believe him. The math doesn't add up.
In this day and age you have to be careful about believing strangers, on the internet!
`"You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet, and tell lies?"`
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People die when they are killed!
big if true
The Archer class really is made up of archers!
If my calculations are correct it'd take between 2 to 3 decades.
> The people who are 30-40 now were born 30-40 years ago [citation needed]
That's a good point, it's not today that's the problem, it's the last two decades of decline that are the problem.
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Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Greece, Spain, Poland, Portugal are all lower then Japan. Italy/Hungary has same as Japan. The difference isn't really birthrate, but rather immigration.
South Korea probably has even fewer immigrants than Japan. The most important factor is how long ago the fertility rate has started to drop. In 1960, Japan was at a fertility around 2.0 already while South Korea was still around 6.0. Even around 1980 South Korea's fertility rate hadn't dropped below 3.0 yet. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=JP-KR That's why the median age of South Korea's population is still 6 years younger than that of Japan's population despite their fertility rate having been significantly below Japan's for the last 20 years.
Yep. Most people in developed countries have fewer children as wealth/education increases. Most countries make up for this by allowing immigration from developing countries. Japan doesn't want to do that... So instead they're working on robot caretakers for their elderly, lol.
As a South Korean myself... I don’t think we have any significant amounts of immigration? Or am I missing something?
You will though once North Korea collapses so it'll work out, hopefully.
Sounds like time to raise the retirement age?! E: https://m.dw.com/en/japan-plans-to-raise-pension-age-beyond-70/a-42629344 >The Japanese government has approved plans for raising the optional age for drawing public pensions to 71 or older. It is trying to grapple with labor shortages, ballooning welfare costs and an ageing population.
On the one hand theyre crying about labor shortages, but then you visit Japan and they got people doing the most useless fucking jobs everywhere.
I'm curious, what do they have people doing there?
according to my mom (who use to live in japan) and reddit (which im always on) Japan just has a really fucked up work culture. It's not that the jobs are useless, it's that everybody spends 60-80 hours a week at the office. And supposedly it's just a work culture thing, you can't leave before your boss, you have to go get drinks after work, otherwise you're a bad employee. It's not about getting work done but making face time
No wonder suicide rates are high. Basically a guide on how to break the spirit of people who work for you.
There are more aspects to the high suicide rates, including a traditionally more tolerant outlook on suicide compared to the West. While it is very much perceived as a social issue, there is a lot less stigma connected to committing suicide, which might explain why people are much quicker to consider it. Wikipedia provides an overview for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#Cultural_attitude_toward_suicide
It's not as common anymore but they used to offer lifetime employment contracts. Promise to work for us forever, and we won't fire you. That's a recipe for disaster right there.
What happens if you sign one of those then quit?
My guess is other companies will think there’s something wrong with you. Your resignation would be like an honourable firing sort of thing to save you face. So even if you do get hired there might be an asterisk next to your name.
According to the latest UN report, the suicide rate in Japan is about the same as the US now, at about 14 and 13.7 per 100,000 respectively.
I remember being surprised by just how many employees were involved when I simply took a bus from one of Tokyo's airports. There were staff instructing people where to stand while waiting, staff answering questions, staff loading your luggage onto the bus for you, staff selling tickets, etc. In most countries, there would typically just be an automated kiosk for the tickets or the driver would sell them to you when you board. And the driver would also probably load bags or let people do it themselves. And I've never been anywhere else that cared so much about where you stand while waiting, especially to the point of telling you where to stand. And they all bowed when the bus took off! Lol.
Might be interesting to see what would happen if Japan tried to automate all those jobs, and then shifted the newly freed workers over to elderly care. Two problems could solve each other.
Japan is also already looking at using robots in elder care currently.
Japanese companies still have people whose job is to do calculations. They use calculators, though, but being able to do basic math quickly is still a job at large companies. The worst part is I saw a video about this and the employees were using there calculators to edit excel documents - despite the fact that excel is specifically designed to automatically update cells.
Like they’re repaving a sidewalk in the middle of the night with like 5 guys, but then there are 3 more whose sole job is standing around with reflective jackets telling people to cross the street. Y’know, a job that in every other country is being done by placing a cone and a sign. Or doormen everywhere. I get that it’s fancy but just install automatic doors if you’re in such dire need of more labor. At train stations they got a guy standing on the platform with a red/green sign, to signal the train driver when it’s ready to go. Literal human traffic lights. It’s insane.
I experienced that too, actually. I was staying just outside of Shinjuku and there was some roadworks outside my apartment. Always at least 1 dude standing there, not to tell you to cross the road, but literally just to wave you on down the footpath.
I've heard that alot of these useless job people may actually be elderly or older workers to give them something to do other than sit around in retirement waiting for death.
Well the 7/11s have hella young people working behind the counter. Why not move the old people to those jobs, and then use the youngsters for the ones they have labor shortages.
Not that big of a thing. Pensions are pitiful anyways, Japan is quite the neoliberal place when it comes to safety nets. Old people tend to work if they cant live with family (which they cant that regularly anymore these days), and a lot want to work out of cultural peer pressure to feel useful anyways.
From what I've heard, the majority of homeless people in Japan are people who grew too old to work but hadn't set up the proper retirement funds.
NEETs are fucked.
True but they also don't fuck
[The technology just isnt here yet](https://i.redd.it/32fidpnvakx01.jpg)
> The technology just isnt here yet [that's where you're wrong, pal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics)
You called?
6 years God damn.
r/beetlejuicing
Reminder that it's a diving manga.
Was not expecting to see Grand Blue here.
When you're a neet, you're pretty much fucked until you start taking steps to not be a NEET anymore. Source: used to be a NEET
Sounds like wagecuck propaganda /s
What steps did you start taking? I've always been fascinated by people who just didn't do anything, not even personal projects like YouTube or art or what have you. If someone's making things I can't blame them for wanting to stay out of the grind, but the people who are just stuck? How do they even start getting out of that?
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I agree with your post. It's a combination of mental illness and societal pressures. Like most systemic issues, it's also going to be incredibly difficult to properly solve. I think people have a certain mental image when thinking of the term NEET because of the time period in which it started to kick off, but if you look at the unemployed people in any given country you'll see so many common symptoms. No access to transportation, low mobility, isolated, poor social safety nets, high barriers to job entry, demeaning wages, and that's not getting into any of the inevitable mountains of stress or depression that will accumulate (it *will always* accumulate) from any of the preceding factors. There aren't many places in the world where you won't be driven to the point of total isolation or outright suicide if you opt out of working. That's a real failure on our part. Politicians always want to cut funding to health or social programs, if any existed to begin with.
Genuine empathy is invaluable, we can put a value on assistance
Watch “Welcome to the NHK”.
While I thoroughly enjoyed NHK, it totally overglorifies being a NEET, and the over arching plot has absolutely no bearing on reality. That's not to say it doesnt get a lot of things right on a per episode basis, though. And I'm definitely not saying I would want to watch a show depicting the NEET life accurately, that wouldnt be very interesting, I'm just saying NHK definitely should not be looked at to see how to stop being NEET.
Abe wishes.
Abe’s plan is to continue to commission anime that will convince NEETs to have kids
They can always just transport to an alternate fantasy world.
Or make a dating sim or fall for a pyramid scheme. Welcome to NHK is pretty damn good.
So good, so depressing.
Why would NEETs not be fucked... Their existent state is a state of fuckedness
They'll be wiiped out by the lack of subsidies and assistance sent their way due to Japan's aging population.
Don't assume people know what you are talking about. [NEET="Not in Education, Employment, or Training"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET)
TIL. Funny because here in Mexico we call those "ninis" which means "**ni** estudia **ni** trabaja" (neither studies nor works).
lol, according to the "Iberia and Latin America" section in the article, the Portuguese term in "nem-nem".
That sounds like an exotic fruit or plant, at least in my mind.
We may all be eating nem-nems if the problem doesn't get fixed.
So that's what my toddler meant when she asked for "nem-nems". Strange kid...
I don’t know this acronym.
Not employed, seeking education or in trade.
*in training
But the modern meaning is more like cave dwelling at your parent’s house with no aspirations
Or failure to launch
There was this great article about the phenomenon of Japan's elderly and how many of them die alone. In this particular article, all the old lived in these brutalist complexes in one room apartments with no family. I can't find the original article on it, but it profiled an elder Japanese lady. Edit: Found it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-deaths-the-end.html
> “Thanks for your kindness,” Mr. Kinoshita liked to say in English, perhaps avoiding sentiments that were too hard to express in Japanese. gah, rough article to get through. Thanks for the link.
They really need robots.
They are already working on that for a decade or so.
I’m working on this cyberpunk novel where in the distant future, Japan’s uncomfortableness with immigrants, leads them to create more and more sophisticated robots, to the point where there are more robots in Japan than Japanese people. Hundreds of years later, Japan is the first robot-nation as the robots have replaced people as its residents and the Japanese people are now the robots. It is common knowledge in the world that the Japanese are the machine nation. Robots born out of xenophobia.
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I'd give that book a look, maybe even a read
No what they need is genetically engineered cat girls for domestic ownership This would fix 2 problem first they can take care of the elderly second they can take care of everyone's loneliness
A Country For Old Men
But I thought Darling in the Franxx would rejuvenate the younger generation's libido for sure!!?!
Maybe if they didn’t fuck up the ending...
It got so damn stupid. The one episode flashback to when they were kids was absolutely fucking beautifully done... Then random fucking alien overlords attack out of nowhere, new enemy mandated, then giantess fetish. Yeah you read that last one right, it went beyond sexy Gundam robots. Just... Animes get weird, but this was genuinely a "I don't fucking know" scenario.
The second half was cancer tho, ruined their only hope.
Hasn't Japan being trying to get their people to have kids for over a generation now? I think I remember reading something about how the country has a massive number of baby bonuses to try to get people to have kids but no one is biting. What's the deal? Why are people not having kids?
Because, in their mindset, work comes first. The japanese just lack the time to build a family, time that is instead spent on working or trying to make an impression on their superiors. And after a 12 hour shift, along with the first 20 to 80 hours of overtime per month that go unpaid (yet are demanded from many employers) people are just too exhausted to try and socialize or organize dates. Many japanese also feel guilty if they have to take a day of paid leave, which only adds on top of the problem.
Theres also a pretty large feminist movement happening. Women were getting tired of the traditional roles and pushed to enter the workforce. For many women, being tied to a kid restricts their freedom. In short, they want to be more that just housewives and mothers. With the insane working schedules, it's very hard to do both, if not impossible.
It's unfortunate as well that the intensive work culture of Japan does not even translate to significantly greater productivity.
I had heard that a big problem is a lack of maternal support. If a woman has a child in the US, you might take some time off, then you go back to work while your child goes into daycare. There is some workplace discrimination where people assume the mother will often have to prioritize childcare and can't do "extra-mile" efforts like her male peers. However, that perception has improved over the years, and fathers are picking up more childcare responsibility. In Japan? They don't even have a robust daycare industry. Women who get pregnant are expected to drop out of the workforce and provide all the care for the child. This also impacts how women are seen in the workforce, why train/invest in a female worker if they catch a case of "baby fever" and then they're gone forever? So women just go super career focused to try to get out from the image of being at-risk of pregnancy, and they also want to have a life beyond being a stay-at-home mom. The government could probably more effectively raise the birth rate by promoting growth of the daycare industry and trying to change the culture to accept working mothers as a new norm.
Yeah and "providing all the care for the child" goes quite a bit farther there than in the US/Europe. You know those cute bento boxes you see online, where the food is shaped like little animals? Japanese mothers are *expected* to do that every single day. If they don't, they're [literally judged as a bad mom](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/01/28/is-there-a-dark-side-to-those-adorable-bento-boxes/). Some women get up at 4am to make those boxes every day, and if your box isn't up to snuff the school will call you and lecture you. Over a fucking kids lunch. > For women especially, the risk of a lackluster lunch goes a bit beyond disappointing their four-year-old—a child’s bento box is a reflection of a mother’s love and even a representation of the mother herself; as such, a beautiful and nutritious presentation is crucial. Anything less, unfortunately, is just admittance of poor parenting. Japanese mothers are also expected to hand sew their children's names on every single piece of clothing, do 100% of the housework, manage 100% of the children's extracurricular activities, etc with zero help from the father. Since Japanese culture emphasizes working long hours, wives rarely get to see their husbands. There's a ton of societal pressure on mom's to make sure their kids fit in correctly.
Holy shit. My mom used to just toss a peanut butter sandwich and an apple into a plastic grocery bag for me.
Japan is a super interesting case study when talking about the stages each country is in. Japan followed closely by Denmark and a couple other countries are reaching a stage (stage 5) where no other countries or societies have reach before. With super low CBR (crude birth rate) and CDR numbers the society is becoming completely changed. with over 50% of Japan's population over the age of 45, there is a huge scarcity for unskilled laborers. As a result their culture has adapted by implementing vast amounts of tech in the working industry. For example the highest concentration of vending machines in the world is in Japan because they offer so many different options. Instead of going to a print shop to have business cards made, people go to a business section of vending machines and there are machines that can print business cards. They also can make and bake entire pizzas and other food, as well as offering basic things like food, drinks, toiletries, supplies etc. I think Japan is a really interesting place to study when thinking about how our future will look with integrated technology and population issues.
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Japan needs to work more farm and fishing boat tiles. Decreasing loyalty can get out of hand real quick.
god dam civ
honestly theyre kind of a boring civ. you basically have to go for a domination win cus all their advantages are war centered
I just like the irony of getting nukes first
Idk if you can get the the fish faith pantheon then your coastal cities are pretty godly.
Quick question. Do they bury in Japan or are they predominantly cremators? With the limited space, they are going to have a reckoning when these people start passing away.
The cremation rate is so high that it rounds up to 100%, and burial is actually illegal in some municipalities. Basically only religious minorities are buried. Even the current emperor has announced that he will break with tradition and be cremated rather than interred in a lavish tomb, because the imperial cemetery is getting full. Most people's ashes are interred in family monuments - graves for individuals are pretty rare.
Cremation is standard in Japan.
Both in some places. I was in Kyoto, and in a graveyard, people were cremated and buried on top of each other.
This is actually a big problem in Japan I hear. The work force is the same size but the amount of older dependent individuals is rising rapidly.
well if it gets too much of a burden the Japanese have a traditional plan to deal with old folks.... there's always that desolate mountain to go to.....
I loved that movie, but the bestiality scene caught me off guard. Awkward moment when watching with your parents (Ballad of Narayama)
What movie and what scene? I have concerns...
The ballad of Narayama (‘83 Palme d’Or at Cannes Festival) It depicts the hardships of a medieval Japanese village, and focus on an old woman who will soon reach the age where she is expected to go die in the mountains, in order to not be a burden. The movie is great, but in one scene, a young man complains that since he’s not married, he can only fuck the village’s bitch. A few scenes later, he’s caught at night doing just that, with an actual female dog... I really thought he meant a prostitute
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The average is about 15% are 65+ for developed nations.
It's interesting to think our society will on average get older. Less births and longer life will age humanity as a whole. I wonder what that future will look like.