Posted on 12/18/2012 6:35:11 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
TOKYO
THE first grade class at the elementary school in Nanmoku, about 85 miles from Tokyo, has just a single student this year. The local school system that five decades ago taught 1,250 elementary school children is now educating just 37. Many of the town’s elegant wooden homes are abandoned. Where generations of cedar loggers, sweet potato farmers and factory workers once made their lives, monkeys now reside. The only sounds at night are the cries of deer and the wail of an occasional ambulance.
Nanmoku’s plight is Japan’s fate. Faced with an aging society, a depopulating countryside and economic stagnation, the country has struggled for decades to address its challenges. As Japan goes to the polls on Dec. 16 for parliamentary elections that will most likely mean the seventh prime minister in six years, voters need to demand that politicians address the most important issue of all: the country’s low birthrate.
Sadly, this issue is hardly being discussed on the campaign trail. Instead, parties are promising to lavish more money on special interests like construction companies, the main beneficiaries of public works spending.
Nowhere is the rapid aging of Japan more visible than in rural towns like Nanmoku, where 56 percent of local residents are over 65. Over the next 25 years, the proportion of Japan’s population that is elderly will rise from almost one in four to one in three. Sales of adult diapers will soon surpass those of baby diapers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Does anyone know why Japan has suddenly stopped reproducing?”
Back in the early 90s, when Japan looked like they would take over the world (much less the US) economically, Rush simply suggested that we export Liberalism to them.
We did, and they have now paid the price for a generation. Even 20 years ago Japanese women knew that their job was to stay home and raise the next generation...now they all work and want nothing to do with the beasts that they used to refer to as husbands.
They’re already working on robots to tend to this exact need.
They’re not going to liberalize immigration. Period, end of story. The NY Times is simply full of mental flatulence... as is their normal state.
Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. (Ranked 6th, I believe.) Suicide is the leading cause of death for men ages 20-44. There is even a forest in Japan known as the "Suicide Forest" (Aokigahara Forest) where people go to kill themselves. I saw a documentary on it. Very sad.
Well, that might be a part of it. But I don’t think it is even a large contributing factor.
When I was sent to Japan on business, I spent a couple days out and about, getting out of the hotel where we were having all the meetings and seeing Tokyo. What I saw was very interesting.
First, there seemed to be quite a few young men who were completely oblivious to women and girls around them. Had no interest. They were completely focused on the nerdy stuff they were doing with computers, phones, etc.
Second, the cost of living is pretty high. You have to have a pretty good job to have a wife with children at home, and our hosts explained to us that after 1992 or thereabouts, salaries and job wage growth really started to go downhill... and even back in the late 90’s, the older men were worried whether young men would start putting off getting married and having families because the economic situation was getting pretty shaky.
In recent reading of the Japanese economic situation, I think you’re wrong on the issue of women not wanting husbands and or children. I see now quite frequent mentions of “herbivore men” who have no interest in women or sex (with anyone) and who are living with their parents into their late 20’s and 30’s, because their jobs don’t pay enough to break out on their own. These guys just show little interest, if any, in women or dating - which is sort of a pre-requisite for marriage and childbearing, yea?
People in the US better start paying attention to the economic situation in Japan. It’s not good, and in the next three to five years, it’s about to get worse. A lot worse. And it will have ramifications for the US as well.
>>”Rush simply suggested that we export Liberalism to them”
From the link — “To secure the rural vote, the Liberal Democratic Party, which held power almost continuously from 1955 until 2009, devoted huge amounts of the state’s budget to infrastructure projects that were intended to revitalize the hinterland. But the revitalization never occurred. Towns were left with deserted train stations, empty hot-spring resorts and extraordinary levels of debt.”
Your post #25 is right on target!
China is looking to expand, so there's that.
Japan would rather build robots than have immigrants - they are the leaders in robotic technology
They’re in deep doo-doo. And a big part of it is the “birth dearth” they have that is going to collapse their social welfare schemes as well as explode their medical care costs.... starting right about now.
In the next several years, you’re going to see some very, very serious economic developments come out of Japan. They’re going to have world-wide implications, and implications for the US as well.
And it's not just Japan . . . China's "one-child policy" is coming home to roost. Two aged retired parents for each working child.
And of course, in the U.S., it's the baby boomers retiring only to find that our SS has been squandered on ineffective social experiments/redistribution, brainwashing our children through public schools into socialists and earth-worshipers, and idiot projects such as obscene art subsidies.
So who is procreating? . . . Muslims have almost conquered Europe. And our open border is populating the USA.
In short, the economic collapse, accelerated by ObamaCare, will have no economic superpower to step in an mitigate the fall. We'll all fall like dominoes.
Luckily, the media will warn us and tell us what to think and do. (sarcasm off)
I've been in China for the past 18 days. I heard a LOT of talk about this. The government is, apparently, re-thinking the one-child limitation.
I've been in China for the past 18 days. I heard a LOT of talk about this. The government is, apparently, re-thinking the one-child limitation.
If they would just open their doors, they could have millions of muzzlems become instant citizens and crank out millions of new “japanese” babies.
Problem solved. /s
They could selectively encourage immigration from sympatico cultures, but just as in 1945, in their insane cultural arrogance, they would rather commit suicide than survive. The result--Japanese are replaced by monkeys. Reality speaks for itself.
That actually might figure. And some day the Chinese People's Liberation Army will step ashore uncontested and find an entire nation of robots, making thirty year-old widgets.
One big circuit breaker, and the end of a nation. Japan may well disappear as a nation during the lifetimes of younger freepers here.
Their system is set up so that a man doesn't get married until he saves enough money to buy a house and provide for his family. To buy a house over there you must have 50% down and good credit.
They are a society where they save much more then we do.
Women search for a mate that is established and has a good job and money to take care of her and her kids.
The problem they have had for the past 20 years is their good paying jobs and hard to find so they have put off getting married until they can save up their cash.
If they don't spend their cash their economy just stays stagnet
I deal with quite a few Japanese students and I'm seeing them 28-32 years old, single and broke. At the rate they're going they won't have kinds until they are in their 40's.
See the pattern ?
Liberals speak with such glee when they talk about the United States being a 'brown' country in 50 years. The way they talk you'd think there weren't any 'brown' countries in the world.
There are - they're all over the place ... many, many, many 'brown' countries.
Maybe liberals would be so kind as to point out all the wonderful, highly productive, well governed and free 'brown' countries... Or even a 'brown' country where a person can buy something from a store and return it the next day... for a full refund.
We'd like to share the liberals' glee with us becoming 'brown' - they need to share more...
NYT asks:
“Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?”
Yes, Japan will survive “as Japan”, even if their population shrinks by 50% or more.
That is because they are protective of their ethnic heritage and permit almost no one (perhaps no one at all) who is not “Japanese” by birth and ethnicity to become a Japanese citizen.
This is distinctly different from the Western world and the Euros (and Euro-Americans), who have imported others who are not “ethnically alike”, and who will eventually overwhelm the Euros by way of demographics.
Japan will remain Japan, but much of the Euro-West seems destined to eventually disappear — sinking beneath the waves of a rising tide of color...
Well, the article certainly has the wrong prescription. More government spending will neither help the economy nor encourage people to have more children. Why have kids just to stick them in government day care centers?
Also, Europe is dying, too. I don’t know what the NYT writers are smoking that they call Sweden a success story. Have you noticed that most of the people having children these days are people with a religious faith? I’m sure the writers at the Times wouldn’t even consider that to be a factor.
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