Japan’s problems are compounded by its ethnocentric concept of nationhood, where it is almost impossible for people who aren’t of ethnic Japanese descent to become citizens. There are third-generation descendants of Korean immigrants in Japan who have never lived in Korea, speak only Japanese and have only ever known Japanese culture, but who can never be legally Japanese.
I hate these birth rate panic articles. If they gave citizenship to the people who are doing the hard work (like 3K jobs) it wouldn’t be a problem.
Visited Japan(Osaka) recently with my 5 year old son. While there is infrastructure setup for people with kids such as stroller only elevators, kids/elder section on the train, nobody, I mean, nobody followed the rules. Regularly the stroller only elevators were full and nobody got out. Or able body adults didn’t even glance up to let my sleepy child sit in the kids designated seats.
There were glares at us when my son was having a hard time, almost like we were inconveniencing them.
In my week-long experience there, people in general are not tolerated for children. No wonder nobody wants kids. I wouldn’t want to if I was treated that way.
So sounds like hard pass for folks with kiddos?
Don’t get me wrong Mario land was great. But just weird shit drove us mad even inside a family friendly place like Universal Studios.
We had a friend with us that had a 3 year old girl with them. The airline lost their stroller(this was an major ordeal, nobody spoke English at the airports there)so they decided to rent from Universal Studio instead.
First of all, the person who was attending the stroller section didn’t speak a lick of English. Fine. Whatever. We used Google translate. He asked us how old the girl was and I said 3 years old.
The next question was
"Is it her birthday? "…Us: ummmm, no. That was a month ago.
They immediately said: "No rent to you. "
Wtf dude. Why?!?! Because the rules are 3 years old or younger. That means less than 36 months, not less than 48 months.
Just random shit like that seems the norm for the Japanese.
Thanks for the clarification. Sorry your trip was so rough. I may hold off going then with the new info.
As a counter point, I had a great time in Osaka with my young daughter this summer. I’m not saying the previous poster was wrong, just that my experience was apparently very different.
Half of all countries are below replacement rate. Japan’s fertility rate isn’t even the lowest.
China is already shrinking
Taiwan is not part of China.
Hey, maybe less humans means more climate. We haven’t tried that one yet.
Less humans mean less innovation. It means less energy and then less emissions total, but that’s irrelevant long term. Without enough labor to support industry growth and technology, we’ll be more on the sustaining ourselves side of labor. Which means we’re far more likely to relapse into fossil fuels. Especially if the depopulation is rapid which will destabilize industries.
That’s not going to turn into a fetish in Japan at all…
This is how the ruling class cuts us out of the gene pool.
