Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds(independent.co.uk) |
Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds(independent.co.uk) |
Virgins sell more papers though, so lets get that clickbait going.
Except for Jesus, the two concepts are usually related.
> Around 42 percent of men and 44.2 percent of women admitted that they were virgins
this seems quite high, although I haven't compared it to data from other countries. Are Japanese people having less sex? And if so, why?
Though, gap between ideal and reality is certainly a one of issues out there, but financial and time issues have a lot of impact to this problem.
What they need is real teeth against law breaking buinesses.
Some of Western countries have same problem as well, but Japan's cause for overtime can be tough one as it often carries mentality of management that is heavily process orientated.
It's amazing to see that much variation between countries.
Maybe Japan shouldn't have cracked down on love hotels.
The adult industry doesn't help increase the birth rate; it helps plummet it.
In all seriousness, if the concern is low birthrates, how is the above a "clearly positive indicator"?
Implementations of maternity leaves are not very high in Japan -- this is coming from the work that histrically, they were expected to leave the work force when women are married.
Also, returning to work probably means no intention of having another baby any time soon.
Quite a lot of people may be even most want both, so as a government you should make that possible. This indicates that the government might be succeeding at that.
>Most people surveyed said they want to get married at some point.
This isn't delineated by gender, so I interpret it as meaning that Japanese men and women both want to get married -- but they aren't enough for each other.
>A booming industry surrounds Japan's growing condition of loneliness, a phenomenon at once quite particular to the Japanese, yet also a glimpse into a future where many people live atomized lives mediated exclusively through personal technology.
That modern philosophy tends to devalue (or rather not value) human relationships is the one thing I'm tempted to blame this on:
https://philosophyinseconds.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/the-...
But that is probably personal bias creeping up. Working hours are the popular explanation, but there is an incongruity: most Japanese claim to want to have relationships, so if they thought working hours were the problem then why haven't they complained? And how could they fail to notice something so obvious? If housing prices are the problem, how does this occur when Japan's population has been in decline for forty years?
I've heard of this phenomenon (and similar ones in Western Europe) and I pick up and discard economic explanations like bottles of some alcoholic beverage. But the alarm in the back of my head says that our culture is the problem, and it just happens to be popular in Japan. If that's the case, things will get worse, not better.
There are a number of interplaying and compounding factors that are responsible for creating this situation. I will list a few in no particular order.
- The hours are absolutely insane. My partner rarely leaves her office before 10pm, and by the time she does, she is completely exhausted and unable to do anything other than hit the sack. This type of situation is extremely prevalent and generally affects both men and women. It is no wonder that young people have no time to socialize, go out and meet potential partners when they spend 90% of their waking hours working or otherwise subordinating to this insane work cult.
- Japan is a country of predefined roles and expectations, and at different ages people are fully expected to meet certain benchmarks and seamlessly transition into new roles. One such role is that of a provider, and men are expected to be able to become full-time breadwinners by the time they hit 30. With the economy being what it is and the traditional Japanese notion of lifetime employment being a thing of the past, a lot of men aren't able to live up to these expectations and simply drop out of the dating pool. Some of it is involuntary, since Japanese women tend to maintain very high expectations as to what a man needs to be able to provide.
- Sex is generally highly available and there are all kinds of parlors, services, salons, middlemen and clubs catering to both men and women. It's cheap, legal and safe, thereby creating a disincentive for people to attempt and engage in the old fashioned mating process. On top of that - and this is going to sound completely nuts to those who aren't familiar with the country - there are full-time gigolos, both foreign and domestic, whose only life goal seems to be getting as many notches as possible. They approach women on the street, in bookstores, train stations, malls, you name it. I know a few of these characters and many of them have notches in the 3 figure range and juggle up to 7 women at a time. It's all they ever do, and I suspect that they tie up a huge number of women at any given point in time. I can't say I've noticed the same phenomenon in any other country.
- The local culture isn't exactly touchy-feely and even when people date, it's something they do because it's what young people are supposed and expected to do, not because they like their partner or dating in particular. Just a curiosity I've noticed with many couples.
Obviously, the situation is very complex and cannot be explained with a simple narrative, but I hope this helps clarify things a little.
Make it socially acceptable and even desirable to have more children. Give incentives to working men who have more children.
If society is moving toward the idea that children aren't a 'benefit,' then having people who are 'willing' to have children have more just postpones the issue, instead of fixing the root cause.
If they viewed people as just interchangeable culturally, why even care about their falling demographics? Other Asian and Africans countries make up for them.
Because they need young, employed people locally to provide services to all the retirees.
Do you have a degree in some engineering and speak Japanese? You can get your visa in about 2 months. Actually, if you are a programmer you may not even need Japanese.
But I don't think virginity need be a problem. If one wants to wait until they meet their right partner why not? Data shows this leads to stronger bonds (though the causation is unknown and may be something like religion).
It's not like more premarital sex even correlates to higher birth rates. If fact for first world countries the correlation has been the inverse since the introduction of the pill in the 1960s.
I suspect child rearing is one of those things that mentally many consider to be a nuisance, but once it happens and there's a kid our emotions take significant hold and it becomes all important.
Why is that a problem? You don't need to live separately from your parents or grandparents in order to get married. Multi-generational households were the norm until very recently. Also, given that the elderly are much healthier now than in the past, they may not need as much care.
Your alternative is to shoot them at the border, or film them while they drown at sea... and even that wouldn't work as well as you might hope. Just wait and see what the next few decades hold, it's going to make this recent wave of migration seem absolutely delightful by comparison.
We've made the implicit choice to live our lives in such a way that the AGW is going to make the places like Northern Africa utterly unlivable, and then we'll blame people for fleeing from it.
It's the typical tragicomedy of a species that has a collective memory of about 20 seconds.
To the degree Africa is unlivable it's because of Africans and their high birthrate (but most of it is not unlivable at all, it's just that Europe is richer and you get free everything).
Either the EU closes its borders or immigration will be the end of Europe. Don't pretend you don't understand this.
Immigration might be a harder sell than dwindling down and disappearing altogether as a nation/culture/race/whatever else is bundled in with being "Japanese".
I believe we reached a sort of mild agreement that Japan's collective unconscious is still trying to process the shock of being on the receiving end of a nuclear attack.
>The theoretic basis of alienation, within the capitalist mode of production, is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny, when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people.
This also explains why opening the doors to immigration is such an unattractive "solution" (quotes, because I refuse to consider taking a break from exponential population growth a problem) : immigration rarely comes without urbanization and even shrinking countries (or maybe especially them?) are still seeing growing cities, all the shrinkage is happening in the increasingly abandoned countryside. Thinking of this, it might not even be a new phenomenon: historically, non-urbanizing immigration was so rare that one would typically sideline the border-crossing aspect and just call them settlers, no matter where they came from.
Uh? Japans's population has stabilised during the last 15 years, and it was growing for the previous 25 years (like +15 millions).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10788996/Godzilla-wh...
One thing that jumped out at me was what appeared to be a widespread fetish where the ideal woman looked like a cupie doll type school girl, almost like a living anime character.
There were also a lot of free "manga" around (anime magazines) and not only where these schoolgirl characters everywhere, raping them was a common theme.
I loved my short stay in Japan, and I had a lot of positive experiences there, but that aspect of the culture was downright creepy.
http://www.oneikathetraveller.com/tokyo-style-and-infantiliz...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_manga#After_World_W...
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/godzilla-is-our-never-endin...
--
[p.s. edit: this thread got me surfing around and landed on the topic of Kawaii Ambassadors [below], which prompts the thought that another component of this very visible trend in post WWII Japanese culture may be a desire to present a non-threatening global image.]
http://web-japan.org/trends/09_culture/pop090827.html
http://www.japannewbie.com/2010/01/14/state-sponsored-cute-k...
People who are dating use them a lot. Because flats are usually quite small, it is sometimes more convenient to spend the night in a love hotel than going home. Married couples use love hotels from time to time in order to be able to make sex without having to worry about the noise, or about a kid interrupting.
The most important for Japanese society is convenience! ;)
A teenager in the US (or most other places for that matter) would have saved to rent a Waldorf Astoria suite if that was the only way to get their game on...
The semantics of the quoted sentence clearly indicate that women going back to work is seen as a good thing (by the author; not necessarily my personal view) in the context of a "notoriously patriarchal society". It is clear that the author makes this point separately from the main concern of the article.
I don't even know how to interpret it differently, regardless of whether I agree.
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21697817-financi...
Conversely in china, some young women are not getting married because they do not want to be roped into caring for their in-laws too. One of my Chinese students admitted that she was desperate not to return to china after graduation for fear of being locked into caring for her grandmother. Should she marry here, she would then be under pressure to have her grandmother move in. Her goal was to stay single and in school as long as possible. It's harsh, but she didn't want to be married so long as her grandmother was still alive. Marriage to a Chinese boy would only compound the problem as he would likely be in the same boat.
I can understand the desire to feel like you have something in your control though, when the reality is so very different.
This just in... Europe is quite a bit larger than Israel, and composed of different sovereign nations.
From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football.
Japan killed tens of millions of Chinese and intended to occupy the entire western Pacific, killing or enslaving all the people who lived there. The entire nation, all of its labor and industry, was bent toward this goal. It was a nation of profound evil.
That wouldn't be far from the truth? If I remember, and it was reported correctly, the US govt deemed the nuclear bomb to be the lesser of two evils; the other being a long drawn out deescalation due to Japanese pride.
It's just gong to happen to you, because life isn't fair.
If you want to stop the migration we're going to see in the coming decades, it won't be war, but wholesale slaughter. Frankly, that conflicts too strongly with our view of ourselves as good people.
Besides, war with whom? Tens of millions of people fleeing their homes? Are you going to go to war with migrants, or maybe you think bombing their homes a bit more will make them less likely to leave?
If you're American, your original comment was referring to the US immigration policy? That would make that original comment seriously misguided.
As to the basic point however that you can somehow vote someone into power who's going to change the reality of how the world is turning out... ha. Ha ha. Unless you're voting for someone who's literally talking about shooting people at the border and letting them drown at sea, you're falling for someone's lies because you desperately want to believe them.
Then I'd ask why you're so desperate to believe them.
It's mentioned in the (rather "left") book and Showtime series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone%27s_Untold_Histor...
I don't think it's a stretch at all to believe that the US did not need to drop the second bomb.
That's one perspective. Another is that Japan was merely doing what it felt was necessary to protect itself from interference by aggressive Western Imperial powers, and weren't necessarily more "evil" than any other empire at the time. A third is that the country that dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities and firebombed Tokyo to the ground was no less evil than the empire they were fighting.
I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this, but "evil" seems more often than not to be matter of cultural relativism and propaganda. It wasn't long after World War 2 that the US was begging Japan for help in their other Asian conflicts and burning whole villages to the ground in the name of fighting the "profound evil" of communism.
One can only assume that this individual believes Germany's concentration camps and what occurred therein were just "cultural relativism" and "propaganda" too and that Germany was "doing what it felt was necessary to protect itself".
One can only assume this individual didn't bother to read all the words I wrote before deciding they knew what I believe.
I specifically said I didn't subscribe to the views I enumerated, but those views certainly do exist. Personally, I think Imperial Japan was incredibly evil. I also think the atomic bombings were evil. Hell, many Japanese feel the atomic bombings were justified - and Japanese legislators contributed to the very peace constitution that "emasculated" them, because they felt (justifiably) betrayed by the Emperor's ambitions.
But since we're discussing the way Japan may view the atomic bombings and how that event affected Japan's culture, reducing that culture to the thought-terminating cliche of "profound evil" adds nothing to the discussion.