[LonghornFreeper]

Sorry about the excerpt, not sure if USA Today via Yahoo is on the list or not. No registration or anything, just click the source link and the article is right there.

Reading this article was pretty scary. Anyone who believes that Japan will provide a bastion against China in the coming decades should read this article. Japan is a society already in decline, and fast approaching freefall.

[BrooklynGOP]

Maybe I should go help out.

[BrooklynGOP]

Maybe I should go help out.

[martin_fierro]

[Army Air Corps]

I am willing to help Japan increase their birth rate. This is a cause that I can really support! ;-)

[Centurion2000]

how interesting ....

[anonymous_user]

Yes, real women are tiring and potentially humiliating. Better to watch cartoon porn and "turn Japanese."

[pogo101]

I read a book about 15 years ago, "The Pink Samurai," that included a lot of this theme of Japanese men being rather clueless about how to deal with women. (Aren't we all? But this book's point was that, in Japan, the confusion was to a much greater degree than in the USA and Europe.)

I tend to think that part of the reason why is that Japanese women were kept politically and socially less powerful than their USA and European counterparts MUCH LATER into the 20th Century ... and so, now that Japanese women are catching up rapidly, Japanese men are somewhat taken by surprise. Their grandfathers still remember when women were not to speak unless spoken to. Put differently: Japan, although catching up rapidly in this regard, is still "only" in the 1950s or 1960s "That Girl!" stage of male-female sexual politics.

Sorry if that came off like Andrea Dworkin. :)

[I_killed_kenny]

"not sure if USA Today via Yahoo is on the list or not"
Gannet owns them and they still own the copyright no matter where it's reprinted (Yahoo or their own site)

[Slings and Arrows]

Today: Japan
Tomorrow: Europe (pre-Eurabia)
Next week: Us?

[talleyman]

Too much soy in the diet?

BTW, your screen name reminds me of the old joke:
"Why are Texans always smiling?"
"Long thumbs..."

[CzarNicky]

"Cry of the Losing Dogs, on the plight of unmarried Japanese thirtysomething women like herself."

Is this some kind of mistranslation? If it isn't I think I might know what the problem is.

[beelzepug]

"Nothing is happening with depressing regularity..."

Not like the good old days when you cats were raping Nanking, is it?

[TheGeezer]

This is not really news. Back in the 80s, I read - in Time I think it was - that Japanese department stores were using cardboard pictures of hostess/guides at elevators and escalators as information kiosks. It seemed that the population was declining so rapidly that young women were not available for hire for the jobs, something the stores had always provided for its patrons.

Abortion and contraception are taking a toll in Japan, it is true, just as it has in Europe and soon will in North America.

We are our own destruction. It's nice that our doom is coming with such subtlety, though. A nice touch. As for China, abortion selecting against women babies is sending the gender balance on the mainland off the rails. The population gains on the mainland are slowing, and it will become increasingly male in nature as time goes forward. Will this make China the same-sex marriage capital of the world? Or will it motivate the next major war of nations, so China can carry off the women of neighboring states to rebuild its homosexual population? Another reason I'm glad I'm a geezer...

[fr_freak]

•Sex. In a 2001 survey, condom maker Durex found that Japan ranked dead last among 28 countries in the frequency of sex: The average Japanese had sex just 36 times a year. Hong Kong was next to last with 63. (Americans ranked No. 1 at 124 times a year.)

We're #1 ! We're #1 !

[Always Right]

•Sex. In a 2001 survey, condom maker Durex found that Japan ranked dead last among 28 countries in the frequency of sex: The average Japanese had sex just 36 times a year. Hong Kong was next to last with 63. (Americans ranked No. 1 at 124 times a year.)

We're Number One, we're number one...

[LonghornFreeper]

What was the problem? I excerpted it already. I posted only a few paragraphs from the beginning of a huge article, well below 10% of the total. Why did you remove the excerpt text?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Many young Japanese women live carefree lives, staying at home with their parents, paying little if any rent, letting their mothers cook their meals, clean their rooms and do their laundry. Many work dead-end jobs that don't pay much but don't cause much stress and give them enough spending money to buy designer handbags, shoes, clothes and jewelry and enough time to take overseas holidays with their girlfriends.

There is the problem right there.

[Cicero]

There were some news articles back five years ago or thereabouts saying that many Japanese women had what they called "lizard husbands." These were men who got up very early to go to work, went to the karaoke bar with their boss after work in the spirit of Japanese teamwork, and got home late at night. So the woman would wake up in bed to find her husband gone, and would go to sleep at night before he returned.

Evidently the same on weekends, when these husbands would rise early to play golf with the boss.

I always rather liked that descriptive phrase for the man who is never in bed while his wife is awake: lizard husband.

[summer]

I had to LOL when I read this part below, because I know American men who sound just like this Japanese man when he proposed here:

The author of Kekkon Shimasen (I Won't Get Married!), Haruka abandoned her own plans for marriage a decade ago when she realized her fiancé wanted her to give up her career and lead the traditional life of a Japanese housewife. She says Japanese men sometimes propose to women with lines like: ''I want you to cook miso soup for me the rest of my life.'' Not surprisingly, Japan's increasingly educated and well-traveled young women are not impressed.

[summer]

PS Maybe some men need to learn how to romance a woman. Woman who have been working all their lives in jobs don't want to get married when marriage seems to offer nothing more but the demands of yet another job.