Without Babies, Can Japan Survive?

The New York Times ^ | December 15, 2012 | ALEXANDRA HARNEY

[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.

[2banana]

Japan has a VERY restrictive immigration policy and will survive as a smaller Japan.

We, on the other hand...

[rockrr]

We have forty or fifty million illegals we would be happy to send them...

[rbg81]

The only shortcut would be a significant increase in immigration, a deeply controversial subject in Japan.

---

And here is the NY Times championing the only “intelligent” solution to the problem. Increase immigration. No doubt they will urge Japan to import Muslims in large numbers. What could go wrong?

Japan will go through some hard times, but will survive. With immigration, they will become just another province in the Caliphate.

[cunning_fish]

In fact they had a massive import of Pakistanis at the time. One egghead in Japan decided they are genetic siblings to japanese and pushed that idea to the government.

[napscoordinator]

Could it be that the population moved to other areas of Japan. Tokyo has a pretty big population. This story could be said in many small towns in America.

[sickoflibs]

They have a serious problem there, at least in the next few decades.

Eventually they will have to liberalize immigration just to staff the nursing homes, I assume that suicide is no longer popular there post WWII.

[Salvation]

Chesterton on birth control/population control:

In 1925 Chesterton wrote an introduction to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which he said that “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”

[TexasTransplant]

If they need a Stud Service, I will carry Laz’s luggage and be quite happy to handle the leftovers.

TT

[MinorityRepublican]

Nope. The Japs will manufacture robots before they ever hire foreigners.

[Chickensoup]

Third, both the government and companies should encourage more women to enter the labor force with high-quality jobs on a par with men and offer incentives to women to return to work after childbirth. In places where these sorts of reforms have taken hold, from France to Sweden, the result has been a boost to the birthrate and the economy.

_________________________________

Pay moms to stay hoome and have a scad of children. Subsudize the scad.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Does anyone know why Japan has suddenly stopped reproducing?

Oh well. A nice empty place for us rednecks to move to when life here becomes unbearable. And I hear it's beautiful.

[Katiana Kalashnikova]

Capitalism depends on growth to prosper. I think the prospects for Japan are grim. But it will be an interesting experiment to watch.

[Alberta's Child]

Personally, I think history has simply run its course there. Once a society gets to the point where it is heavily urbanized and has such a high standard of living, it naturally does whatever it takes to maintain it and continue to improve on it — even if it means eliminating all the difficulty and uncertainties of raising kids.

[I-ambush]

Till our women had no more children
And our men lost reason and faith
And the gods of the copybook headings said,
“The wages of sin is death.”

[ClearCase_guy]

I think Japan will have a rough time. A small population of young people, and a large population of old people is an uncomfortable situation.

However, on the far side of that, Japan will end up with an efficient, automated society, with a small population and the ability to run a large national economy with just a core group of producers. That could be a good thing.

To put it another way: Think of the US with a population of perhaps 200 Million. Imagine that we've got rid of all the moochers. All the lazy people, the derelicts. We're left with an efficient, automated society, we have a vast infrastructure in place, and we have a total population of 200 million, all of whom are genuine producers.

We'd have a wonderful society.

Japan will have pain -- but on the far side of that pain, Japan may have a wonderful society.

[dvan]

Sounds wonderful! Algore and the other evironmentalists long for the United States to become as ideal as Japan.

[Koblenz]

It's almost impossible to learn to read Japanese as an adult, much more difficult than it is for someone to learn English if they are already familiar with the Roman alphabet. Even without familiarity with the Roman alphabet, there are only 26 letters to learn, and most immigrants would have been exposed to the Roman alphabet, even if the native language in their home country used a different alphabet.

Thus, an intelligent immigrant to the US or other English speaking country can become proficient in English in a relatively short period of time.

[max americana]

I volunteer my services for the fansub community in America on occasion. Based on the last Animexpo here in L.A. and from what my friends told me, there is a massive flight out of Japan. Been to Tokyo and the prefectures to visit my college buddy who teaches English there in a gakuen’ or high school, he also notices a LOT of the upper grades getting less and less students.

[NVDave]

No.

I’ve looked at the state of the Japanese economy from the standpoint of an investor.

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.