Posted on 03/17/2023 11:02:23 PM PDT by Cronos
When Kentaro Yokobori was born almost seven years ago, he was the first newborn in the Sogio district of Kawakami village in 25 years. His birth was like a miracle for many villagers.
Well-wishers visited his parents Miho and Hirohito for more than a week – nearly all of them senior citizens, including some who could barely walk.
“The elderly people were very happy to see [Kentaro], and an elderly lady who had difficulty climbing the stairs, with her cane, came to me to hold my baby in her arms. All the elderly people took turns holding my baby,” Miho recalled.
During that quarter century without a newborn, the village population shrank by more than half to just 1,150 – down from 6,000 as recently as 40 years ago – as younger residents left and older residents died. Many homes were abandoned, some overrun by wildlife.
Kawakami is just one of the countless small rural towns and villages that have been forgotten and neglected as younger Japanese head for the cities. More than 90% of Japanese now live in urban areas like Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto – all linked by Japan’s always-on-time Shinkansen bullet trains.
That has left rural areas and industries like agriculture, forestry, and farming facing a critical labor shortage that will likely get worse in the coming years as the workforce ages. By 2022, the number of people working in agriculture and forestry had declined to 1.9 million from 2.25 million 10 years earlier.
Yet the demise of Kawakami is emblematic of a problem that goes far beyond the Japanese countryside.
The problem for Japan is: people in the cities aren’t having babies either.
“Time is running out to procreate,”
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
“Time is running out to procreate,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a recent press conference, a slogan that seems so far to have fallen short of inspiring the city dwelling majority of the Japanese public
China is patiently waiting.
China is due for the biggest population crash in history.
Socialism destroys families and government pinzi schemes are about to run out of other people’s money.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
(Rudyard Kipling)
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Well, artificial birth control is evil. That’s all
“Its fertility rate – the average number of children born to women during their reproductive years – has fallen to 1.3 - far below the 2.1 required..”
Last I checked, fertility rate in USA is only 1.6. And dropping.
Imagine a world without babies...
What a terrible place that would be...
The declining birth rate reminds me of two things: first the movie ‘Children of Men’ a world where people could no longer have babies . The other thing is an experiment with rats that were given all the food they could want and allowed to multiply without bound. The experiment resulted in a population collapse because the rats no longer cared about becoming parents .
We may be fighting wars over third world babies to keep economies from collapsing
China is likewise facing a demographic implosion.
By 2100, Nigeria will have a population equal to that of China.
Regards,
So to help, I would need to increase the birth rate of women in their reproductive years by 0.8 kids per woman, or basically 1.5 million less 799,728 = 700,000 kids.
I don’t think I’m up for that. Maybe when I was younger. Plus I would need pictures.
“Plus I would need pictures.”
Do your patriotic duty man! Work with the lights out. The pictures we showed you weren’t really her anyway. ;-)
Assuming I’m only attracted to 1 in 5. And assuming half of those are married. That’s 1 in 10. So now instead of increasing the birth rate by 0.8 it needs to be 8.0 kids per available woman that I’m attracted to.
I’d like to help. I really would. Men are problem solvers. But this just seems insurmountable.
lol...”Love” will find a way!
If both of you are wearing brown paper bags over your heads, does that hurt the pregnancy rate?
Probably not. May actually help in some cases.
You know what would really help to boost the birth rate and repopulate the countryside?
Working from home.
Japan has the technology to do this. They just have to decide they want to.
It is their screens and media. It poisons the kids. I know it sounds weird but there isn’t one trans in US who isn’t into Anima and Manga and screens.
It goes double over there.
It isolates.
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