Posted on 04/29/2012 8:46:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“THE Children of Men,” P. D. James’s 1992 novel, is set in a future where the world’s male population has become infertile, and an aging Britain is adapting to the human race’s gradual extinction. Women push dolls in baby carriages. Families baptize kittens. There are state-run “national porn shops” to stimulate the flagging male libido. Suicide flourishes. Immigrants are welcomed as guest laborers but expelled once they become too old to work. The last children born on earth — the so-called “Omegas” — have grown up to be bored, arrogant, antisocial and destructive.
James’s book, like most effective dystopias, worked by exaggerating existing trends — the plunge in birthrates across the developed world, the spread of voluntary euthanasia in nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland, the European struggle to assimilate a growing immigrant population.
But one developed nation is making “Children of Men” look particularly prophetic. In Japan, birthrates are now so low and life expectancy so great that the nation will soon have a demographic profile that matches that of the American retirement community of Palm Springs. “Gradually but relentlessly,” the demographer Nick Eberstadt writes in the latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly, “Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction.”
Eberstadt has spent years writing about the challenges posed by declining fertility around the globe. But Japan, he notes, is a unique case. The Japanese birthrate hovers around just 1.3 children per woman, far below the level required to maintain a stable population. Thanks to increasing life expectancy, by 2040 “there could almost be one centenarian on hand to welcome each Japanese newborn.” Over the same period, the overall Japanese population is likely to decline by 20 percent, with grim consequences for an already-stagnant economy
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Trust me... There is room: Regions such as Tohoku and Hokkaido are mostly country.
I don’t think it’s wise for them to increase the population even more and pave over what little country is left. Ever since I was a kid, whenever Japan is mentioned I picture an island so overpopulated they have to import virtually everything they need because they have wiped out the resources they had.
Wait, was that wrong?
When you 'baptize' kittens, you're not supposed to hold them under for 5 minutes.
Or so I'm told.
I don't know why the NYT is so suprised by this. This is not news in any sense, as anyone with a brain who has seen the demographic numbers over the past 10-20 years could accurately predict the outcome.
I doubt it. I'd probably refer to them as 'japs' occasionally as well when writing, as it's much easier to spell than 'Japanese'. I wan tell you that for me, there is not a smidgen of racial animus in the term. It's just slang. I'd wager the same could be said of the poster. If I'd made the post, and you'd called me out on it, I'd see the humor in it, but not the irony.
I recall reading something in the ‘80s to the effect that everyone on the planet could live at the density of New Jersey in an area the size of Texas.
You are making a sound point, and this is a real issue for Japanese families. Some live in apartments so small that they have a roll up bed in the living area. In Japan, there are “love hotels” - for trysts - but most of the people using them are respectable married couples! They are sharing close accomodation with parents, and actually have to go and rent a room if they want some privacy.
Japan used to have a much smaller population, and will again. Living conditions will adjust.
She says women “will not be shoved back in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant.”
**
THIS whole notion needs to be thrown out if women are EVER to truly advance.
The idea that your life comes to an end, and that you are relgated to the kitchen just because you have a child — who makes this crap up?
I have 3 children. I also have 2 bachelors degrees and am working on a masters and a very nice career. I almost NEVER cook. I have a FANTASTIC life with a spouse who SHARES responsibilities.
I didn’t have to abort ANY children to get this life. Really. I have as close to having it all as anyone. I just didn’t get it all at once.
Women who are abort are just nitwits. They are weak, shortsighted, and have no courage. To have a lot in life takes courage — and bucking the system. To abort is to go along and get along with whomever in your life tells you “you can’t do it.”
F that. You CAN do it, even with kids. Even with 4 or more kids. Look at Sarah Palin.
consider yourself *highly* commended, sir!
(Brilliant, even by FR's stratospheric standards.)
Cheers!
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