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Onuki, a 31-year-old salesman, is headed to the train station to catch the 12:24 a.m. train, the last one of the night, back to his home in Yokohama. The train will quickly fill up with other professional working men.
At about 1:30 a.m., after having made a pit stop at a convenience store to grab a sandwich, Onuki arrives home. When he opens the bedroom door, he accidentally wakes his wife, Yoshiko, who just recently fell asleep after working an 11-hour day. She chides him for making too much noise and he apologizes.
Then, with his food still digesting and his alarm set for 7 a.m., he creeps into bed, ready to do it all again tomorrow.
Over the past two decades, stories like the Onukis' have become commonplace in Japan. Young couples are fighting to make relationships work amid a traditional work culture that expects men to be breadwinners and women to be homemakers. It's a losing battle. Many newlyweds are forced to watch their free time disappear, surrendering everything from the occasional date night to starting a family.
The daily constraints have made for a worrisome trend. Japan has entered a vicious cycle of low fertility and low spending that has led to trillions in lost GDP and a population decline of 1 million people, all within just the past five years. If left unabated, experts forecast severe economic downturn and a breakdown in the fabric of social life.
"Adult diapers have outsold baby diapers in Japan for the last six years."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by boltronics on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:06AM (18 children)
Seems to me that an economy which is only sustainable with continued population growth is doomed to fail eventually anyway (not enough land, too much pollution, etc). The solution should ideally not be to force an increase in population and delay the inevitable, but rather to create a new system that is sustainable without such a requirement.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 1) by idiot_king on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:12AM (10 children)
Well, while you're trying to formulate that great new system, Japan will have withered.
The simplest and most effective way is migrants. Same reason why sanctuary cities in the US are so prosperous: there's always someone there to take up the lower-end jobs so society can still run in high gear.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:49AM (9 children)
Is that why they're so prosperous? California has a trillion dollars in growing debt despite being the most attractive state in the country to live in, plenty of millionaires, billionaires, corporations, and Hollywood.
No, the problem is that the financial white collar parasites can't profit unless the economy is constantly growing. And since they're the ones in politicians' ears, immigration policy gets made for them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:06AM
Insightful for that bullshit? Really?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NewNic on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:11AM (4 children)
Parent is no doubt another butt-hurt Red state resident who is upset that California, despite its liberal policies is more wealthy that his/her dirt-poor rural backwater, which is mooching off the blue states.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:59PM (3 children)
It is *because* of liberal policies that we are successful. We rejected the conservative economics of poverty, starvation, and neglect and proved that liberal economics works where they are sincerely implemented in good faith and without a Republican party strong enough to sabotage us.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 24 2017, @12:32PM (2 children)
Let's see what Fresno looks like in ten years. The "liberal" economics of poverty, starvation, and neglect aren't any prettier than the conservative version.
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:31PM (1 child)
Better than it looks now, which is better than 10 years ago.
Conservative economics do not produced improvements for working people and the middle class. And they certainly would not help Fresno or the central valley. Conservative economics are an incredibly reliable engine for the manufacturing of human misery, poverty, and early death.
Our state will not allow conservatives to claw us back to feudalism, which is their dream.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:06AM
You sure like to pull facts out of your ass, don't you?
I picked it because it's a growing city (has been that way ever since its creation around 1880) and because it is one of the poorer regions of California. So a sudden reversal in its population, which is hard to disguise, would be a strong indication that the city has changed in a bad way and hence, its population has similarly experienced bad times.
I think we'll see the start of population decline in Fresno by 2027 which is about five years into the $15 per hour state-wide minimum wage law that California passed in the recent past (and for which roughly 50% of Fresno's workers make less currently). It should be educational.
(Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:29AM
I agree. Not modding +1 insightful because it's obvious: The growing tilt in wealth-distribution in afaik all developed countries is evidence.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:10PM (1 child)
California's debt is going down you liar. [usgovernmentspending.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 24 2017, @12:37PM
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:16AM
Don't worry, Frankie and Benjy [wikia.com] are on the case [slashdot.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:44AM
At some point in the future, the birth rate and genetic defect rate will become equal. Humans will become extinct.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:10AM (2 children)
Not necessarily. Excessive population growth is an age old problem that life has had to deal with since it began billions of years ago. Some of the solutions are very ugly. Periodic wars to kill off excess population is one way. Famine is another. Endless cycles of growth and collapse can be sustainable, as long as the peaks and collapses are not too destructive or thorough.
Whether humans must or can live that way is the question. Barbarian hordes without the technology to discover and convert all available resources can do that, can all just pick up and move somewhere else and fight with the current occupants if any, when they run out of room or food. They can't inflict any lasting damage on the environment no matter what they do. Modern nations with nuclear weapons absolutely cannot live that way. What I suspect is that overpopulate and collapse is a weak strategy that leaves a species more vulnerable to extinction, and so life has evolved various restraints.
But that seems like only part of the story of what's going on in Japan. This workaholism, what is the point of it? They in a terrible hurry, racing to get ahead of the rest of the world? America is fairly badly infected too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:34AM
There's no point, and it's almost certainly more destructive than productive. The Japanese even have a word, Karōshi [wikipedia.org], meaning (quite literally) "working to death".
The problem is really cultural. If you go home before your coworkers do, you must not be as dedicated to your company as they are. If you don't go out drinking with your coworkers after work, you must not like them very much. This attitude is so ingrained that even if you tell your workers to go home and relax they probably won't.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:14PM
Two reasons: 1) it improves various aspects of the worker's life, particularly financial, social status, and company/industry position, and 2) it improves society since the worker typically produces more and generates more benefit for society.
(Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:16AM
An economy should be sustainable without population growth, and I think this is the case: Economically, the unemployed are a surplus the economy could do without. (I'm not arguing morally here, and I'm in no way inferring a lower value of unemployed. Quite the opposite, I think we need to distribute work more equally and embrace the opportunity for more free time, to create new art, new entertainment and enjoy life. The problem is that high unemployment-rates tilt the power in the employers favour, enabling them to exploit the employees even further, that way driving down the number of required employees and the salaries required to enable the employees and unemployed to consume.)
But what happens in Japan is not "no growth", but a hefty decline. The proportion of "elderly to care for" vs. "young people able to work" is a growing due to reduced birth-rates, and growing further due to medical progress. Employing foreigners in order to mitigate this problem seems like a valid option to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:46AM
Well said. Low fertility and low spending are obviously good things.
The real problem is there was too much fertility before, especially right after WWII and in the 1960s. Population booms are usual after war and the boom in 60s was driven by too much spending... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_pyramid_of_Japan_2015.png [wikimedia.org]
Also Japan has post WWII had a crazy level on consumption, it was the worlds largest economy from 1968-2011 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/feb/14/china-second-largest-economy [theguardian.com]
We indeed need to come up with a better system.