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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:06AM (2 children)
I was a salaryman until years of long commutes and sleep deprivation and the senselessness of it all finally took their toll, and I suffered a nervous breakdown at work. Now I'm a hikikomori, and I haven't spoken to anyone for two years. I get so much sleep now I can finally think straight, and while wide awake I'm doing the very best trolling of my life. Eat my well rested ass, wage slaves!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:05AM (1 child)
Yup, Japanese. Or US millenial / teen, guess the puritan morals are finally dropping away.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:38PM
The modern puritan IS the progressive SJW. Just a slightly warped religious cult. Worship of ones own holiness leads to societal collapse and self destruction inevitably. The English and Dutch were correct to excise them from their culture. We're stuck with them, probably. Truly a cultural cancer.
Its interesting to view political polls, "Generation Zyklon" is pretty far right wing on average, although the left wing sub-population has achieved cultural escape velocity and is accelerating leftward faster than any point in history while the bulk of the generation is moving rightward. Next couple decades going to be interesting to watch play out.