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posted by n1 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the lack-of-future-taxpayers dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 2) by idiot_king on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:17AM (8 children)

    by idiot_king (6587) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:17AM (#513996)

    You're right, it's late, I apparently forgot to quote the rest of the atrocity that was typed. Let me continue.

    So you are exactly backwards. They wouldn't "continue their lifestyles and keep their culture" at all. They would have "complete collapse". If they "open their doors for foreigners", then we could say that "they have a deathwish".

    Again: USA. Millions of undocumented citizens let in since 1965. No collapse. Just a racist orange goblin as President and stupid Mideast wars by Bush Jr.

    Japan knows the deal with refugees. Japan has a couple dozen refugees. Two have already gang-raped, so Japan stopped admitting refugees and passed a law to monitor all Muslims.

    And this is why they jumped too soon. How many rapes happen in Japan by Japanese men? I bet they aren't comfortable with those statistics, either! Men will rape, this is a horribly sad fact of life. But, for some reason, I'm willing to bet if they were Muslim women, you'd be totally fine with it. Just a guess?

    There are perhaps 1000 Muslims in the whole country. Due to these small numbers, there hasn't been a terrorist attack in a couple decades.

    And I'm willing to bet that terrorist attacks by Japanese men are orders of magnitude higher than those 1000 Muslims. Remember that sarin attack some years ago in the Tokyo subway? Wasn't a Muslim, was it? Nope. It was home-grown, Japanese terrorists.

    Japan has a unique and wonderful culture that would go extinct if migrants of any type were accepted.

    *Sigh* Once again, USA. Still racist. Still sexist. Still meddling in global affairs unrelated to anything about them. Same as 100 years ago.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:13AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:13AM (#514011)

    Yep, that's the one, a couple decades ago. That was Japan's terrorist attack.

    I think that proves my point, hmmm? Terrorism basically doesn't happen in Japan. It's not something you just have to accept, despite what London's mayor says to the contrary.

    European countries face Islamic terror on a regular basis. Sweden, France, and Germany have all had the "truck of peace" experience. Bombings are common too. This is not a future that would be good for Japan.

    Oh, and rape... well I'm glad you asked! It is rare in Japan. The rate is 1.0 per 100,000 in Japan. We can compare this to 9.4 in Germany, 17.0 in Scotland, 27.3 in the USA, 63.5 in Sweden, and 132.4 in South Africa.

    The US hasn't collapsed, but we sure are having problems with our immigrants. Yes, this is partly why we chose Trump. There are towns in the USA that don't speak English. This makes me a stranger in my own country. It hurts our economy; taken to the extremes (as in Paupa New Guinea especially, and also much of Africa) it largely prevents a nation from functioning. We are facing terrorist attacks: the Boston Marathon bombing and the Orlando nightclub shooting would both have been prevented if we had stopped immigration.

    That "undocumented citizens" think is a load of nonsense too. Hardly anybody born in the USA is not registered at birth. If you refer to border jumpers, they are not undocumented at all. Identity theft takes care of that. There might be somebody running around claiming to be you. Perhaps you will get arrested for a crime he commits, or get a bad credit history due to his misbehavior, or get inappropriate medical treatment because his medical records are your medical records. Every year, illegal aliens cost our society more than the cost of a wall. We could build a new wall every year and still save money.

    • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:34AM (5 children)

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:34AM (#514114) Journal

      Terrorism basically doesn't happen in Japan.

      Might have something to do with them not sticking their military dicks into middle eastern politics like certain other countries I could mention. The USA and Europe are targeted by middle eastern terrorists because those are the people who've been killing and bombing in the middle east for the couple of decades / couple hundred years. Oh, that and the fact that they know that they can easily escalate the violence if they target hysterical, ignorant racists like you.

      rape... well I'm glad you asked! It is rare in Japan.

      Ah yes, Japan, a beacon of completely normal and sane and not-at-all dysfunctional sexual behaviour. Where they have women-only subway cars to stop men from frotting themselves on strangers, and vending machines selling worn schoolgirls underwear.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:06PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:06PM (#514338)

        Ah yes, Japan, a beacon of completely normal and sane and not-at-all dysfunctional sexual behaviour. Where they have women-only subway cars to stop men from frotting themselves on strangers, and vending machines selling worn schoolgirls underwear.

        Your response is a non sequitur. If your position is that Japan's rape rates are high, then prove it using scientific evidence. And no speculation like 'But there are all these unreported rapes!' unless you have hard evidence to back it up.

        • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:21PM (2 children)

          by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:21PM (#514506) Journal

          And no speculation like 'But there are all these unreported rapes!' unless you have hard evidence to back it up.

          Sure, here you go. [japantimes.co.jp] It was only a google search away.

          But since we're insisting on "evidence to back it up", how about you provide some some proof for your lazy assertion that Japan's low rape stats have anything to do with their immigration rates?

          Interestingly, the wikipedia page where you got your statistics (which, by the way, you should be more careful with - your Scotland figure and Japan figures were from different years) show that the muslim country of Pakistan has rates well below the US, Scotland and the other countries you mentioned. A country with very similar per-capita rates to Japan is Canada, which (as I'm sure you know) has one of the Western world's most open immigration policies. [theguardian.com]

          Want to try again?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:46PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:46PM (#514558)

            Pakistan is the sort of place where it would be insane to report a rape. You might find yourself killed by your family if you reported it. You might find yourself in trouble with the law, for sex outside marriage, if you reported it.

            Japan isn't like that. Japan is just better.

            • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:54PM

              by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @10:54PM (#514560) Journal

              Better to a degree, yeah. But apparently it's still not the sort of place where rapes routinely go all the way from reporting to prosecution to conviction to punishment, so I'd say it's not all the way better.

              Well done for completely ignoring the rest of my post, btw.

      • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:05PM

        by Aiwendil (531) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:05PM (#514498) Journal

        and vending machines selling worn schoolgirls underwear.

        I wish people would stop underestimate japan's creepiness [wikipedia.org]

        (if anyone want to read about the state of affairs [techinasia.com] (js req))

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:33PM (#514216)

      Oh, and rape... well I'm glad you asked! It is rare in Japan. The rate is 1.0 per 100,000 in Japan. We can compare this to 9.4 in Germany, 17.0 in Scotland, 27.3 in the USA, 63.5 in Sweden, and 132.4 in South Africa.

      After a few minutes of research I can tell you that the swedish rape rate is massively overinflated. First off, their law deals with sex crimes differently and lumps them all in together. Second, because of such lumping, that number includes crimes and other offences that arent what we Americans do not consider rape. Paying for sex, aka prostitution? Thats a sex crime that gets lumped into their statistic. Plus, each incident is recorded. So one woman reporting twenty different incidents against her drunken husband is 20 reports in that statistic. And lastly, what they don't tell you is that many of the refugee/migrant sex crimes are against their own people.

      And let's just ignore that sex crime in sweden has been on a downtrend since 2010 BEFORE the migrants/refugees began arriving. And they have been taking in such people for decades.

      I hate religion and think people who believe in it are FUCKING STUPID. And I think Islam is one of the worst of the bunch (also includes government and law, what could possibly go wrong?). But you can't make shit up and expect people to believe it. Some of us actually research outrageous claims. It's why I think trumpies are particularly retarded. They just ate up every little bit of "news" and statistics and voted.