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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: 2) by rondon on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:55PM (1 child)
Does massive automation help with their demand problem? I'm honestly curious if the Japanese have a way out of this predicament that doesn't include an infusion of people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:08PM
What demand problem? From the summary quote:
GDP isn't that important and low spending is what you'd expect in the wake of substantial recessions with weak recoveries, and extremely high debt throughout Japanese society. As to fertility, not seeing the problem there either. Japan's doing its part to help with global overpopulation. Even if Japan itself really has some sort of insufficient demand problem, it can always export to areas of the world that don't have this demand problem.
My view is that Japan's current problems stem from falling into a Keynesian spending trap following the 1990-1991 recession. They paid too many people for far too long to do inefficient work. Now, in order to have a strong future, they'll have to restructure their society aggressively, whether or not immigrants are involved. That's the real economic crisis they face.