
Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis - lermontov
http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-three/turning-japanese-coping-with-stagnation.html
======
timeal
Why so many negative comments? Japan certainly seems to outshine the US
according to multiple metrics, so they are doing something right:

Japan's unemployment rate is 3.6% vs 5.5% for the US:
[http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/results/month/inde...](http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/results/month/index.htm)
vs
[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000)

Japan's homelessness rate is 20 per 100,000 population (25,000 homeless people
in 2001) vs 220 per 100,000 in the US:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=q-PgHH8TJi8C&printsec=front...](http://books.google.com/books?id=q-PgHH8TJi8C&printsec=frontcover)
vs
[https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/2012AHAR_PITesti...](https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/2012AHAR_PITestimates.pdf)

Japan's incarceration rate is 50 per 100,000 population vs 710 per 100,000 for
the US.

Japan is even on track to stop increasing their public deficit by this year
(thanks to the new sales tax) whereas the US is far from being on budget. And
Japan even manages to achieve this despite a significantly aging demographics
(lots of social benefits paid to non-working people), compare
[http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-
pyramids/japan-p...](http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-
pyramids/japan-population-pyramid-2014.gif) vs
[http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2012/3/28/saupload_3-...](http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2012/3/28/saupload_3-28-us.png)

Japan's society seems to be functioning better than the US. I appreciate this
article for trying to find out why.

~~~
rodgerd
> Why so many negative comments?

Because the English-speaking world has roughly agreed on the neoliberal
economic consensus that extreme individualism, devil-take-the-hindmost
capitalism is the Only Way. It is an absolute dogma, reinforced constantly
through the press and the best-funded political parties.

Rich nations like Japan or Norway who are trundling happily along with more
equitable societies, rather than a return to Victorian social models, need to
be stigmatized lest one start asking questions like "what's the point having a
country of billionaires and ditch-diggers?"

Might as well pitch atheism in Saudi Arabia.

~~~
Dewie
Please don't bring Norway into this. I'd rather not see it inspire yet another
subthread with a bunch of cocksure foreigners who think they know what this
country is like. Their analysis tends to be shallow.

~~~
Osmium
If that's true, why not help educate? What is Norway actually like?

~~~
Drakim
I live in Norway, and I think it's pretty close to an utopia.

Not that there aren't flaws, but people tend to complain for the sake of
complaining.

This often makes outsiders think that it's all just a facade and that behind
the scenes it's actually terrible, that Norway can't just be a good place to
live, there has to be some sort of dirty secret that undoes all the good
things about the place.

~~~
Dewie
Are you a native or have you moved there from somewhere else? I think the dual
to "the grass is always greener" is that you might not realize that some
things are problematic, or that there are better alternatives, unless you've
have the chance to look at it from another perspective.

~~~
Drakim
I moved to Norway when I was 5 (from Sweden). While I technically qualify as a
foreigner, I would say that I'm a vanilla Norwegian guy.

I can't really comment on being biased or not, that's obviously not the sort
of thing I would know myself, but I do have a lot of friends all across the
world that I talk with regularly, and find that they have to deal with a lot
of small crises and huddles in life I don't have to deal with (saving up for
college, paying hospital bills, high insurance costs, etc).

I know that if I suddenly lose both my arms in a car accident, or otherwise
get long-term sick, the social safety net is there to get me back on my feet.

When I've interacted with the police, they have been polite gentlemen who
genuinely care about their job and their community, I've never come across the
power and trigger happy psychopaths that the US unfortunately seems to attract
for their police jobs.

And I know by experience that even somebody who has a "low" job like working
at McDonalds is pretty well off, able to buy more than just the bare
necessities. Stuff like people having two jobs just to survive is unheard of.

As I said, nothing is perfect, but when I do hear people complain about
Norway, it's usually from an outsider perspective, getting things like our
taxes completely wrong, or from an insider perspective, complaining about dumb
politicians or bad weather.

------
hkmurakami
> _And then there’s the view. Whether it’s the outskirts of Queens on the way
> from New York’s JFK airport, or the fringes of the Los Angeles highway off-
> ramps by LAX, everything seems a bit run down and decrepit._

Even on the train from Narita Airport to Tokyo, you'll pass plenty of
comparatively run down "commerce areas" adjacent to small train stops. The
buildings are old, and made of nondescript concrete that have been stained by
the rainfall over decades. It makes me uneasy every time I see these sort of
buildings.

Taking the Narita Express or the Limousime Busses will largely insulate you
from seeing those things though.

~~~
jpatokal
Yeah, that line is ridiculous. Tokyo is the _only_ part of Japan that's still
growing in population, and that will stall and reverse by 2020. Even in Tokyo,
"new and shiny" is concentrated in a few central spots near major train
stations. Population in the rest of the country is shrinking, with many places
in outright collapse.

[https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/yubari-
withering...](https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/yubari-withering-
into-truth/)

~~~
jcurbo
Bit of a sidebar but I _really_ like Spike Japan. I wish they'd compile all
the blog posts into a book.

~~~
tsotha
I just wish he'd keep posting. I got the distinct impression someone
complained to his employer, though, and he was told to stop. I used hit that
site up all the time looking for a new post.

------
LukeHoersten
'"Do rich societies really need to get richer and richer indefinitely?" he
asks.'

They do if they are going to pay off their mega-debt. The real fear is when
the GDP drops below the yearly interest payments.

I feel the same when I go to nice European countries. "Wow everything is so
nice" and then I remind myself that Germany is paying for it all. It's not
sustainable. Look at some of the Scandinavian countries for nice mass public
transit in a more sustainable setting.

~~~
thret
Does anyone actually think the USA will ever pay off its debt?

~~~
gnaritas
Public debt is private savings, you don't ever want to pay it off. Debt is to
be serviced, not paid off.

------
tsotha
I don't find his reasoning compelling at all. Countries can coast on the
efforts of previous generations for a long time. Indeed, you would expect to
see all the outward signs of prosperity in a society which has comparatively
few children to whom resources must be allocated.

------
VaedaStrike
Japan is a cut rose. Cut in a clean way. Kept at an optimal temperature and
sitting in an optimized floral solution. It will last quite a while in a very
attractive state, but its still cut from that which renews and replaces.they,
like much of the world, are in for either a great mutation or an
extinguishing.

------
drpgq
I think when comparing Japan's growth versus other countries one has to
remember the differences between GDP growth and GDP growth per capita (as the
article alluded to). I live in Ontario, which basically has been sub 2% GDP
growth since the 90s, but has had around 1.1% population growth. So most of
the GDP growth has been from population increases rather than people
individually becoming richer. Sometimes I thing the Japanese are on to
something.

~~~
throwaway344
For anyone who is interested in Ontario's GDP numbers, I found some data.
Excel so beware.

[http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/ecaccts/oea_hist.xls](http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/ecaccts/oea_hist.xls)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
You can read Excel in Pandas and in R.

~~~
w1ntermute
As well as LibreOffice Calc.

------
marcusgarvey
>from dreams of the infinite to realities of the finite

It certainly feels like the entire developed world is at this awakening point.
Some cultures are just built to handle it worse, or better, than others.

~~~
hyperion2010
If we make it for long enough we will face a time when growth based economics
fail. The funny thing is that if you think quality of life is related to GDP
per capita then one way to improve quality of life is to allow GDP to stagnate
while you decrease the population.

We desperately need to find alternatives to US style consumer economies
because they are simply unsustainable and don't really lead to happiness or
fulfilment. It amuses me that this article seems to suggest that it is not
technological innovations that may save Japan but their longstanding cultural
habits and priorities.

------
agentultra
> I travel back and forth between Japan and the United States, mostly Tokyo
> and New York and a few other American cities, several times a year. The
> contrast is jarring. Arriving in the US can feel like rolling back a decade
> or more, returning to a time when information was scarce, infrastructure
> creaky, and basic services like ground transportation chaotic and
> unreliable.

When I visited Tokyo in 2008 I felt the same thing upon my return home. The
transportation systems are efficient, punctual, and clean. People paid for
their meals, bought snacks, and took the subway using their phone to pay for
all of it. People were, with few exceptions, polite and helpful despite my
boorish attempts to fit in.

Everything... it's so well thought out. You hand the store clerk your yen on a
small tray. You can swipe your phone at a vending machine to get a quick
bottle of water. You can walk from a bustling interstitial arcade into a quiet
shrine. It seems like everything is meticulous and considered.

Even the seediest clubs in Roppongi or the dirtiest punk bars I could find
still maintained the propriety and concern for others I found everywhere else.
After one show the band passed around a bucket for some yen and we all sat
down together and had food and drinks. One of the kids I came with made sure I
got on the right train before the subway shut down. Even as a foreigner I
could find people who were concerned about me as they were for everyone else.

Arriving back in Canada, where I'm from, was not what I had expected. The
streets are haphazard and practical without a consideration for how it looks.
People are louder. Traffic is thick. Litter abounds. Turnstiles, ticket
booths, and grumpy ticket booth operators. Pushing... always the pushing. I
had to wait a while before Street Fighter 4 would come across the Pacific so I
could play it again... and 7 years for Apple to announce that you may
eventually be able to buy a Coke with your phone in certain regions. Coming
back to Canada felt like walking backwards in time.

------
gwern
Not exactly a hard-hitting analysis.

~~~
bjwbell
Just looking at the title of his book "Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture
Has Invaded the U.S." gives doubts to his objectivity.

~~~
serve_yay
You literally just judged a book by its cover in order to accuse its author of
a lack of objectivity. God I hate you guys sometimes.

~~~
troubled5
No, the circumstantial evidence of the book title was placed along with the
shallow exposition that made up the "analysis" and was found to point in the
same way: towards a not very objective assessment by the author.

I mean, this is a the text where a teacher relates anecdotes of the japanese
actively sabotaging their learning (answering "yes" even when they don't
understand) in a positive context.

------
aikinai
I just noticed that the calligraphy responsively changes from vertical right-
to-left to horizontal left-to-right even though it's an image. If you're
reading on an iPad, you can check just by changing the orientation. Very cool
attention to detail.

~~~
e12e
Thank you for pointing this out (reading on a desktop, so I'm wouldn't have
noticed otherwise). The source does this via:

    
    
        <figure
         class="book-fullbleed ipad-portrait-img">
           <img src="ima( … )9.jpg" alt="">
        </figure>
        <figure
         class="book-fullbleed ipad-landscape-img">
          <img src="imag( … )x1039.jpg" alt="">
        </figure>
    

And where ipad-landscape-img is backed by media-selectors in bookstrap.js.

I wonder if this "bookstrap" think is related to bookstrap.org? The site is
blank, and the github-repo linked to from
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/bookstrap](https://www.npmjs.com/package/bookstrap)
is gone/empty …

Either way it's refreshing to see some people still make sensible design
without a ton of minimized CSS (even if this still pulls in two big
stylesheets and a js-file … all to display some text … ).

------
chaostheory
> Japan’s 2014 fertility rate is low – 1.4 births per woman – but David
> Pilling, former Tokyo bureau chief of the Financial Times, notes that South
> Korea’s is lower; and that those of other developed countries, from Taiwan
> and Singapore to Germany and Italy, are similarly low.

The difference with at least Germany, Italy, and Singapore is that they are
fighting low birthrates with increased immigration. Japan is not. They are
betting on robotics, in order to keep their population homogenous.

------
lovemenot
Such cultural aspects of Japan are indeed attractive and I hope they will
endure. However, the current economic model is not sustainable for a country
of 120M, or even 80 - 90% of that (after shrinkage of human assets).
Ironically, from the perspective of the country as a whole, _sustainable_
agriculture / craft industries are very far from being so.

I believe, Japan needs to find a way to attract economically stimulating
diversity into the midst of its cultural homogeneity, without generating
excessive social disapproval. OIST[1] is an interesting experiment and I'd
like to keep an eye on its progress.

Otherwise, it'll eventually come down to a drastic upheaval, along the lines
of Meiji or Post-WWII. And that can only happen after the other countries have
laid down a bright new model for Japan to follow and improve upon. Which could
be a long time hence since, as the article says, Japan is in the vanguard
right now.

[1] [http://www.oist.jp/](http://www.oist.jp/)

~~~
jpatokal
The interesting difference to eg. the Meiji revolution, and what makes this
really uncharted territory, is that the extreme aging of Japan makes both
democratic _and_ violent upheaval near-impossible. You can't vote out the
bastards, because the pensioner vote outweighs the youth, and any violent
students/revolutionaries will not be able to get the majority of the
population on their side.

As a practical example, my father-in-law was a salaryman with a rock-solid
pension and amazing health care (a month in a hospital costs $50, etc). His
generation has no incentive to change the system that has worked for them --
even though it imposes an increasingly unsustainable burden on the ever-
shrinking working generations paying for it.

~~~
lovemenot
If and when it happens, a sharp transition would include seizure of debt
assets owned by your father-in-law's generation. Either through default or
inflation.

Furthermore I understand, but cannot provide evidence, that 10% of true
believers is enough to revolutionize a whole population. Indeed the Meiji
succeeded with only around 10% support.

------
Animats
There's a new "Cool Japan" venture capital fund.[1] It's run by the government
and some big banks. Since their startup late last year, they've bought the
world's largest translation/subbing service, a TV channel, and an anime
streaming operation, and opened a food court in Singapore. The government of
Korea has been spending heavily to promote K-Pop, and Japan is responding.

They take proposals. See their investment criteria.[2]

Someone should propose a robot-run restaurant in San Francisco.

[1] [http://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en/](http://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en/) [2]
[http://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en/investment/flow.html](http://www.cj-
fund.co.jp/en/investment/flow.html)

~~~
rtpg
what's the story behind the food court?

------
greggman
I've had that experience as well but it's arguably a pretty self selected
thing. It's only people living abroad who are almost all people who wanted to
live abroad. Ask the same questions to an actual slice of Japanese natives
living in Japan and the number of people that want those things will likely be
a tiny percentage of the total.

------
stevedekorte
Is the author saying recession _caused_ the good aspects of Japan. If that is
the hypothesis, then we expect that none of these cultural aspects like low
crime rates, politeness, good food, cleanliness, etc existed before the
Japanese recession? Why do people take articles like this seriously?

------
Inetgate
There is one typo in brush style typeface translation. The word "萎縮" is
pronounced as "Ishuku" not "Jishuku". If writer want to "Jishuku", chinese
character should be "自粛".

------
carsongross
_Nearly everyone was on the same proverbial page: Japan 's population is 98.5
per cent Japanese, as defined by citizenry. While ethnic diversity has its
strengths (and some academics point out that, when you analyse the
population's regional roots, Japan is quite diverse), a set of common cultural
values, instilled from birth, may strengthen resilience in the face of crisis
and adversity._

Thought-crime in progress, citizens. Look away! Look away!

~~~
le_lenny_face
Jesus Christ. Why do we even allow this sort of pseudo-scientific "race
realist" (read: racist) rubbish on Hacker News?

Japan is one of the most racist first-world countries in the world. Have you
even seen their incessant xenophobia?

~~~
girvo
I think there can be an interesting discussion on the benefits of integration
vs. diversity, even if I personally think diversity is something that is good.
Integration has good sides and bad sides; the good being the focus of the
original article, the bad being horrendous xenophobia and terrible treatment
of those who don't integrate. Shutting discussion down as if things don't have
multiple sides isn't very liberal, in my opinion, even if I personally
disagree with the focus of said discussion.

------
Bognar
This site has this line in bookstrap.css:

    
    
      /* Use responsive pixels */
      font-size: 1px;
    

Since Firefox uses the font size to determine scroll distance, this page
scrolls really slowly in FF.

~~~
e12e
Thanks for the heads up. I was mostly happy the thing worked well (except for
arrow-key scrolling) with js off... I wasn't aware of this (mis)feature of
Firefox (I can see the rationale of using line-height for scrolling a line at
a time, so it might be safe to say that the css is at fault here).

~~~
Slackwise
Speaking of misfeatures: I was scrolling down this page, wanted to go back up
to re-read something, and the entire page just changed.

I wondered why for a second, then made a half-inch swipe to the left and
discovered there's a "feature" to let me change the page for some reason, but
it requires that I change the fundamental way I operate my phone/browser.

Tried to read the article again, and on the way down to where I was last
reading, the page changed again. Closed the tab and won't bother reading the
rest because I'm infuriated.

This is on a Nexus 5 with Android 5.1, so no, there is no rendering issue
here, or lag in read of inputs. This is just an anti-feature that need not
exist, nor is made obvious to the user that it exists and needs to be worked
around.

------
jayfuerstenberg
Herbivore men in Japanese is not "soshoku danshi", it's "soshoku KEI danshi".
Just sayin'.

~~~
mlmonkey
Does this apply to vegetarian Japanese men? Does this mean vegetarianism is
considered a negative (at least among men)?

~~~
kazinator
I don't think it's literal; it just uses meat eating as a metaphor for
aggressivity and drive. Just like in English we have "carnal act" for sex,
referring to the flesh. Or whatever.

It's not even a word denoting vegetarians, but rather herbivores. A vegetarian
is called 菜食主義者 (saishoku shugisha), not "soushoku" anything. "soushoku
danshi" comes from "soushoku doubutsu", or "herbivore".

