- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
Outside a train station near Tokyo, hundreds of people cheer as Sohei Kamiya, head of the surging nationalist party Sanseito, criticizes Japan’s rapidly growing foreign population.
As opponents, separated by uniformed police and bodyguards, accuse him of racism, Kamiya shouts back, saying he is only talking common sense.
Sanseito, while still a minor party, made big gains in July’s parliamentary election, and Kamiya’s “Japanese First” platform of anti-globalism, anti-immigration and anti-liberalism is gaining broader traction ahead of a ruling party vote Saturday that will choose the likely next prime minister.
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Is anyone making a list of those anti-foreigner countries, so we know where not to shop, where not to visit, and where not to invest in?
A better question would be is anyone making a list of the people financing these candidates. Id bet anything if you follow the money trail, there’s a common denominator.
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My list so far:
- United States of America
- Hungary
- Russia
- Japan
But… I expect there are a lot more.
It’s actually scary how quick they’re rising. I live in Japan, and I once heard them at a intersection nearby on a car giving a speech. I hated how they speak. They sounded like they were heavily appealing to the emotion and used a lot of sentence final particles like ne, in a tone that sounded half-aggressive and also… very conservative in a way. They were talking some shit about how Japanese people should come first and that we should “protect Japan”, as if there was some sort of foreign force trying to tear Japan down to pieces. What’s worse was that there were actually people cheering for them. I actually wanted to go downstairs to shout at them but I restrained myself from doing that. I still sort of regret not going there to shout at them.
They’re scared. If you believe the info out there, population collapse is imminent. Someone shouting out patriotism, rallying the people, is probably a comforting thought to them. They need someone to blame, the outsiders are easiest.
When people don’t feel they can afford the time and money to have kids, populations break and noone is addressing it. The world could probably stand to have some population regulation back down from 8bil, but this isn’t the way :(
Their society will collapse from this racism in a generation or so. No point in correcting people who can’t see the writing on the wall. As much as the current regime tries to deny it, immigrants have been the strength of the US.
The populist surge comes as Japan, a traditionally insular nation that values conformity and uniformity, sees a record surge of foreigners needed to bolster its shrinking workforce.
Here’s your short reminder that there is no such thing as a “too small workforce”.
Anti-immigrant policies, which allow populists to vent their dissatisfaction on easy targets, are appealing to more Japanese as they struggle with dwindling salaries, rising prices and bleak future outlooks.
A smaller supply of labor on the labor market means that higher prices will be paid for said labor, which means higher salaries. The decline of japanese population is a good thing for the people. Trying to “fill up” that population with foreigners is the most wrong thing anybody could do in that situation.
I fully, 100% support the japanese people with trying to uphold their own culture, their own way of life, and deal with their problems themselves. If you rely on foreigners to solve your problems, then you have already lost. In fact, you never even tried. If you have dwindling salaries and you try to fix the problem by giving away more jobs to other people, then you’re stupid and shouldn’t hold a ruling position. That’s economics 101, not a conspiracy theory.
I mean, America has traditionally been an immigration country. 97% of people in the US today are the descendants from immigrants, so at least there i can understand that immigration seems like a historically continuous process. But japan always had little migration, both in and out. It’s pissing me off that newspapers say we need to “fix” our declining birthrates. We don’t need to “fix” it because it’s not a problem. It’s just people giving the planet a break and creating some more space for themselves. Fewer people in a country means more resources per person. That increases the resource supply and decreases the Cost of Living; which probably increases the Quality of Life.
This is the longest piece of horseshit I’ve seen all week.
There is absolutely such a thing as too small a workforce. Higher prices for labor eventually means higher prices for goods. Until it all breaks down because you don’t have enough working people for a functional society.
Who takes care of the elderly or works essential jobs like healthcare? There are maximum ratios for emergency care nurses to patients. Even if you tripled their pay its not going to budge that ratio one bit.
He’s supported by the most exceptionally ignorant among the right-wing (whom we call ‘netto-uyoku’—Internet right-wings). Many people in Japan use Xitter as their primary source of information and are being brainwashed by the xenophobic conspiracies flooding the platform. This country is over; it’s actually worse than America, IMHO.
I’m a fairly open borders guy, but if you want to have near-zero immigration to avoid foreigners, the country HAS to improve the life of persons, particularly women, so that having children and raising them to adulthood is a activity that is more joy than stress. Otherwise, you’ll go the way of South Korea.
Of course, the “correct” behavior is to not treat foreigners as other, but as “merely” different aspects of self. Then seek to integrate all tolerant persons that want to immigrate; likely through multiculturalism.
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Racism and xenophobia aside, how many humans do we need? Our poor earth. A declining population is probably an ok thing. I think it’s the capitalist class ringing the alarm bell as they see their profit forecasts take a blow. How many hundreds of millions should that island hold?
I’m not sure how many people Earth will hold in the future, but we can look at historical data. Source
We know that worldwide human population was around 300 million for most of the medieval age (500 AD to 1500 AD). That was sustainable, i.e. people lived like that for a thousand years without incurring some ecological catastrophe. I’m not sure whether it’s needed to return to these numbers, but it’s certainly possible.
I’m all for persons voluntarily opting to have fewer (or no) progeny. Certainly, that is my intent.
But, Malthus was wrong on so many levels, and regulating reproductive activity even with the best of intent is going to be abused by eugenicists for genocide.
The already posted SK vid explains how the current social systems in most countries need at least replacement birth rates. It might be possible to have a society that could survive less-than-replacement birth rates, but I don’t see how.
but I don’t see how.
Tax the F out of the rich and give it to child-bearing families. The amount is based on the rate of decline. Hand it out as a monthly stipend, and enforce checks for kids’ quality of life.
Free government-staffed daycare.
3 Months Paid Paternity/Maternity, guaranteed jobs.
Free Fertility Clinics.
It’s going to be expensive AF for a generation or two.
That’s not how to survive with less-than-replacement birth rates, that’s how to get higher-than-replacement birth rates (possibly without immigration). (I will admit that I was unclear that I meant “I don’t see how” to long-term sustain population decreases.)
But, absolutely, to get more birth, you need to have lots of support for child-raising, so that it is seen as more joyful than it is stressful. I know SK is having problems getting the political (or even democratic) will to implement those things, and even if they did all of that today AND birth rate immediately soared, they’d still have a “demographic squeeze” that their current economy can’t sustain.
I don’t think Japan is facing the demographic squeeze, yet. I don’t think you’d find much support for these “COMMUNIST” ideas among Kamiya’s followers, tho.
It’s tunable. You don’t need to exceed, you can run at 99.95 and slowly back down.
Still going to have the geriatric problem, but that seems more approachable.
It might be possible to have a society that could survive less-than-replacement birth rates, but I don’t see how.
I want to add that historically, in the US from 1680 to 1880, the population has grown by approximately 3% annually. Source
(In the table, since the growth rate given is per 10-year interval, you have to divide it by 10, roughly, to get 3% annual growth)
This suggests that it should be possible (at least in theory) that the population can shrink at the same speed, i.e. 3% annually. This would mean an average fertility rate around 0.66 children/woman. Currently, in most western nations, it’s around 1.4, while 2.1 would be “replacement levels”, i.e where the population numbers stagnate.
The reason why i think you can have a 3% annual population decline is because it’s kinda symmetric: instead of a surplus in children (which eat and consume resources but don’t contribute through their labor power), you have a surplus of old people (which, mostly, also consume resources but don’t work). So, the situation is kinda symmetric, and that’s why i suggest that it should be possible.
because it’s kinda symmetric
That’s not what I’ve been told, but I’m not an expert.
I imagine part of that is due to an interaction with economics, particularly inflation. A 3% inflation is considered healthy, but a 3% deflation is almost certainly a monetary system in a death spiral.
It’s a delicate feedback loop. Statisticians say that once you reach a certain decline rate, you end up exponentially shrinking and lose most of your middle-aged population in a couple of decades. The lower ages continue to decimate, and the geriatrics end up living in poverty.
Especially in Japan where the reproductive numbers are already barely sustaining.
Taxes have to skyrocket to keep things running, the economy and real estate go fallow. It’s a particularly nasty downward spiral they paint. Supposedly, even if you try to recover, people won’t be able to afford to have kids and they’d need to be having a LOT of kids each. Could be some horrible forced breeding shit if a few generations just to keep us from dropping to unsustainable levels.
Ideally, you evenly distribute the young, working people that are available on Earth. Japan has too few, Africa has gobs. (Although I don’t even know if the trickle of foreigners they’re taking in are from high-birth places)
Unfortunately, whatever the local majority group is is against whatever group isn’t, and that’s how you get history, and history happening again.
This vid explains the situation better than I can (it’s about South Korea but Japan is basically in the same boat)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
From a higher abstraction vantage point, you are not wrong, but you are basically advocating for entire countries to disappear
but you are basically advocating for entire countries to disappear
In biology, a species is considered threatened if there’s fewer than 200 individuals of that species around.
Here’s your short reminder that south korea has 52 million people, so even if people almost stop having children for a generation or two and the population stabilizes at 5 million people, which is 1/10 of what it currently is, it’s still very far away from extinction.
ugh… watch the video and then come back once you ditch the pedantry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
if a country of 52 is reduced to 5, they would literally roll back to per-industrial living
If the entire country wants to enact policies and cultures that would lead to their disappearance then who are we to tell them otherwise?
rational people?
But you are being disingenuous here… it’s not the entirety of Japan, same as the entirety of Murica did not choose to swim in the sewer with MAGA… yet they are forced to by a loud minority and a push over majority
I think we should at least warn them; perhaps they don’t have enough information to connect that outcome to their currently preferred policies. I.e. they don’t actually “want to enact policies and cultures that would lead to their disappearance”. Preventing persons from unintentionally harming themselves seems like a good thing.
Preventing persons from harming others (unintentionally or not) seems like a moral imperative. And, I think there are probably SK citizens that don’t consent to the current policies that will be harmed.
But, at the end of the day, I don’t have any action items. I see it mostly as a cautionary tale to drive my own policy preferences.
Welcome to the era of Misinformation
Why do you think we are here? getting people to vote against their own benefit is how we get Billionaires and eventually devolve into fascism before we step into another WW
Yeah, the hostile information environment is … tough. But, until we figure out how to navigate it, we won’t have a truly global society, and I’m not sure that separate, non-hostile communities/associations/syndicates are a stable configuration.
Critical thinking skills are part of that, but exercising them as a defense in that environment is not something you can sustain indefinitely. Everyone needs time to rest and everyone is going to make mistakes.
Japan’s population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children. Their population by age is becoming very top-heavy which means that the young are paying a lot to keep the old alive.
The solution to this (apart from don’t get into such a situation) is to import young workers to even out your population spread and to raise wages in line with the cost of living and raising a family.
They appear to be shouting “Damn foreigners! Coming over here and making all our elderly live longer than we can economically support them! Overworking our breeding generation so they don’t want kids! Curse those foreigners!”
Basically, a shrinking population is good for the people, because there’s fewer people among which to divide the resources that the land can provide, so on average that should mean more resources for people, in other words a lower cost of living (since cost of living depends on resource availability). And it also means that there’s less supply of human labor on the labor market, and by the rule of Supply and demand that means that the prices for human labor (wages) are gonna go up, i.e. people are gonna get paid better for what they do.
That intuitively makes sense, because if your country has 10 million people instead of 100 million, then your CEOs and companies are better gonna treat your workers better or they’re gonna strike, and since there’s fewer other people to replace those workers, their strike would have greater impact and therefore more power.
on top of that, you can’t just assume that there will be a high demand of human labor in the future. You have to assume that automation is going to reduce jobs, so if you don’t also reduce the number of workers, you’re gonna face an unemployment crisis, and that can be very bad for the workers.
(overworks and robs an entire generation to death)
“Why would foreigners do this?”
Also I’m almost getting tired of posting this brilliant illustration but sheesh, if the jingoistic authoritarian entitlement clan isn’t using the same playbook every. Time.
It really is the best illustration of exactly what’s happening.
I’m not sure I like this comic because it suggests:
- The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around
- That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism
I think both assumptions are actually copes by a middle class who, afraid to look at its own complicity in neoliberalism, find’s easier to condemn the common people as racist and intellectually deficient.
In actuality I think the working class is intuitively aware that their disfranchisement is directly connected to policies like immigration. Along with the opening up of global markets which had a disruptive affect on wages the policy of open immigration has kept wages low and fractured communities and a common sense of culture.
I’m not sure I like this comic because it suggests:
The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racismSo you dislike it because it’s real and accurate? I don’t understand, it could not be more accurate and straight forward for a comic
- The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around
Statistically and visibly just how it is. Those dudes work two jobs that are both really bad to live in a shithole, because they have no choice.
- That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism
'Member WWII, or WWI, or the various imperial wars before that? I 'member. The prejudices are intuitive alright.
I think not acknowledging that both are true and happen over and over again is a cope. The subset of middle class people who realise what’s going on are that way, because they’re basically working class people, but for whatever reason are privileged enough to spend time actually learning and understanding.
I think the cookie represents entitlements or government services granted to citizens.
The wealthy person has oodles of subsidies and tax breaks, but is trying to scare the working person by talking about the immigrant seeking equality.
That is literally the messaging from corporate media sources. The comic doesn’t really get into whether the working person believes it or not, to me it’s more about the messaging used by the wealthy.
I don’t actually think global markets or immigration are inherently bad things. It’s vastly superior to nationalism and rigid borders. The problems are entirely caused capital and the exploitation of workers, hence the plate overflowing with cookies. The wealthy are the problem, not immigrants.
I think the cookie represents entitlements or government services granted to citizens.
No, the cookie is just employment (money for work)
The cookie could just be stuff in general. Rich people have lots for no reason, workers have a little or none depending on whether their ancestors were from a lucky region.
Japan’s population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children
While this may be a contributing factor, there is obviously more to it. Japanese workers actually work less than the OECD average hours per year. Take a look at a handful of countries such as: Mexico, South Korea, United States, Finland, Germany, and Japan (generally representative of their respective regions and income levels)
Then compare those country’s hours worked to their fertility rate
Mexico works the most hours of any of those countries by far, only behind Colombia in terms of hours worked, yet has the highest fertility rate of any countries I listed
South Korea works a lot of hours, second highest of those countries, just above the US. They have by far the lowest birth rate. A bit over half that of Italy and Japan, the 2nd and 3rd lowest birthrate countries, yet both Italy and Japan work far less hours than South Korea
Germany and Finland, famed for their quality of life and lower working hours, both have relatively low fertility rates. Far less than the US and Mexico, countries with far more hours worked, and far fewer legal protections to workers - especially pregnant women
In short, when comparing different countries, I don’t see a substantial correlation between hours worked and fertility rate
Boomers of the world consumed all resources and pulled up all ladders behind them. American Boomers are especially oblivious to their roles in creating the current world, and seemingly oblivious to concepts like basic empathy. Their entire worldview is a function of how they can best benefit. “Generation Me,” was the perfect tag.
Got mine, fuck you
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Its basically the exact same issue happening everywhere in the western world, Japan is just a few steps further a long.
RIP. I really want to study abroad there and have been making plans, but the current admin + Japan’s rising anti-foreigner stance really dampens my hopes. I get there’s been some awful, entitled, shitty tourists and vloggers over there in the past few years, but I wish they’d realize that we’re not all like that…
just do it. the whole world is getting xenophobic and the good times are not coming back anytime soon. don’t let it keep you from living your life.
I second this. Please come to Japan before it disappears.
Japan is nice to visit, not so nice to live there (there’s better and more easily approachable places). Racial discrimination is not new in Japan and their laws don’t indicate of any changes like western societies have been implementing. You aren’t getting lynched, but expect housing refusals, difficulties finding jobs, social exclusion, and stereotypes.
This is a gross overgeneralization though. If you find like minded people, they’ll accept you. Shit, if you grew up playing Final Fantasy, chances are, your peers there did too and any stereotype is quickly forgotten.
But in general, don’t be surprised when you don’t get served beer cause you ain’t Japanese.don’t be surprised when you don’t get served beer cause you ain’t Japanese
I lived in Japan for a few years. In the entire time I lived there, there was two instances I could say I experienced discrimination based on being a foreigner
Instance 1: I had a few friends visiting that don’t speak Japanese, and we went to Sapporo. We were looking for a place to eat on the outskirts of the city, walked in a small ramen shop and were immediately told, in English, that the shop was closed (we had been speaking English among ourselves). In Japanese, I passive aggressively said, “Oh, I saw the sign saying the shop was open… sorry, I’ll leave”. It was like 6:30PM. They had their “open” sign on the door. The shop was almost certainly open
Instance 2: A bar in Shinjuku had a sign saying “No foreigners”. I popped my head in and politely asked the master, in Japanese, what was up with the sign. He sit up when I spoke in Japanese and said because he doesn’t speak English he didn’t want to deal with the hassle of customers that can’t speak Japanese
Which is to say, as a white foreigner from a high income country, the discrimination I’ve faced is public businesses that don’t want to deal with customers that don’t know the language and etiquette. Many of the other foreigners I’ve talked to had similar experiences, although outright racism or discrimination is not unheard of
More people need to raise hell about this group because they also have members who deny the Nanking Massacre.
The nazi party is funded by Russia btw and there’s so much propaganda in Japan rn its insane. One major piece still making news is that foreign tourists dont pay their hospital bills and losing “Japan so much money”. The amount of unpaid bills was 400k usd that year and foreign tourists revenue was 58 BILLION usd. That’s 0.00069% loss of total revenue.
This constant propaganda around the world is so depressing and not because its there but because truth is right next to it and nobody’s looking.
funded by Russia btw
This constant propaganda around the world is so depressing and not because its there but because truth is right next to it and nobody’s looking.
That much is obvious. Japan only has miniscule amount of foreigners compared to other countries but somehow managed to also have been stoken up with anti-foreign sentiment. It’s all the dark money flowing into social media algorithms brainwashing people. And the truth is that data is the new gold. Personal information is not only commodified but also weaponised. However, as you said, the truth is next to it but nobody is looking.
Here’s a bit of a rant.
Japanese people have notoriously been xenophobic, racist, or ignorant… but they also tend to be quiet and polite since the war, so they’ve really cleaned up their image.
They’ve also had their egos constantly stroked with all the TV networks showing stupid shows where all the foreigners are SO AMAZED by Japanese culture. Same with all these social media content. It’s really annoying. Being proud of your culture and heritage shouldn’t need recognition by foreigners and it certainly shouldn’t need belittling of others.
Not saying that everyone is a racist. Not by a long shot. It’s just that this kind of self-centered, xenophobic ember had been kept alive in a non-negligible number of people. And I feel like now, there is this perfect environment for which the shitty few to really have themselves heard for maximum exposure and influence. It sucks.
In December 2024, there were 3,768,977 foreign residents in Japan, representing 3.04% of the Japanese population.
Fucking foreigners sucking up all the jobs and destabilizing a country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Foreign_residents
.
When I was growing up too many people I knew wanted to move to Japan because of the technology sectors and the “modernity”. Turns out both are a lie, and after learning about Japanese work culture, it’s even worse than the USA. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to work in Japan over an EU country outside of family reasons.
They were living 20 years in the future in 1980. They are still living 20 years in the future of 1980.
Probably a millennial delusion shored up by gaming. Japanese tech hasn’t been anything to talk about for nearly 20 years.
It’s always outdone by Korean or Chinese tech.
In the 1980s, they had legitimately ground-breaking tech, from LCD displays to Toyota to PCs to walkman to BetaMax to unmanned railway stations.
Then the 90s happened, and decades of economic stagnation while society continues to be centered around the boomers (paper offices, Fax machines, they made new cassette tapes until like 2015, they still have payphones, cash-only businesses, etc).
Japanese tech
I would have a difficult time identifying Japanese tech that isn’t made in China.
When I was growing up too many people I knew wanted to move to Japan because they fetishized underage Japanese girls.
Japanese people are extremely racist. They genuinely put republicans to shame.
I’ve known several people who are half Japanese and whose grandmothers would never forgive them for that fact. They’d love all the cousins and shit on them. It’s really sad.
The open secret of most Asian societies!
Japan will be the test case for declining populations. They will be the first to show us the consequences and the right and wrong ways to deal with the issue.
Short of Malthusian disasters, I don’t think any sort of economy in human history has had to deal with this.
