Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 280 posts

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#121

Post by UntitledNo4 »

nl wrote: post #34
usernew1817 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does saying "married to a Japanese" sound so much more awkward then saying "married to an American/Canadian"

I'm married to a Britisher (which is not used in Great Britan anyway) sounds similarly awkward. Married to an Englishman/Welshman/Irishman works, but is gender (and England/Wales/Ireland) specific. I'm married to a Scott works though. Not sure there is a general purpose word you can use to say "I'm married to someone from Britian".

To a Scot, unless your husband's name is Scott, in which case I apologise for making assumptions.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#122

Post by indefatigable »

Sagat wrote: post #115
randomafrican wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not Pandas. Ressource depletion is only a problem if our ressource consumption doesnt evolve. And it will evolve.

What if it evolves in the wrong way? Plenty of emerging middle classes in developing countries are now looking to join the American-style unsustainable lifestyle movement.

So what, these foreigners ought to be denied the same opportunity?

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#123

Post by bluedino »

throw_away wrote: post #101
creamyhorror wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as simple as: - In standard English, "Japanese", "Chinese", etc. are now used only as adjectives and not nouns (although the noun usage used to be acceptable). So you can't correctly say "a Japanese came in" any more than you can say "a Swedish came in." http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/29887-grammar... - "The Japanese" remains valid as a way to refer to the people of that nation collectively. - "-…

The only people I've ever encountered using the "a (Japan|Chin)ese" construction were (Japan|Chin)ese people themselves. Which may have rubbed off on GGP from GGP's Asian spouse. I've wondered if there was some correlation in Asian languages, but the English translation of the Japanese version of that wiki page makes it seem as if the concept of demonym is foreign to Japanese readers: http://translate.google.com/tran…

It's also a way older people or rural/Southern people would refer to African-Americans: "She dates a black"

Most people would think that's an odd or deragotory way of saying that.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#124

Post by guerrilla »

veidr wrote: post #73

This is a stupid article, and young people in Japan have not stopped having sex. What westerners might call 'casual sex' -- sex without the framework of a relationships that implies various other promieses/committments -- is normal, and also not likely to be spoken about frankly, especially to a reporter, and much less a British one. Sometimes I'll witness a young woman asked about it at a social gathering (as people…

I have to say, this is the kind of thing I was thinking while reading the entire article. One of the things I remember most about working in Japan is the different manners in which people would answer questions. Everything did seem so extremely indirect, yet not necessarily dishonest.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#125

Post by klipt »

einhverfr wrote: post #62
emiliobumachar wrote: post #33

Is there hard evidence that this is bad? Resource depletion is among the highest risks to civilization. Seems straightforward that severe population decline should be desired, and voluntary refraining from reproduction should be welcome. (Please don't just extrapolate the trend till extinction. See http://xkcd.com/605/ . )

Well, the fundamental problem is a demographic one. In the end, the elderly are always cared for by the young so if you have a lot of elderly and not very many young, this becomes a real problem. Ideally, the birthrate would be close to the replacement rate. Much lower and you run into very significant problems. If you want to draw down the population, a birth rate of say, 90-95% of the replacement rate would not be…

> In the end, the elderly are always cared for by the young so if you have a lot of elderly and not very many young, this becomes a real problem.

Fun fact: an evolutionary explanation for "witch hunts" is that when the tribe is low on food, they're an excuse to get rid of less useful / influential elderly people. Which is why they happen more in resource constrained developing countries than rich developed ones.

But it goes to show that if young people feel that the elderly are more burdensome than useful, they may find a way to get rid of them.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#126

Post by coldtea »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #76
einhverfr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1, especially on wishing there were more really good social sciences blogs out there covering issues like this. One of the big problems of course is the fact that while outsiders can see dynamics of and sometimes critique cultures, such critiques are necessarily incomplete (well all critiques are necessarily incomplete but outsider ones are especially likely to be). But on your final question, I think one of the big…

Maybe one should ask why narratives instead of detailed scientific analysis is voted up on hackernews? Do the "corporate media organizations" control hackernews now?

Or, you know, people prefer narratives, and there's nothing inherently bad to them, compared to "detailed scientific analysis" (of which, 90% is also shit anyways).

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#127

Post by steven2012 »

m_mueller wrote: post #14

The subject is interesting, especially because I'm married to a Japanese - but man do I hate articles that go round and round like this one. Here, have a little bit of a sociological hypothesis - but let's not go too deep for your little brains shall we? Here, have a little bit of anecdotal evidence instead. Enough of that? Alright, let's start over again. [...] Oh I'm outa time, let's end the article now, kthxbye. I…

What do you mean using anecdotal evidence instead? The author cites data and surveys, which clearly show the problem.

"Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060."

"The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all."

"A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way."

"Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.)"

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#128

Post by klipt »

raverbashing wrote: post #28

In the midst of all, this seems to be one of the best parts of it: "Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me." Great, so if a w…

> from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan

Well they are living on an island. You can't grow your population forever in a finite space without increased competition.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#129

Post by VLM »

jpatokal wrote: post #83
smegel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you can talk about demographic trends without delving into fetishism and sexualization. As strange as it sounds, there isn't much relation between sex and the choice to have children, from my understanding Japanese women are rejecting motherhood because it cancels whatever limited career opportunities they may have had. In other words, like most demographic trends, it is driven by economics. Of course to a s…

While I don't disagree with you that economics and the plight of the working woman in Japan is a major cause of the dismal birth rate, there's definitely more to it than just that. In particular, the "herbivore man" phenomenon is definitely A Thing in Japan, and the WP article claims that anywhere between 36% and 71% (!) of Japanese men under 30 now self-identify as herbivores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore…

"turn their backs on typical "masculine" and corporate roles"

So they're basically hippies, although for cultural reasons the girls don't think their hippies are cool, so they get less sex not more.

One interesting effect of huge rates of freeters and neets is some segment of the salarymen feel they're just one bad review or whatever from permanent downgrade into freeter / neet status, or at least the girls may think that about them. So the percentage of people behaving like freeters / neets probably is somewhat larger than the demographic percentage of freeter/neets.

Well, no girl my age would ever have anything to do with me because I'm poor and have no future, so, uh, yeah I'm not looking thats the story I'll tell so I feel a little better. Pout and quit is hardly unknown in the west "Oh so you guys are cheating and stacking the game against me, well F you I'm taking my (two) balls and going home". Although with the decline of casual neighborhood play this might be an unknown social situation for our young... In the past it was not unheard of, screw over the kid who brought the tennis ball and he takes it and goes home and no one plays...

Don't end up like a teen parent, don't have relationships and kids until you can afford it... well, what if the economic deck is stacked such that 25% will never, ever be able to afford it? Well, until the inevitable revolution, you'll get weird things like young people not having sex.

Finally the whole topic is super hetro-normative so I think we can all safely assume at least 5% or so are in the closet.

So 5% in closet, in 2000, in better times, 10% were NEETs per govt figures, in better times 30% were freeters (some of whom do get some...) maybe 10% of salarymen (or more precisely, the girls checking them out) accurately or inaccurately believe they're one unlucky event away from permanent downgrade into freeter/neet (is there significant upward mobility in Japan from freeter/neet? Not that I've read/heard?) So that's 55% right there although some of the freeters ARE probably getting some. Of course not everyone reacts to being screwed over by withdrawing; in the US they sometimes go out shooting, etc. Fixing the withdrawl problem without fixing the economic stressors is likely just to result in different negative social reactions WRT weapons etc.

Re: Have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

#130

Post by steven2012 »

veidr wrote: post #73

This is a stupid article, and young people in Japan have not stopped having sex. What westerners might call 'casual sex' -- sex without the framework of a relationships that implies various other promieses/committments -- is normal, and also not likely to be spoken about frankly, especially to a reporter, and much less a British one. Sometimes I'll witness a young woman asked about it at a social gathering (as people…

Why is it stupid? Obviously they don't mean every single Japanese young person hasn't stopped having sex. What the author means is that as a trend, they've stopped having sex, as evidenced by the declining population, the lack of young people in relationships, etc. From the data they cited from the surveys, it seems pretty incontrovertible that there is some sort of problem, despite your own personal anecdotes.
Post reply on HN