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Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

thelongandshort.org

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Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#61

Post by Dewie »

rodgerd wrote: post #54
timeal wrote: post #52

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... vs 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:…

> 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 r…

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.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#62

Post by aikinai »

adsofhoads wrote: post #47
aikinai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Google fight (excluding Chinese) turns up 549,000 results for 草食系男子 and 571,000 for 草食男子. Much closer than I expected, but the 'kei' is definitely not required.

I think they meant that http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-three/images/DeskHe... has the 系 but then the translation the article gives below it is missing the "kei".

Oh, I see! Yeah, that's true.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#63

Post by troubled5 »

serve_yay wrote: post #30
bjwbell wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#64

Post by crdb »

twblalock wrote: post #55
timeal wrote: post #52

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... vs 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:…

Even during the deepest point of the post-1980s recession, unemployment never exceeded 6%. In fact, the highest level of unemployment Japan has experienced since 1953 was 5.6%: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate It is interesting that they managed to preserve low unemployment and increase the standard of living during about 20 years of flat economic growth, but they've done it. Part of it can be…

Some argue that Japan fudged its numbers to hide the drop in GDP following the crisis, and was waiting for reality to catch up whilst reporting stagnation for a few years.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#65

Post by hudibras »

Dewie wrote: post #61
rodgerd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

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.

You know that you don't have to read all the comments, right?

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#66

Post by girvo »

le_lenny_face wrote: post #23
carsongross wrote: post #2

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, cit…

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?

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.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#67

Post by w1ntermute »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #43
throwaway344 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can read Excel in Pandas and in R.

As well as LibreOffice Calc.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#68

Post by 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.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#69

Post by cbd1984 »

carsongross wrote: post #2

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, cit…

Yes. Being anti-racist is just like being the Thought Police in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#70

Post by hollerith »

twblalock wrote: post #55
timeal wrote: post #52

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... vs 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:…

Even during the deepest point of the post-1980s recession, unemployment never exceeded 6%. In fact, the highest level of unemployment Japan has experienced since 1953 was 5.6%: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate It is interesting that they managed to preserve low unemployment and increase the standard of living during about 20 years of flat economic growth, but they've done it. Part of it can be…

Japanese GDP (PPP) per capita is only about 70% of US GDP per capita. If they have the world's second-highest GDP, that is mostly because they have the developed world's second-highest population.
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