121–130 of 202 posts
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so all japan needs to do is completely destroy their own culture, its so simple now
You're really underplaying how much extant "Japanese culture" sucks for young people, and women, and everyone who isn't a wealthy old man. There's so much pressure to get a particular type of job (or marry a dude who has that type of job) and jobs of that type are quite unpleasant. Mis-investment on an immense scale (roads to nowhere, tearing down 20-story office buildings to build slightly fancier 22-story office bu…
But of course, Japan is very hard on itself and sets insanely high standards for itself at every level of society. If you are bullish on Japan, you're easily dismissed as a nationalist or racist or as living in denial.
I guess the ultimate revenge is living well, so I've already won from that perspective. I feel genuinely sorry for people who can't see a good thing for what it is.
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'The only way for Japan to progress is to abolish Japanese culture in favour of multiculturalism'. ... is how many people in the other parts of the world would view that position. Maybe it's hard to understand for 'New World' people, who don't really have a sense of their own ethnicity, but it's very different elsewhere. 'Japan' is not so much a 'nationality' in the modern, Western sense. 'Japan' is the place where t…
No culture has escaped appropriation and mixing, especially not Japan. So much of modern Japanese life has been molded by the American occupation. Why do you think more non-Japanese people in the country means the end of Japanese culture? I know many foreigners who live long-term in Japan and have absorbed many ways of working in the society. Why do you think they stay? Ultimiately, the base belief behind the anti-mu…
Very true. But it's also fundamentally different than if the American influence were to have come from 10 or 20 million actual Americans living in Japan.
"Have they not accepted American culture?"
America does not have a culture in the classical sense of the term, or to be more fair - it's a new kind of culture.
Ergo - there is a 'lot less to accept'.
In America, you can 'do as you please' so long as you're not out go hurt anyone.
In Japan, there are a myriad of rules, spoken and unspoken, that one must adhere to.
It's easy for immigrants to 'get along' in the New World.
It'd be exceedingly hard to do so in places with more established classical culture.
This can be seen in Europe: they are very much intellectually and political open to newcomers, and yet have a really, really hard time integrating them.
There are dangerous, 'no go' zones in Sweden.
There are zero 'no go' or dangerous places here in Canada (or at least not based on migrant residence), where we have a lot more immigrants than Sweden.
In Canada we don't have our own language, customs, no cuisine, few social expectations other than fairly secular ones: go to school, get a job, be good, pay your taxes.
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Japan has been influenced by the rest of the world for millennia - just recently there was an article posted to HN about ancient Persia having envoys to Imperial Japan[0,1], to say nothing of China, which is probably responsible for just about everything you associate with "Japanese culture," or the Western influences behind the Meiji restoration and postwar government. All cultures change over time, even the ones th…
Being 'influenced' by other places is definitely not the same thing as mass migration. We often think of 'Tea' as a very English thing (and it is in many ways now), but of course it has it's roots in China/Asia i.e. global trade. The Japanese borrowed ideas from elsewhere for quite some time (as has everyone of course), but they would view 'building Western warships' as something very different from 'importing millio…
You're probably going to have a hard time finding a job in Japan that isn't "English Teacher" if you can't speak Japanese effectively - which is an example of the parent culture exacting a price in the form of partial assimilation for the opportunity of cultural exchange.
Plus, most immigrants to Japan are probably going to be from China, Korea or other Asian countries, simply because of proximity. Immigration doesn't necessarily have to mean millions of Westerners.
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>what culture is something like Todai-Ji a part of? China.
whatever you say
Although I did make an error - it's both Korean and Chinese.
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whatever you say
You're not aware that Buddhism isn't native to Japan? And here I thought you were a cultural expert on all things Japanese. Although I did make an error - it's both Korean and Chinese.
and buddhism isn't chinese.
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Indeed, postmodernism is not a science at all. Test of us non-postmodernists value an education system capable of producing competent elites, who in turn produce value for society (measure that how you like). By that measure, it's pretty apparent that Japan's universities are doing poorly. And the Japanese agree with this, in case you missed it. Please stop with this nauseating pedantry.
Japan is going pretty well last I checked. It's one of the few places that is successfully transitioning to a lower birth rate via population shrinkage rather than mass immigration, enabling them to maintain their own culture and people.
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Indeed, postmodernism is not a science at all. Test of us non-postmodernists value an education system capable of producing competent elites, who in turn produce value for society (measure that how you like). By that measure, it's pretty apparent that Japan's universities are doing poorly. And the Japanese agree with this, in case you missed it. Please stop with this nauseating pedantry.
Japan is going pretty well last I checked. It's one of the few places that is successfully transitioning to a lower birth rate via population shrinkage rather than mass immigration, enabling them to maintain their own culture and people.
Japanese people don't think things are going so well.
Many knowledgeable non-Japanese don't think that things are going so well.
My personal take is that Japan is taking a huge gamble by taking on a massive amount of debt relative to their GDP. The piper will need to be paid at some point.
John Mauldin had described the Japanese economy as a bug in search of a windshield. Based on what my Japanese friends in the financial sector say, they agree. Everyone is just crossing their fingers now and hoping that something... anything... happens to force a redirect. No one is quite sure what this will look like (I personally think yen will take a big hit, but that's just a guess).
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You're really underplaying how much extant "Japanese culture" sucks for young people, and women, and everyone who isn't a wealthy old man. There's so much pressure to get a particular type of job (or marry a dude who has that type of job) and jobs of that type are quite unpleasant. Mis-investment on an immense scale (roads to nowhere, tearing down 20-story office buildings to build slightly fancier 22-story office bu…
There is such a huge gap between your incredibly bleak image of Japan and the lively, optimistic and impressive Japan that I live in. I've lost count of the number of gaijin experts on Japan who want to tell me about how wrecked Japan is, and how Japanese people are in denial, and all the ways they need to emulate the West to get with the program. I've also lost count of the things that Japan does measurably better t…
And now they're stuck with the debt associated plus the ongoing cost of maintenance.