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Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

independent.co.uk

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Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#71

Post by james-skemp »

hasenj wrote: post #37

IMO a decent solution to the low-birth-rate problem is not to try to hook up all the singles together, but rather encourage existing couples to have more children. Make it socially acceptable and even desirable to have more children. Give incentives to working men who have more children.

This seems wrong to me. This seems to go against the promotion of diversity, for the species and in thought.

If society is moving toward the idea that children aren't a 'benefit,' then having people who are 'willing' to have children have more just postpones the issue, instead of fixing the root cause.

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#72

Post by honkhonkpants »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #70
honkhonkpants wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, unprovoked? That belies a lack of historical perspective. Japan killed tens of millions of Chinese and intended to occupy the entire western Pacific, killing or enslaving all the people who lived there. The entire nation, all of its labor and industry, was bent toward this goal. It was a nation of profound evil.

It's not like China didn't do that in its past either, probably as recently as qianlong. But they don't go around calling China a nation of profound evil at the time.

Right, the historical anomaly of Japan and Nazi Germany was they tried to kill everybody and take all of their land well after that kind of thing had passed out of style.

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#73

Post by aianus »

coldtea wrote: post #68
mangecoeur wrote: post #47

Perhaps the darker side that could be missed is that despite their demographic problem, Japan continues to refuse to let in more young foreigners in to help balance the demographics.

They don't want any random fix of their demographics where they just bring in young people of whatever nationality. They want a Japanese fix to their demographics. If they viewed people as just interchangeable culturally, why even care about their falling demographics? Other Asian and Africans countries make up for them.

> If they viewed people as just interchangeable culturally, why even care about their falling demographics? Other Asian and Africans countries make up for them.

Because they need young, employed people locally to provide services to all the retirees.

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#75

Post by M_Grey »

feklar wrote: post #62
M_Grey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan isn't going to change in that regard anytime soon. They'd definitely rather have less Japanese people, and have them still be what they consider "Japanese" enough. Japan has many wonderful aspects to it, but the racism and nationalism are not part of them.

I remember reading an article about AirBnB breaking into Japan, where the local resistance wasn't the usual complaints of limiting the monthly rental supply therefore jacking up rental rates, but that AirBnB 'encouraged more foreigners to come here'. To get rid of foreigners, Japan puts up so many blocks and delays to permanent residency they hope you get the message and choose to leave.

They're not a culture that relishes saying "no" outright either, so what you're talking about can get intensely aggressive by way of a substitute for "no". For example, if someone in Japan tells you that something is, "Very difficult", they means it's about as likely as spontaneous, unpowered, human flight.

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#76

Post by M_Grey »

gjolund wrote: post #74

As opposed to Europe's solution, where they allow unrestricted immigration from volatile areas?

"Allow"

Your alternative is to shoot them at the border, or film them while they drown at sea... and even that wouldn't work as well as you might hope. Just wait and see what the next few decades hold, it's going to make this recent wave of migration seem absolutely delightful by comparison.

We've made the implicit choice to live our lives in such a way that the AGW is going to make the places like Northern Africa utterly unlivable, and then we'll blame people for fleeing from it.

It's the typical tragicomedy of a species that has a collective memory of about 20 seconds.

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#77

Post by jbicha »

Implicated wrote: post #56
krapp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't surprise me if some Japanese viewed the atomic bombings as an unwarranted act of unprovoked aggression - and they may not be entirely unjustified if they do. From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football.

> From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football. That wouldn't be far from the truth? If I remember, and it was reported correctly, the US govt deemed the nuclear bomb to be the lesser of two evils; the other being a long drawn out deescalation due to Japanese pride.

Yes, that's what's taught in US schools, but there's significant controversy among historians over whether the Japanese may have been about to surrender in the late summer of 1945 anyway.

It's mentioned in the (rather "left") book and Showtime series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone%27s_Untold_Histor...

I don't think it's a stretch at all to believe that the US did not need to drop the second bomb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#78

Post by krapp »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #69
krapp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't surprise me if some Japanese viewed the atomic bombings as an unwarranted act of unprovoked aggression - and they may not be entirely unjustified if they do. From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football.

Yeah, unprovoked? That belies a lack of historical perspective. Japan killed tens of millions of Chinese and intended to occupy the entire western Pacific, killing or enslaving all the people who lived there. The entire nation, all of its labor and industry, was bent toward this goal. It was a nation of profound evil.

>It was a nation of profound evil.

That's one perspective. Another is that Japan was merely doing what it felt was necessary to protect itself from interference by aggressive Western Imperial powers, and weren't necessarily more "evil" than any other empire at the time. A third is that the country that dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities and firebombed Tokyo to the ground was no less evil than the empire they were fighting.

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this, but "evil" seems more often than not to be matter of cultural relativism and propaganda. It wasn't long after World War 2 that the US was begging Japan for help in their other Asian conflicts and burning whole villages to the ground in the name of fighting the "profound evil" of communism.

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#79

Post by Apocryphon »

scythe wrote: post #26

What is concerning is this: >Most people surveyed said they want to get married at some point. This isn't delineated by gender, so I interpret it as meaning that Japanese men and women both want to get married -- but they aren't enough for each other. >A booming industry surrounds Japan's growing condition of loneliness, a phenomenon at once quite particular to the Japanese, yet also a glimpse into a future where man…

And as hackers, are how are complicit in the creation of technology that either supplants human relationships, or morphs them into something less substantial than what existed beforehand?

Re: Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds

#80

Post by bbctol »

f_allwein wrote: post #33
abstractbeliefs wrote: post #4

Before we get into a huge discussion about virginity, it's worth noting that the government isn't actually worried about it. They're worried about fertility rates. Virgins sell more papers though, so lets get that clickbait going.

Yes, but virginity is an interesting part of the issue: > Around 42 percent of men and 44.2 percent of women admitted that they were virgins this seems quite high, although I haven't compared it to data from other countries. Are Japanese people having less sex? And if so, why?

It's misleading wording in the article; that's actually the percentages of 18-34 year-olds not married or in a relationship.
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