Young Japanese are surprisingly content
economist.com
economist.com
I think there are at least two kinds of "content" -- one that stems from happiness and another that stems from depression.
The former is the good kind, the one we all assume the article is talking about.
The latter is a resounding "meh" followed by a "who cares."
I've seen a lot of the latter in people in their 20s and early 30s here. The world's going to shit, the society's going to shit, nobody has money, rent is expensive, nobody cares. Spend the money now and enjoy hanging out with friends -- screw retirement and the future because you can deal with it later, preferably with the pension system.
Who's going to get ahead at work? The old folks are all impressing their own power structure on the younger folks and making life miserable. Why bust your ass at work when you can just do your own thing with a bunch of jobs cobbled together?
So, basically, a lot of the "content" people I see around me around happy with their lot, they just don't think their lot's going to improve or worth working on.
This is from a point of view of 11 years in Japan, six years in Tokyo.
Except it happens at a nation's scale.
I do think the resulting apathy keeps the problem going. I wonder if apathy looks like the cause because the process starts in early childhood.
It's essential to find a source of contentedness in life, but it can be easily manipulated to become complacency. Are these kids content about being content?
If the answer is no, then to be happy, we must pass through hell with the rest of them.
What matters, is what you do when you've passed through hell and seen it for what it is.
Per the article:
>describe themselves as content.
The trouble with the article is Japanese are notoriously not honest with their emotions.
I know today's Japanese youth and young adults are not very open or honest with their emotions, especially with respect to sharing negative feelings. How that compares to the past, I don't know. It could very well be the same, but take the article's claims with a grain of salt. I just know that I've personally met an unfortunate number of Japanese who are depressed and disaffected.
Internet stereotypes aside, I'd love a source on that
Decades ago, anthropologist Ruth Benedict discussed this issue (among others) in her book, "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", which was held in high esteem by the Japanese post-war generation. You might start with that.
Not so much the tomfoolery but just the relative contentment with their lives, despite their lacks.
Ask people in their 20s and 30s what they think about the world, and over half of them will say the world's going to shit in one way or another. I know people on both sides of the political spectrum that will say that. This isn't a good sign for society.
Granted, I am not divorced from this phenomenon. There is a lot of things that my parents' generation did that I don't do because they seem pointless. I'm not in a relationship, hence not married, no kids, I don't intend on owning a house with a white picket fence(or any house), I don't have two cars, I don't go on vacation after vacation, I don't "pound the pavement", etc. All because I find these things to be "meh", having a low ROI in general.
Do you know the song, "We didn't Start the Fire"? [1] Great song. It was released in 1989 - check out the lyrics. Even more interesting though is why the song was written. [2] Billy Joel was in a recording studio talking to a friend of John Lennon's son, who was 21 at the time. They had a conversation:
- Friend: It's a terrible time to be 21 [because the world's going to shit]
- Billy Joel: Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.
- Friend: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.
- Billy Joel: Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire#His...
The foundational assumption of the modern scientific era (circa 1845) is that steam engine physics are a fundamental law of the universe. This guiding constraint is referred to as the "Laws of Thermodynamics"...
Today's scientists have better numbers. Dark energy and dark matter are their realization that something is wrong with 1845's understanding of the laws of nature.
However because scarce things are driven by pseudo auction dynamics that depends on wealth disparity rather than absolute cost young people quickly realize there is a ceiling.
Because they know they can't break that ceiling money may as well be spent on fun "now" things. Or hail Marys like Bitcoin. Because in many ways, scarce things are the only things of "true" value.
There is a parallel here to the disenfranchisement of the black community. You can live "comfortably" as long as you don't try to cross the moat. Energy that could've been spent improving quality for all is spent on digging the moat deeper.
I am not in Japan, but the East Coast of USA. I am 22, have no debts, own my car, make 65k and have close to 50k invested in the stock market. I save close to 60% of my income and actively invest it.
On paper, I should be great but I am struggling with this nihilistic attitude to life. I am in good shape, sleep well, drink only water, work on programming projects or other side businesses, play video games, read non-fiction and hang out with friends.
How do I snap out of it and find more meaning in life? I've felt this "content" depressed limbo state for the past 3 years.
My go to quote for how I feel in general is from Fight Club.
“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
I tend to agree. I have lived here for a short time but you get a sense of this just by being around people.
Go along get along, and such.
I am a fan of anime but I think there's a lot of tepid, derivative or uncreative anime being created that Westerners aren't completely exposed to.
For example, there are six or seven anime released in the past few years where the protagonist went to sleep/died and then woke up in a video game world, either in a game they played IRL or simply somehow were transported to the world of a video game or a world that behaves as if it is a video game.
They range from inventive and interesting to tedious rip-offs.
In my opinion when the Japanese are inventive they have some really out-ther stuff, which is a sign they are really extending themselves in creativity.
One of the aspects of non-American narratives I enjoy is the greater likelihood of a tragic or bitter-sweet ending.
I think publishers hold contests to find which writers will get their stories serialized and at least according to 4chan isekai stories are banned from those contests now for being too uncreative. So people just posted their stories online and some still got picked up by publishers to get light novelized!
Heck let's take western indie games where a large percentage of all indie games are yet another smash brothers clone or a metroidvania clone. There's probably at most 3 more genres that make up the majority of titles
In other words that there is tons of derivative stuff is not even remotely unique to Japan.
There's tons of anime that doesn't make it out of Japan (or used to be) as well of tons of manga that's seriously creative. Walk through a Village Vanguard store for example.
[0]recommended: Stein's Gate, Psycho Pass, FLCL, Serial Experiments Lain, Tatami Galaxy, Pop Team Epic, Cowboy Bebop, Akame Ga Kill, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt
1. This quality is unique or more common in Japanese anime
2. This is a feature of all media of which Japanese anime is one
If the answer is #2 then there was no reason to say it. It would be like saying "water is wet in Japan". Of course water is wet everywhere so no point in even bringing it up.
If it's #1 then we need proof that Japanese anime has more clones than other media from other countries. I think that proof will be hard to find. Crunchyroll is not Japan.
There is a lot of anime I would rate much higher than pretty much any other narratives presented in other media formats including my native Hollywood.
Or fantasy genre that is repeating Tolkien tropes over and over and again.
Superhero again and again and again. Detective stories one like another. All vampire stories that kinda copy each other.
Existence of repetition does not cancel out creative inventions.
And I enjoy anime because it more frequently challenges or presents me with a significant and interesting ethical or philosophical problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
Just find what you like and revel in it.
Let's not generalize "the west". There's a huge difference in this regard between US and central/southern europe.
Houses are also much more affordable to own in Japan. Interest rates are around 1%. Tokyo is doing a good job of keeping up with demand, and a single family home in Tokyo can be purchased for under $500k compared to millions of dollars in SF or NY.
These things matter when it comes to contentment. I may not be rich, but I can own my own home, my kids can get a good education, crime is very low, we don't have to worry about going bankrupt if we have a medical emergency, there are amazing public parks nearby that I can visit, good service wherever I ago, etc.
Contrast with the USA; the crisis - social, economic, political - is here, and it has been for a while. Everyone has something to scream at each other about.
Do you have the feeling that it is likely to break, or just noting it as a risk?
My gut feel is that despite the significant demographic problems, Japan has one of the better societies for weathering the increasingly rapid changes modern societies are subject to. But keeping it that way I have no clue how they do it (or got it the way it is now for that matter).
They are less so when they think about the future
That subtitle completely changes the context of this article.
The surprising news is that there's a significant uptick in reported contentedness now.
You can accuse The Economist of headlines that are too witty by half frequently, but not of click-bait.
That's a pretty damning statistic for a secular country. Is that a world record?
> Correction (February 22nd 2018): The original version of this article said that around 40% of Japanese were still virgins at the age of 34. In fact, that only applies to unmarried Japanese.
They could also be lying on the surveys.
That said, it seems like this has been a recurring theme in stories about Japanese youth I've seen in recent years, that asexuality is becoming a thing.
A chaste person experiences sexual attraction but chooses not to act on it.
An asexual person doesn't experience (or experiences very little) sexual attraction in the first place.
The perspective behind all this appears to be: "If I get involved in a relationship, even a purely sexual one, the time and effort required of me won't be worth the trouble. I would rather just do my own thing and spend time with platonic friends."
The way some people treat sex as not just pleasant activity or something that we biologically wish for, but also something that you must have lest it is "damning" is odd.
But it is sex people systematically find damning and focus on.
Frankly, sex in Japan sounds miserable and I hardly blame them for not being particularly eager to have more of it
One factual error too is that maguro is an insult. Maguro is hardly considered to be a delicacy either, I mean it's the not so great part of the tuna... Otoro or chutoro would probably be more adequate if it were supposed to be named after delicacies but then that would conjure fat and oiliness which I'm not sure would make most girls happy.
The rest is rather true with the exceptions that I've had drunk japanese girls be very direct about their intentions. So, while I agree that they tend to not be direct, alcohol does play a role. An average though, girls or guys who end up with foreign boyfriends or girlfriends will tend to be more open minded than the rest of the population, so there's a bit of a sampling bias.
It's mentioned in passing but I'm not sure why this article was written. "Young people feel good about life" is a welcome change from the usual "rah rah, be upset about [bad thing]".
The fact that the bidet/spray toilet is used is imo a big indicator of sophistication and significantly superior in every way to toilet paper.
But then again, there's dumb things too: they plant trees underneath powerlines ^^ Maybe that subsides jobs?
Awesome country.
It is so. Damn. CLEAN. I’ve hated the concept of littering since I was a little kid and it pisses me off to see peope who don’t respect their environment.
I was able to spend two weeks in Japan last year and boy, it was glorious. I also like how it’s illegal to smoke while walking. You have to go to a designated smoking area.
It's even more admirable when you consider that Tokyo has been the world's largest metropolis by several metrics (at least until recently, but even now it's #2 or thereby), and compare it with the state of other densely-populated cities:
[0] http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=garbage+in+New+Delhi
Coincidentally, I watched it from a recent recommendation on HN[2]. That comment has a link to stream the movie.
In case of Japan, it is probably leaning towards the latter. By control, or contain your desire to reach a state of peace, or inertia. Not really surprised because Japan, deep inside, is still very much influenced by the thoughts of Buddhism. Is this really self content? I would like to offer my share of benefit of doubt.
Is the suicide rate really significantly higher than other developed countries considering it's 5 more suicides per 100,000 people?
The article seems to imply that it's a big problem with it being the leading cause of death in Japan, but there are few things that can kill you over there since most people don't drive, and violent crimes are almost non-existent.
The rate has actually fallen to 15 per 100,000 people, which is only 3 more than the 12 per 100,000 people in the United States. So not great but also probably not a big enough of a difference to be brought up in every single conversation about japan like it currently is. South Korea on the other hand... yikes.
I don't get this. What is supposed to be this so called burden nowadays? What will elderly people require? Food and medicine? First can be considered cheap, relative to the amount of employed people. Actually, I'm not sure there will be needed much more workers than now, if things will continue to improve, we may expect to need less. Healthcare maybe will require a small increase to cope with the growing numbers of patients. (But maybe not necessarily so, considering that the system already serves the current numbers of people and the population is declining?) The Japanese government already pays for 70% of healthcare services for working people, how much of a difference will it make to cover it a little bit more for the old? So what remains there to struggle with? Some food-stamps and a small increase (relative to already existing levels) in healthcare subvention? On the other hand, after giving them food and healthcare, you're pretty much free to cut in pensions as much as you must. It isn't like there are leases or mortgages to be paid. Not from pensions, mind you.
Imagine you kept spending the same you do today, but stopped earning income to pay for it. Then on top of that your healthcare spend goes up an order of magnitude. Then imagine this happens to a significant portion of your fellow countrymen in a short time period
"Elderly people need the same things as all other people"
Like what? This is where it would have been actually interesting to have something meaningful from you, but here you're just glossing over. From what I noticed (and heard directly from elders around me) it's the other way around.
Wow. I had no idea about that, the statistics seem shocking.
> There are several reasons why satisfaction is rising. Partly because of the cost of housing, more young people live with their parents. Masahiro Yamada, a sociologist, calls them “parasite singles”.
Yeah, accomodation is ridiculously expensive here and it's reflected in the price of hotels and how small everything is. It was pretty claustrophobic my first few days here. There's an interesting article[0] talking about the housing situation but I don't know if it's accurate or not.
> Life is pleasanter in other ways too. On every street corner is a 7-Eleven or similar convenience store where young people can buy everything from stationery to ready meals (and heat and eat them on the spot), flick through manga comics, and buy tickets to baseball matches.
My favorite part of Japan is that you can walk down an average block and expect to pass a dozen vending machines with coffee, energy drinks, and beer. Always gives me a good laugh. In this sense life is pretty convenient, but in Korea it is even more so (their skyscrapers literally have miniature malls in them).
> Although rapid economic growth is history, they appreciate that living standards remain high, and that life (apart from housing) is affordable.
This seems true, stuff like food is not as expensive as I expected (coffee is a dollar, a sushi dinner for two is 60 dollars maximum and usually more like 20.) Korea was even cheaper, though, and the food was much better.
> That is good news for a country where the word “youth” tends, with good reason, to conjure up images of gloomy misfits: hikikomori—people who shun society—and otaku—nerds.
Most "otakus" I've seen so far were foreigners and not Japanese. I can't comment on the number of hikikomoro here, for obvious reasons, but I do think these are exagerrated stereotypes. Perhaps these stereotypes were more true in the past.
Just some observations, I've only been here a week. Oh yeah, and Japanese people drive less, bike more, and tend to be rather fit (or at least not obese) -- that gives them a big leg up on Western countries in the happiness department :)