Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

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> 1. Japan has extremely low levels of many of the problems that we have in Western nations.

> 2. The reason WHY they're so unaffected by problems that arise in racially-divided societies with fluctuating gender roles, is because they are a deeply xenophobic monoculture society that restricts immigration and promotes traditional gender roles.

I agree, mostly on 1, but 2? I don't think many people would say their misoginy is in any way responsible for e.g. the order and low crime rates. Xenophobia maybe - it's easier to keep everything clean and orderly if everyone who lives there was born there and was indoctrinated in school to be a good orderly citizen.

However, one of the problems they share with many "Western" nations but much worse, is the birth rate. They're looking at a massive demographic crisis because of their misoginy, and not helped by their xenophobia (e.g. some countries are relying on migrants to "fix" the low birth rates).

> Extreme fasciation with the Japanese way of life has always struck me as roundabout white supremacy cloaked in a cosmopolitan facade.

That is the impression I get frequently too, especially when it's put in a "it's clean and there's no crime because they're racially homogenous" way, which is quite disgusting. Singapore and Switzerland are also clean and with low crime rates, yet they're quite diverse in every possible aspect (cultural, ethnic descent, languages, religions). Haiti is in anarchy, yet relatively culturally, ethnically and religiously homogenous.

> However, one of the problems they share with many "Western" nations but much worse, is the birth rate. They're looking at a massive demographic crisis because of their misoginy, and not helped by their xenophobia (e.g. some countries are relying on migrants to "fix" the low birth rates).

This argument about misogny being the cause of low birth rates kind of falls on it's face when you go back in history to when these countries had higher levels of misogny yet much higher birth rates. If you're JUST looking at the correlation, misogny rates correlates with HIGHER birth rates, not lower ones. (Correlation does not necessarily imply causation and all that, but there's a possible argument that could be made here but I won't make it.)

Low birth rates the world over have a much higher degree of correlation with urban versus rural living ratios rather than anything else. When property costs per square meter/foot are high and you can't use your children to help your business there's a VERY strong incentive to not have children for economic reasons. (Historically most Japanese either had children working with their parents on farms part time or children helping run the family shop part time that was underneath the living area. That changed with the post-war economic boom.)

>This argument about misogny being the cause of low birth rates kind of falls on it's face when you go back in history to when these countries had higher levels of misogny yet much higher birth rates. If you're JUST looking at the correlation, misogny rates correlates with HIGHER birth rates, not lower ones. (Correlation does not necessarily imply causation and all that, but there's a possible argument that could be made here but I won't make it.)

Not that I agree with sofixa’s reasoning, but I also do not agree with this reasoning.

It is possible to have different levels of misogyny. Less misogyny can dissuade women from having children, but they still have the right to not have children. More misogyny could be women do not even have the option to not have children.

I think the OP is making the point that mysogyny is good for birthrates, which seems to be what you are saying too?

> They're looking at a massive demographic crisis because of their misoginy, and not helped by their xenophobia

Japan now has highest birth rates out of all developed Asian countries.

TIL, thank you. Korea is astonishingly low! 0.84/woman in 2020.

Correlates nicely with their location on the economic parable. Korea started to grow later than Japan (because of the civil war) and is now where Japan was about 30-35 years ago: still booming, with insane real estate costs, etc. Japan has had 20 years of stagnation - people got poorer, so now they're making kids again.

It seems much more likely that the driving factor behind their low birth rate is their very high rate of overwork. There have been a number of articles about how impossible it is for a typical salaryman to have enough free time and energy to even care about sex, let alone find a partner.

> They're looking at a massive demographic crisis because of their misoginy, and not helped by their xenophobia

I’m not sure we can attribute it to either. They were arguably more mysoginistic and xenophobic in the past, and they didn’t have any issues keeping population levels up.

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