Japan's Leader, Fumio Kishida, Will Step Down | Hacker News Reader

Japan's Leader, Fumio Kishida, Will Step Down

nytimes.com

22 pointsmikhael15 comments

Honestly, there is no making the people of Japan happy. They keep hating everything their PM’s do, then when next election comes around they vote the same party right back in. It’s a bit bizarre.

Despite how forward thinking they are in terms of tech and public infrastructure, many aspects of their culture are decidedly stubborn and very difficult to dislodge. I think you can heavily blame the massive age disparity in Japan; way too many very old people are still in power and still voting. They live too long. Meanwhile, younger generations are outnumbered, and a big part of the culture is to not go against the grain and demand things change.

> very old people are still in power

Doesn't sound like something exclusive to Japan. Sounds like you are describing my country and it's nowhere near Asia.

Compare an age distribution chart from your country to Japan's and tell me it still seems the same.

Yes, old people are in power in other places too. I live in America. Japan is an extreme case, and the low porportion of younger voters excacerbates the disparity.

It appears life expectancy gains are a curse in the aggregate due to rigid human mental models and an inability to prioritize the future over the present.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

>way too many very old people are still in power

Kishida is much younger than either Biden or Trump.

Kishida is about 7 years older than Harris.

Harris is the VP, not the President (yet). For the past 8 years, the US has had presidents in their 70s and 80s. There's a good chance Trump will win this year's election too, and he's almost 80 now.

You can say the same thing about most countries. Its like a human instinctual need to constantly want political change

i don't think there is political thinking behind it, it's emotional "somebody must be to blame for everything I don't like in my life", which is instinctual for human children, for sure

The action isn't between political parties, it's the factions within the party. It's structured differently than the US so it looks strange that it's one party in power all the time, but there is plenty of push/pull for satisfying public opinion going on within the LDP. They have to _really_ screw up or ignore public opinion for a long time for the public to choose a different party.

Edit: come to think of it... can you imagine the leader of a political party choosing to step down due to popularity issues, allow a subordinate take the party in a new direction, and suddenly people are much happier with that party? seems oddly familiar. Imagine if the gov was structured in such a way that this is considered normal and then you basically understand why one party is always in power.

Usually Japanese leaders still get voted in before they get "revoted" by their congress as leader, PM. Your example of recent Kamala isnt that apt as she didnt get voted in as Democrat leadership, but selected by inner Dems cicle very much akin to that X-Files cancer man commitees majestic 12. Your example would be more correct if after this Nov, she won the election assuming no more luggage votes, machine recounts frauds happened again like 2020 (I doubt so, which means if she won, then your example still not correctly apply in this Japanese case). Anyway westerners are not that highly educated in politics other than American. So whatever explaination, I doubt he or she the audience can understand pretty much like describing blue to someone born blind.

I think this is not restricted to Japan. In many countries, yes, including the obvious ones, a lot of people have integrated a political party's view of the world into their world view and their self-concept.

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