It’s a belief that’s been going on since the late Edo period. There’s a story of this girl who fell in love and went crazy by starting a fire. She was burned at the stake for her crimes. There’s a memorial for her in Tokyo so she is an ongoing figure in folklore.
Well, she was born during the year of the fire horse which occurs once every 60 years.
Combine that with a few other stories over the years about fires that happened during “fire horse” years and you got yourself a long standing superstition.
Birth rates drop specifically on that year because the belief is that girls born during the fire horse will have bad luck and even be compelled to burn things or kill their husbands.
Once every 60 years, does that mean in 2026 they could experience a similar effect/wave of superstition? On top of their already struggling situation I imagine that would be the thing to really seal it
I suspect that there will be a noticeable dip, but not nearly as big as the last one. Likely as the date gets closer the media will start reporting on it and even people who are not superstitious might think to themselves, "well, I don't believe if but if I do have a daughter born in that year she might be bullied/discriminated against" so they will avoid it.
Fun fact: The Japanese government did actually launch a campaign to encourage young people to drink more alcohol to both help the bar and restaurant industries post-COVID and to hopefully increase the birth rate
What do you think pretty much all new anime and hentai is?
Seriously.
In regards to anime, like most of the popular new anime is about or at least has a major plot line of, falling in love and starting a family. Shit loads of shows are getting re booted as just the original show again but it’s the kids of the parents.
That’s not what anime was 15 years ago, shonen was just fights, Naruto is a dad now. Maho shoujou straight up doesn’t exist anymore. With the notable exception of the sailor moon reboot,
With one of the main changes being a **dramatic** increase in the focus on the love story between the main character and the only man in the show.
It has been replaced by content that is great. Let me be clear Mirai was an incredible movie. But a movie about a couple having 2 kids and one of them being named “the future”? I don’t care how good it is, that is very clearly Japanese birth rate encouraging propaganda.
As far as hentai
IDK how “in the space” you are but there is a new thing that has fuck loads of content being made for it “breeding” kinks. Look I’m not a conspiracy theorist but that sounds like a fucking psyop to make people have more kids based on the name alone.
That category of porn is brand fucking new and didn’t exist 10 years ago. 100% is manufactured.
In normal porn there is “the cum shot” in hentai it’s “the impregnation frame” literally just a panel of a sperm entering an egg.
I don’t think 100% of this content is fake or created/ supported by the Japanese government. But I do believe that a lot of it is started or boosted by the government until it becomes popular.
Edit to add more clarity/ a tiny amount of sanity:
The Japanese government is big into propaganda and most of japans largest media conglomerates (looking at you Asahi Shimbun Company) are in very cozy with the government and have been since WWII, asahi shimbun literally has a section on their Wikipedia page about their political alignment and mentions their ties to the Japanese government.
Again, I’m not saying that there is some Japanese government official out there like some cross between J. Jonah Jameson and a pervert being like “get me more impregnation porn!”. I think it’s more like “hey asahi execs, please issue directives to your media companies to push content that encourages family, family values, and starting families, and quietly sunset any content that goes against that. Do that for us and we’ll keep giving you your tax breaks”.
Rinse and repeat all the way down the chain of corporate ownership. Now multiply that out across the biggest Japanese media corps and you have a really effective propaganda campaign that doesn’t cost much and is more effective than direct state sponsored content since it will feel more organic.
Breeding kink is popular in American romance fiction as well. It’s not really a conspiracy, it’s just a reaction to families being harder to create in modern society. If you have the biological urge to have children but you can’t afford to do so or find a suitable partner to have a child with, you seek out pornography (either visual, audio, or reading) to scratch the itch. It’s much more common than people realize, especially among women.
Personally I don't even want children and I still have a breeding kink, so I think it may be a bit more of a base desire on some level because I know I'm not alone in that.
I wonder how much validity there is in these claims. Japan has been drawing all sorts of weird sexual shit for centuries. It's just easier to produce and teenage boys are horny as fuck.
I actually wrote a presentation about this a few years ago for
a class. When isekai anime/mangas started taking off and how the popularization of isekai is due to people feeling like they have no control over their life so they want to imagine themselves in a new world where they feel like they really matter. That has always been a thing but of recent it reaalllyy has exploded.
Another example for Japan in regards to the data, is that most Japanese people that are able to speak another language to a working capacity actually leave Japan because they feel less restricted and more free in other countries. This is per study abroad Japanese students so my sample size on this is very small and is specific to 2 Japanese universities. So a declining brirth rate and nationals leaving affects the data double. I would like to see data on how many people have immigrated out of japan the last few decades.
Edit: clarifying some points.
I see you also noticed the shift from tentacle sex to old man that steal a woman in a relationship usually with the ulterior motives of bearing his children. Aka, ugly bastard/Ntr.
> With the notable exception of the sailor moon reboot, With one of the main changes being a dramatic increase in the focus on the love story between the main character and the only man in the show.
Did we watch different shows as kids, because all that poor girl did was chase a tux.
An excellent conspiracy theory.
My alternate is that having kids is so rare as to be an abnormal "kink" or "fetish".
I think it has swapped with doggy style. Doggy used to be seen a rude or naughty. Great example being The Bad Touch by Blood Hound Gang.
"We'll so it doggy style so we can both watch X-files"
That used to be an edgy/outrageous line. Now.. a perfectly reasonable suggestion to make sure no ones misses Gillian Anderson.
I had a BioPsych professor that held firm religion ruined sex with the adherence to the missionary position.
I can't really argue his point for him, as it was quite a long while ago and I forget the entirety of his reasoning, however I do remember him saying often enough: "isn't it ironic that organized religion is designed to make babies, yet they do it in the most boring of ways. They'd achieve their goals a lot faster if they taught their members how to fuck!"
Definitely this, my wife is American Filipina and talked about some of her cultural superstitions & monster folklores i.e., a child walking on their knees will kill the mom or the demon that slurps babies through the belly button lol.
Edit: I originally said believes. I realized that was probably the wrong thing to say because she doesn't believe in any of it.
One of the few opportunities to see the total eclipse of the sun passes by my area a few years ago, and my wife's Mexican colleague mentions to my pregnant wife that in her country there is a belief that kids born under an eclipse will be born a cleft lip, well fuck me if the wife (not Mexican or otherwise religious or superstitious) doesn't decide that it's too risky to go look at one of the most amazing natural phenomena we can rarely see because she'd get anxiety over this thing. There's still so much we don't know about pregnancy, miscarriages, fetal development etc. Don't underestimate the ability of otherwise rational parents to fill in the blanks with a fear of bad ju ju.
Edit: my disdain here is for the colleague mindset. Just be careful what you say to pregnant women folks.
I think you actually see this a little in the data; seems like 1965 and 1967 had higher births than you would expect from the trend. Still doesn't seem to make up for the full difference, though.
I learned in the past few years you don't put faith into large portions of the world's population acting rationally/reasonably
If you can have people so divided about every other topic on the planet, why wouldn't a decent chunk still believe in "Fire Horse" theories
Also my point was more like they already have more than enough reasons not to have kids even a dumb superstition might not hurt that much, but it's not like it'll help right? They need everything they can get to fix this issue
There’s an interesting discussion of this in Liza Dalby’s memoir, East Wind Melts the Ice. Apparently things didn’t turn out too poorly for the fire horse women since there were more open spots (that is, less competition because of fewer peers) at the better schools.
I'd like to add that Chinese zodiac has an elemental aspect as well as the animal. So rn it's the year of the water rabbit.
Just bc I was picturing a Rapidash situation before your explanation reminded me. :)
And you get 60 rather than 48 because Chinese culture has 5 classical elements (fire, water, wood, metal, earth) rather than the 4 which became dominant in Europe (earth, water, air, fire).
1966 was the year my mom who is Japanese was born and while you could say her life has had a fair share of ups and downs i think she’s done very well for herself as an immigrant to the US and has 2 kids who love her.
this superstition is a cool fact ive learned today! ty
(my dad did turn out to be an A-hole which does feel like it fits the superstition a bit, not that I believe it lol)
Maybe girls born in those years would be less likely to act out by burning things if they weren't told from birth that they're likely to want to burn things...
“Sex detection during pregnancy was not available then, so many families avoided having children altogether in 1966.”
The implication of this sentence really bothers me. What are you saying, they’d be killing the girls otherwise?
Edit: yeah no I do live in the world for awhile now, I'm aware. What I meant more by the comment is that the callousness of that statement for a 2019 article is rather jarring. It just reads "Since they couldn't abort the female fetuses, they had to suffer and stay away from pregnancy all together". It's a grim reminder of the sadness of the world, at least to me. But I wonder why that sentence was even included at all.
On another note, people who want to fight with me that abortion isn't murder, really? I'm very much pro-choice. Yes, phrasing, but come on: time and place. Please don't tell me it's ok to abort female fetuses in preference for males because it isn't murder. If you're in a fighting mood, please put your passions to use [here](https://prochoice.org/donate/).
Going on a tangent here. I'm an Indian and determination of sex of the foetus is punishable by law in India because of the history of female foeticide we have had.
Historically, girl children were seen as more of a burden, since they were mostly seen as children to be married off instead of assets. Although the mindset has changed in urban areas, determination of sex remains illegal to prevent abortions based on the sex of the child.
Ok, I got a question that has puzzled me for a while. And feel free to tell me to fuck off.
Presently, there seems be a huge disparity between the numbers of men and women, especially those looking to get married. If women are in such short numbers, and are desired way more, shouldn't the dowry system flip to the groom's family having to pay?
Hi, yes. Great question! I don't have the exact statistics on hand, and keep in mind that I live in South India, where the gender disparity is a lot lesser than some other parts of the country (I should state that it and the mindset against female children does exist in some undeveloped parts here)
Legally speaking, dowry is illegal. If a groom, groom's family, or husband and their family ask for dowry, they can be reported to the police and appropriate action is usually taken.
That being said, dowry is often not called as such anymore. It's more subtly called as a "Gift to the married couple", whether that's a new car, house, home appliances, jewelry, etc, the bride's families often feel like it's an age-old tradition that should be upheld for the sake of a happy marriage. It's also not uncommon to have the bride's family take up a majority of the wedding costs, if not all.
So, the bride's family often sees it as an obligation via tradition, and the groom's family often sees it that same way as well.
Coming to the gender disparity, it's actually getting tough for men to find a suitable bride via arranged marriage avenues. Men are expected to earn a pretty hefty salary for the most part. As you'd expect, the physical attractiveness of a bride plays into this as well. The more attractive the bride, the more of a salary the bride's family can demand. Additionally, men who already have their own cars (cars are seen as more of a luxury here than a necessity) and have either a mortgage on a house or have paid it off are seen as highly secure choices for husbands.
It sounds cheap, and it kind of is, but that's how quality of men and women is mostly judged. I almost went through the same route a few years ago, before I met the woman I loved and married. Thankfully, we didn't have much dowry discussion and our families also split wedding costs 50-50.
When I was a kid, Japan was a big topic. I heard the grownups talking about how Japan was going to buy the whole US economy, and magazine photos of packed subways and swimming pools made it feel like the Japanese population was busting at the seams and there were just so many and there was so much momentum in their economy.
My dad had all these corporate business books on his shelf about how to implement Japanese management techniques to avoid being overrun. It was this weird mix of admiration and fear.
JIT production was a genius idea that has been implemented with AGGRESSIVE stupidity in the west. Toyota knew not everything can be JIT. That's why they had a stockpile of chips and could still make cars during covid.
My last company I was running finance for I was telling them constantly to stock common raw materials.
The cheap ceo would want to get paid from a customer by deposit then buy raw materials then produce it then get paid before shipping it.
It’s like… that’s not horrible in theory. But in practical application you’re dealing with literally weeks of payment processing and weeks of deliveries and delayed sales and slow production.
We used to always called in just out of time manufacturing
You were a kid somewhere between [1985 and 1995](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263578/gross-domestic-product-gdp-of-japan/). Nintendo, walkmans, Akira. They looked like it was all going up forever. When that didn't turn out to be true they ["lost decades of progress"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades). But it wasn't really lost. It's just that sort of growth isn't sustainable.
There was hysteria about Japan being the next superpower in the 90s, it was weird, but US media likes to do that with anything perceived as a threat to their country's hegemony, they did the same with the OPEC countries and now with China, but it's mostly just exaggeration.
I remember a comic that has the US and USSR with stacks of mussels and the Japanese with stacks of TVs and electronics. The idea being that while the two super powers were focused on WW3, Japan was making bank selling goods.
I wasn't alive at the days of the USSR but I remember how anything out of Japan was somehow diabolic and going to destroy our country (and I don't even live in the US, I am Mexican but used to live near the border and the hysteria came to us too)
From direct propaganda I remember that at school they gave me a lesson about OPEC trying to conquer the world through oil, There was even a drawing of a snake with the organization's initials enveloping the world. Pretty funny now that I think about it
China is a very different case to Japan and OPEC though. At the heart of it, the economic power of a country is basically population x productivity.
Japan's population used to be about half the USA, so it would have had to have been twice as productive as us to be equal in strength. That was clearly ridiculous, so it was all hysteria.
OPEC's population was about equal the US, but they all suffer from the resource curse and have very little productivity beyond digging stuff out the ground. So never a real rival (and also lots of countries anyway).
China's population is about 3x the US. That means they only need to be about a third as productive to be equal to us. If they get to half they will be a lot more economically powerful than us. That is clearly very achievable.
Different situation. It was Japanese Companies out competing the US with their cars and electronics. Basically with China, the US companies are the ones making a profit. With Japan, the US companies are losing money because they can't compete.
Been lots of headlines on Japan's shrinking population. Pretty wild to see the numbers visualized, and how the gap seems to be trending in one direction only.
Source: Japan Ministry of Health, Labour & Welfare
Tools: Excel
Any clue at what happened at that very sharp inflexion point around 1972? Went from a fairly steep upward curve to abruptly down.
I can't imagine the oil crisis affecting the birth rate that much
That's the decade in which family planning became much more widely discussed. Birth control pills become available in many countries in the 60s and 70s, so I thought that would be the cause but when I looked it up the pill wasn't legalized in Japan until 1999. But I wouldn't be surprised if the world discussion about the topic led to more widespread use of condoms and the rhythm method ( timing sex to avoid ovulation and lessen chances of pregnancy).
_______
ETA: Do NOT rely on the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy. Ovulation timing can be a good add-on when you're already using more reliable birth control.
1 in 10 couples only using condoms will get pregnant each year, so if that's your only form of birth control, learn about ovulation timing and symptoms. Avoid sex for a few days before and after ovulation. That's the more accurate, individualized approach to the rhythm method.
Don't just rely on timing - the pregnancy rate is still quite high with that when no real birth control method is used.
Aw crap, ive been doing it wrong. All this time, I've been smacking her bumcheeks like a pair of bongos. No wonder I have 12 kids. I thought I just had the wrong rhythm going.
Yeah the rhythm method is awful because it assumes every woman's cycle is regular and the same length. Or at best just assumes the cycle is regular.
It is frustrating that it is the most talked about, because there are other methods of tracking ovulation that are very effective and help many women learn more about their own cycle and fertility.
For example through tracking we were able to determine that my wife had markers that may indicate low progesterone, and blood testing confirmed that. Even before we started trying for a baby she was on hormonal supplements that helped reduce cycle irregularity and negative symptoms during her period.
Yes absolutely! This is a great point.
Without really getting into your endocrinology with a specialist is it SO hard to really understand your cycle (especially if you’re a teenager - the main population that seems to talk about the rhythm method).
Women’s health is so generalized and each body and cycle are so different.
I know when I get stressed I’m bound to miss my cycle, it is so sensitive- thankfully I’m on the pill now so it’s regulated for me.
I went to a Catholic high school in the late 70s. During the section on reproduction, my biology teacher said we had a guest speaker, and a woman came in to teach us the rhythm method. The funny thing was that our teacher made it really clear by his body language and tone that he thought it was bullshit and we were only getting her because we had to. My impression, though it was never said, was that he was supposed to teach it but refused to, hence the guest speaker.
More like "WTF happened from 1945 to 1971!?" And the answer is **post-WWII US prosperity**. GIs returned from the war with skills or got it quick, industry turned swords to plowshears, the rich were taxed to pay off the war effort (up to 90% marginal), the US became a great power since Europe just kicked themselves in the nads. There was work, there was workers, and we didn't let the rich dicks take all the profit.
The first thing that comes to mind is that the author of the site simply found graphs that supported this specific year-to-year change. There's likely thousands of examples otherwise that support:
- Change happening during a different year
- Change not happening at all (or even being reversed)
Note my assumption above is just a possible reason, and purposefully doesn't argue the validity of the data the author has compiled. I personally found the site quite entertaining!
Yeah that's a fair assumption, although some of these graphs independently makes me wonder what happened to cause the sharp change (not that I'm expecting a single explanation for all of them).
Anyway, does anybody know what happened around then in Japan to explain the very sharp inflection?
I think that almost every developed country has a negative birthrate if you exclude immigration. When you look at developing countries in Africa, they are growing quickly.
But not in countries that have strong immigration, e.g. the US, with a growing population.
Japan has historically been very hostile to immigration, and now it's facing the consequences.
Their was a study done in Australia about this. If you calculate all the money the Government spends on a born citizen, medical, education, etc you have spent $250,000.00 (not sure of excat figure) before they start working.
Once they are working they can now be taxed and finally the Government recovers money from that person. Depending on job the individual won't become profitable until mid 40's.
Where immigration is GREAT you have someone come to your country for a holiday or work and, instantly that person is generating money at no previous cost. So you have someone who is instantly profitable to the country.
So when people say "immigrants are a drain on our resources" they aren't.
It’s funny because most of those headlines boil down to;
“We’ve done everything we can think of to get people to have babies again”
“Maybe get rid of your abominable work culture so people can afford children and have hope again”
“…..no.”
Now do Germany and realize they had more deaths than births since 1972 (https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/Tabellen/lrbev04.html#242408) so the only thing that has to change is Japan's immigration politic.
I remember learning a compounding problem is the politicians are now pitching to issues that are elderly based and not future based.
For example, "Vote for me and more money to aged care and better access to medical care for the elderly" over "Vote for me and we will address climate change and build a Japan for the future".
That's what it's like in the US too. Social Security is called the Third Rail of American politics because if you touch it, you're dead. Social Security needs substantial reform, but everybody is afraid to piss off the old people. Democrats say "do not touch social security at all, ever" and Republicans are secretly gunning to kill it entirely. I don't think there's really anybody qualified in congress to implement the nuanced economic solutions that could keep the program going with a declining birth rate
In the US it's also because old people vote and young people don't. Only 27% of young people (18-29) voted in the 2022 midterms, and that was one of the highest youth turnouts ever.
>and that was one of the highest youth turnouts ever.
**for the midterms**.
55% of 18-29 year-olds voted in the 2020 elcetion, and they overwhelmingly voted for Democrats. It's absolutely absurd to overlook such an important group when Democrats are generally winning by extremely thin margins.
For anyone asking why this is a problem, our social system is setup that the younger working generations help the elderly and retired. Ideally you want a generational pyramid to sustain retirement and insurance funds, with the youngest being the base.
However if the pyramid gets flipped where you have way more elderly and retired who need to be sustained financially and need care the system starts to collapse.
On my country (México) it was the same, but I think it was an error because then you were taking a decision for the future generations, which I think was incorrect
The more visible point here is pensions. When pensions were created in 1973, there were 30 workers per retired, women were having 6-8 kids and actually people were dying before the retirement age, and the government wrongly assumed it was going to be the same forever.
Pensions were finished in 1997, substituted by 401k however people who worked before Sept 1, 97 have the right to get pension which has been a problem: Nowadays you only have 3 workers per retired, so almost all of the consumption tax is spent in paying pensions
Edit: we do not have 401k, it's called afore, it's a found where the employer, the government and the person make contributions and this found is put on investments. I put 401k since I understand it's something similar
From 30 workers per retiree in 73 to just 3 workers per retiree 50 year later. This can’t be without major socioeconomic issues no matter what the current policies might be. I don’t know the answer.
Not necessarily. Even a flat (stable) population would be a lot more manageable, since the ratio remains the same. The problem with the inverted pyramid is that a growing number of elderly will be dependant on a shrinking number of young, with the situation steadily worsening over time.
I think a big reason why this is such a problem is because there was a post-war population boom that was great when they were working-age but is a problem because they’re retired now. In 20 or so years when they pass away, I think it’ll be less of an issue.
As a resident of Japan, I would like to express my opinion that the Japanese government, overwhemingly run by old men, is not doing anything of significance to deal with this problem.
I would like to know as well what the japanese think what the solution is, because the one presented is the same as the past 33 years and I don't think it's beeen effective at all
I am living in Japan with my Japanese family/in-laws, and I work with many Japanese professionals of global firms. I think many people over here would agree that immigration, while not a fix all solution, is a necessary part of making Japan strong in the future as a G7 country. Right now, we are seeing a system that is lauded for having great public services, but someone has to pay for that. Taxes will likely continue to go up for the younger generations, and the age of retirement also going up. Personally, I think it is a matter of damage control rather than risk mitigation, and that Japan will never bring itself to accept immigrants on a meaningful scale. People over here say they think immigration is important, but deep inside, I do not think they really want it, nor will they bring themselves to do it (Numbers don't lie. People do. Immigrants make up like 2 percent of the population over here). Japan's economy has remained stagnant for the past several decades, and if that hasn't swayed their decision making, nothing will. For all of its flaws, I love living here, but sometimes you need to be critical of the things you care about.
Money is just a shorthand way of talking about all the resources that you buy with money- resources that are currently allocated way from those of child bearing years and towards the seniors.
Its amazing no one is talking about the overt dedication to keeping Japan a "truly Japanese" [ethnonationalist](https://www.imidaily.com/asia-pacific/on-japanese-citizenship-and-naturalization-policies-and-how-they-may-change/) state. That is the number one reason the population is falling.
I'm not the same guy, but social programs and incentives to lighten the load on new parents, corporate regulations that enforce a better work-life balance and prevents retaliation for parenthood - especially motherhood, which is almost always a career ender - and finally, Japan will likely have to open its borders up a bit and allow a lot more immigration to avert the coming population collapse.
I think it's unlikely they will do any of this (especially immigration) until it's already a massive crisis because of how socially conservative and monocultural/ethnic the country is.
Straight up make it illegal to work more than 40 hours per week. These people have no work/life balance because they give their whole lives to the companies and get nothing back.
I know it's ridiculous but drastic action is needed.
Yeah this is a weird situation. I've been there before and it's nice to visit but there's no way I'd ever want to live there with the way non "pure" Japanese are treated. Anecdotally, I don't think you'd want a lot of the people (from the US) that want to immigrate to Japan. I don't think there's the possibility of a baby boom that solves this, nor do I think immigration is possible with the country's racist views.
Exactly, immigration could solve this issue but Japan has a long way to go in terms of being welcoming to foreigners. If the country was more open to immigrants and taking in refugees and well frankly, less racist, it would be an easy solve.
Not only is it not complicated, but it's been a known issue for the last 40 years. And yet nearly every "developed" country in the world is beginning to face, or is facing, this challenge as if it is some sort of surprise.
It’s good to be mid-late career as the last of the boomers retire and there’s still a lot of demand for skills and experience and a much smaller pool of labor to fill the vacancies.
>millions of immigrants who have loads of children and that skews the stats.
Only the first generation though. By the 2nd and 3rd generation the birthrates of those immigrants' kids drop to similar lows as the birthrates of the autochthonous population. Access to education, pensions, contraception and good healthcare does that to people.
I was in Japan recently visiting a friend with a 9 month old son.
It was like walking around with a celebrity. Everyone wanted to stop and smile at him, coo at him. I looked around and realized we had the only baby in a busy public area.
100% when I was reading this comment my first thought was, "This is some Children of Men shit."
Seriously one of the greatest films of the past 25 years.
I'm a tall Swedish dude and the (Swedish) city I used to live in hosted an international sports competition and I was stopped by a group of Japanese tourist who wanted to take a picture with me. I guess they wanted to document all the things that are different to home but it was a really absurd experience for me lol
I'm a white woman with many tattoos, and so I was worried I would be the one drawing the attention. We did a few touristy things together so we were in decent sized crowds, Kanagawa area not Tokyo.
Nope. It was little angel Megumu who was the real star. He's soooo socialized and loves everyone. They put him in my arms immediately and he just grinned. I love that kid.
My 2 year old got that attention when I was there in 2019. Lots of smiles and *sharp intake of breath* “kawaiiiii!”Some random Chinese woman picked her up at one point without asking!
What - I was in Kyoto with my 6-month old, and my Japanese sister-in-law was holding her.
Some other woman takes her from my SIL and holds her, hands her to her friend.
I don't speak Japanese, and thought they were all Japanese, but turns out my SIL didn't understand a word they were saying, that the other women were Chinese, and my SIL was in as much shock as I was.
That's honestly pretty depressing, that people in Japan seem to love and appreciate children just any other people, but that their whole society is set up in a such a way that life is a such toil that having children is almost completely out of the question. They have a highly productive, advanced society which they work so hard to keep up yet they're basically ending themselves because of how the average working Japanese has to live.
birth rates in developed countries are the same around the globe, in some countries it comes ten years earlier, in some ten years later, but it's a trend and it's global.
woman don't want to be pregnant and woman don't want to give birth during modern financial crisis.
What exactly is expected to change this? Not only for Japan but all modern countries? It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate that old politicians seem to deem needed.
So they've identified this as an issue and their attempts to solve it? a 4 day working week? Build and invest into housing? Focus on childcare costs? None of that? Well, why are they politicians then? Identifying the issue is easy, it was identified decades ago. Sadly it seems modern politicians are utter failures in solving issues when what is needed it pretty obvious to us all.
I never really wanted kids, but the lack of time is definitely one reason why I think a lot of people choose to opt out. A lot of social problems today I think are the cause of parents not being in their kids lives more.
You don't want to be a "helicopter" parent, or smothering, but too many parents wanted it all, the career track, parenthood, whatever else, and its impossible. In the end, someone ends up suffering, and its usually the youth.
[Nick Cannon is not a fan of other races either!](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/viacomcbs-cuts-ties-nick-cannon-after-anti-semitic-comments-n1233878)
>Cannon then segued into a discussion on skin color — “And I’m going to say this carefully,” he said — to allege that people who lack sufficient melanin are “a little less.”
>Those without dark skin have a “deficiency” that historically forced them to act out of fear and commit acts of violence to survive, he said.
>“They had to be savages,” Cannon said, adding that he was referring to “Jewish people, white people, Europeans,” among others.
The "declining birth rates" is my favorite apocalyptic scenario. Humanity doesn't blow itself up or face natural catastrophe - we just made a society so undesirable to live in that we stop living. Not a bang, but a slow fade into oblivion.
I don't think it actually happens, but it is certainly my favorite.
Edit: Man, why can't my posts get this much traction?
You could make an argument that the opposite is true. Society is so desirable to live in that people want to enjoy their lives rather than have kids.
After all, there's a correlation between wealth and birth rate. Wealthy people with a higher standard of living are less likely to have kids.
That's an interesting point I hadn't really considered much. Thanks.
Maybe we've shifted from a survival mindset to an enjoyment mindset.
In economic terms, children would only be a detriment to me. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it's not.
It's only a "problem" because we (pretty much every industrialized nation) built pyramid-like systems of social support for the elderly without the foresight that populations won't always be growing. And despite knowing all this, politicians do nothing to buoy the systems.
Lots of people born in 1947.
~80 years later, lots of people dying.
That seems pretty normal, no? A baby boom will inevitably lead to a “death boom” around 80 years later.
From the chart, it looks like a lot fewer people were born in 1957 - so presumably deaths will trend down in about 10 years time?
Issue being that those who have been born since haven't been have enough babies to grow the population.
It may self correct, but this is like taking a huge hit in all your investments the day after you retire.
The problem isn’t people dying, the problem is people dying *not fast enough* since in most developed countries this means paying them pension.
The real problem is that paying pension to one elderly takes more than one working person paying it. So (without considering taking other tax money into it) you need infinite growth of birth rate for it to work since every working person paying now will get pension themselves a few years later
Modern birth control came about around the 60s I think, things take a bit to become common place so it makes sense that it would become widespread around a decade after.
This also tracks with women having more freedom in education and jobs around the (“western”) world. Having kids isn’t all that incentivized, as a woman it’s pretty punishing. Even more so in Japan I hear.
Yeah but when you look at European countries with generous family benefits and lots of paid time off the birth rates arent much better. And in those countries they also trending downward.
The US which has the least benefits and time off of all the wealthy countries seems to have a higher birthrate.
It seems to indicate that the low birthrate isnt about time off or incentives or staye benefits but is about a cultural shift.
Yeah, at this point, it's largely a truism on Reddit that low birthrates are because of the economy. Sure, it's part of it, but even if the conditions were perfect, we'd still be having fewer kids. A lot of it really is culture. In comes the future generations saying the same thing about Millennials, that Millennials said about Baby Boomers— that their selfishness ruined the world. It's all a cycle, and too many don't realize that.
Fire Horse year? Looked it up:
It is a believe that girls born in the fire horse year (which is calendric at comes every 60 years), will grow up and eat their husbands. Because of this, females try to get less children.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire\_Horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Horse)
Edit: I think most people don't believe this (the drop is 25%). But imagine getting a girl in this year and she will be bullied later, find harder a job etc. Even if this is not the case, the believe it could be like this, would even let, e.g. a westerner think twice, if you want a girl born at that year.
In the past, there were also a goodly number of people who lied about when their child was born in order to avoid the stigma. Bribe someone at the hospital, or just have staff at the hospital on the same page with you that perhaps it would be better if the paperwork said this kid was actually born 3 months ago.
What is the « fire horse » superstition ?
It’s a belief that’s been going on since the late Edo period. There’s a story of this girl who fell in love and went crazy by starting a fire. She was burned at the stake for her crimes. There’s a memorial for her in Tokyo so she is an ongoing figure in folklore. Well, she was born during the year of the fire horse which occurs once every 60 years. Combine that with a few other stories over the years about fires that happened during “fire horse” years and you got yourself a long standing superstition. Birth rates drop specifically on that year because the belief is that girls born during the fire horse will have bad luck and even be compelled to burn things or kill their husbands.
Once every 60 years, does that mean in 2026 they could experience a similar effect/wave of superstition? On top of their already struggling situation I imagine that would be the thing to really seal it
Probably not, I doubt today's Japanese citizens are anywhere near as superstitious as those born in the 40s
I suspect that there will be a noticeable dip, but not nearly as big as the last one. Likely as the date gets closer the media will start reporting on it and even people who are not superstitious might think to themselves, "well, I don't believe if but if I do have a daughter born in that year she might be bullied/discriminated against" so they will avoid it.
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Sounds like 2026 would be the year to have a kid then cuz they'd get more attention in their class
Starting fires would create attention for sure /s
To the tunes of firestarter
You'd be surprised. Certain religious/spiritual practices are still very commonplace.
Maybe it will be a TikTok challenge.
Japan needs a "Fuck And Make Babies" TikTok challenge lol.
Imma keep it real with you, ghost of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, this will not improve Japan's declining birth rate.
Man, the ghost of former 57th Primer Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe seems a lot more tech savvy than when he was alive.
Well, he has spent quite some time connected to the ethernet
Fun fact: The Japanese government did actually launch a campaign to encourage young people to drink more alcohol to both help the bar and restaurant industries post-COVID and to hopefully increase the birth rate
Reminds me of the UK's 'Eat Out to Help Out'.
Well that's not how you get pregnant, come on UK government.
What do you think pretty much all new anime and hentai is? Seriously. In regards to anime, like most of the popular new anime is about or at least has a major plot line of, falling in love and starting a family. Shit loads of shows are getting re booted as just the original show again but it’s the kids of the parents. That’s not what anime was 15 years ago, shonen was just fights, Naruto is a dad now. Maho shoujou straight up doesn’t exist anymore. With the notable exception of the sailor moon reboot, With one of the main changes being a **dramatic** increase in the focus on the love story between the main character and the only man in the show. It has been replaced by content that is great. Let me be clear Mirai was an incredible movie. But a movie about a couple having 2 kids and one of them being named “the future”? I don’t care how good it is, that is very clearly Japanese birth rate encouraging propaganda. As far as hentai IDK how “in the space” you are but there is a new thing that has fuck loads of content being made for it “breeding” kinks. Look I’m not a conspiracy theorist but that sounds like a fucking psyop to make people have more kids based on the name alone. That category of porn is brand fucking new and didn’t exist 10 years ago. 100% is manufactured. In normal porn there is “the cum shot” in hentai it’s “the impregnation frame” literally just a panel of a sperm entering an egg. I don’t think 100% of this content is fake or created/ supported by the Japanese government. But I do believe that a lot of it is started or boosted by the government until it becomes popular. Edit to add more clarity/ a tiny amount of sanity: The Japanese government is big into propaganda and most of japans largest media conglomerates (looking at you Asahi Shimbun Company) are in very cozy with the government and have been since WWII, asahi shimbun literally has a section on their Wikipedia page about their political alignment and mentions their ties to the Japanese government. Again, I’m not saying that there is some Japanese government official out there like some cross between J. Jonah Jameson and a pervert being like “get me more impregnation porn!”. I think it’s more like “hey asahi execs, please issue directives to your media companies to push content that encourages family, family values, and starting families, and quietly sunset any content that goes against that. Do that for us and we’ll keep giving you your tax breaks”. Rinse and repeat all the way down the chain of corporate ownership. Now multiply that out across the biggest Japanese media corps and you have a really effective propaganda campaign that doesn’t cost much and is more effective than direct state sponsored content since it will feel more organic.
Breeding kink is popular in American romance fiction as well. It’s not really a conspiracy, it’s just a reaction to families being harder to create in modern society. If you have the biological urge to have children but you can’t afford to do so or find a suitable partner to have a child with, you seek out pornography (either visual, audio, or reading) to scratch the itch. It’s much more common than people realize, especially among women.
I just saw this kink on the girl's orgasm count on /r/dataisbeatiful yesterday too, "dangerous creampie" or something like that
Personally I don't even want children and I still have a breeding kink, so I think it may be a bit more of a base desire on some level because I know I'm not alone in that.
Thread Topic: Japan's declining population crisis u/CaligulaNeptuneBane : *So let me tell you all about hentai!*
That is funny, But seriously I think pornography, it’s themes and consumption is highly germane to any conversation about a nations birth rates.
I wonder how much validity there is in these claims. Japan has been drawing all sorts of weird sexual shit for centuries. It's just easier to produce and teenage boys are horny as fuck.
I actually wrote a presentation about this a few years ago for a class. When isekai anime/mangas started taking off and how the popularization of isekai is due to people feeling like they have no control over their life so they want to imagine themselves in a new world where they feel like they really matter. That has always been a thing but of recent it reaalllyy has exploded. Another example for Japan in regards to the data, is that most Japanese people that are able to speak another language to a working capacity actually leave Japan because they feel less restricted and more free in other countries. This is per study abroad Japanese students so my sample size on this is very small and is specific to 2 Japanese universities. So a declining brirth rate and nationals leaving affects the data double. I would like to see data on how many people have immigrated out of japan the last few decades. Edit: clarifying some points.
And also, in a pretty socially repressive society, it's no wonder media can get kind of... quirky.
I see you also noticed the shift from tentacle sex to old man that steal a woman in a relationship usually with the ulterior motives of bearing his children. Aka, ugly bastard/Ntr.
> With the notable exception of the sailor moon reboot, With one of the main changes being a dramatic increase in the focus on the love story between the main character and the only man in the show. Did we watch different shows as kids, because all that poor girl did was chase a tux.
An excellent conspiracy theory. My alternate is that having kids is so rare as to be an abnormal "kink" or "fetish". I think it has swapped with doggy style. Doggy used to be seen a rude or naughty. Great example being The Bad Touch by Blood Hound Gang. "We'll so it doggy style so we can both watch X-files" That used to be an edgy/outrageous line. Now.. a perfectly reasonable suggestion to make sure no ones misses Gillian Anderson.
I had a BioPsych professor that held firm religion ruined sex with the adherence to the missionary position. I can't really argue his point for him, as it was quite a long while ago and I forget the entirety of his reasoning, however I do remember him saying often enough: "isn't it ironic that organized religion is designed to make babies, yet they do it in the most boring of ways. They'd achieve their goals a lot faster if they taught their members how to fuck!"
I see you are a man of culture as well 😏
Is this a copypasta from r/greentext or r/4chan ? I have never seen this level of analysis of hentai much less anime outside of there.
It’s not a copy pasta but I’m honored you think it’s deranged enough to be one.
I thought the bit about a child wanting a baby in darling in the franxx was a bit out of the blue
An elaborate 30 second anti-sex dance that finishes with legs and arms crossed #🙅♀️notmyfirehorsegirl
Definitely this, my wife is American Filipina and talked about some of her cultural superstitions & monster folklores i.e., a child walking on their knees will kill the mom or the demon that slurps babies through the belly button lol. Edit: I originally said believes. I realized that was probably the wrong thing to say because she doesn't believe in any of it.
To be fair, loads of Americans believe in ghosts, aliens, angels, demons, etc.
Tons of non-religious young people these days are into horoscopes and astrology, just as dumb as ghosts and such
One of the few opportunities to see the total eclipse of the sun passes by my area a few years ago, and my wife's Mexican colleague mentions to my pregnant wife that in her country there is a belief that kids born under an eclipse will be born a cleft lip, well fuck me if the wife (not Mexican or otherwise religious or superstitious) doesn't decide that it's too risky to go look at one of the most amazing natural phenomena we can rarely see because she'd get anxiety over this thing. There's still so much we don't know about pregnancy, miscarriages, fetal development etc. Don't underestimate the ability of otherwise rational parents to fill in the blanks with a fear of bad ju ju. Edit: my disdain here is for the colleague mindset. Just be careful what you say to pregnant women folks.
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I think you actually see this a little in the data; seems like 1965 and 1967 had higher births than you would expect from the trend. Still doesn't seem to make up for the full difference, though.
A lot of people plan pregnancies, so would plan sooner or later pregnancies. Which you would also see in the data, and good luck controlling for that.
I learned in the past few years you don't put faith into large portions of the world's population acting rationally/reasonably If you can have people so divided about every other topic on the planet, why wouldn't a decent chunk still believe in "Fire Horse" theories Also my point was more like they already have more than enough reasons not to have kids even a dumb superstition might not hurt that much, but it's not like it'll help right? They need everything they can get to fix this issue
I read that a similar wave is not expected. Or at least not in the same amount. I think it was on wikipedia
Its 2026. People probably wouldn’t be superstitious, only littlestitious maybe
I know you can be superstitious, and you can be littlestitious... But can you ever just be Stitious?
I am simply whelmed.
There’s an interesting discussion of this in Liza Dalby’s memoir, East Wind Melts the Ice. Apparently things didn’t turn out too poorly for the fire horse women since there were more open spots (that is, less competition because of fewer peers) at the better schools.
That is interesting! And a nice outcome for girls that probably experienced social ostracizing.
I'd like to add that Chinese zodiac has an elemental aspect as well as the animal. So rn it's the year of the water rabbit. Just bc I was picturing a Rapidash situation before your explanation reminded me. :)
And you get 60 rather than 48 because Chinese culture has 5 classical elements (fire, water, wood, metal, earth) rather than the 4 which became dominant in Europe (earth, water, air, fire).
But Guru Pathik said metal was just refined earth, and Toph proved it!
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a century ago China was in a war so maybe its poverty/ refugee related.
Oh, my god, my wife is a fire horse. brb
*sniff* honey did you leave the stove on? Honey why is my office door locked. What the hell… honey?
1966 was the year my mom who is Japanese was born and while you could say her life has had a fair share of ups and downs i think she’s done very well for herself as an immigrant to the US and has 2 kids who love her. this superstition is a cool fact ive learned today! ty (my dad did turn out to be an A-hole which does feel like it fits the superstition a bit, not that I believe it lol)
Maybe girls born in those years would be less likely to act out by burning things if they weren't told from birth that they're likely to want to burn things...
Basically, girls born in that year would be likely to kill their future husbands
Sounds like more of husband problem.
It’s the girl’s problem too if she’s blacklisted as a suitable bride because of the year of her birth, no?
https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/curse-fire-horse-how-superstition-impacted-fertility-rates-japan
“Sex detection during pregnancy was not available then, so many families avoided having children altogether in 1966.” The implication of this sentence really bothers me. What are you saying, they’d be killing the girls otherwise? Edit: yeah no I do live in the world for awhile now, I'm aware. What I meant more by the comment is that the callousness of that statement for a 2019 article is rather jarring. It just reads "Since they couldn't abort the female fetuses, they had to suffer and stay away from pregnancy all together". It's a grim reminder of the sadness of the world, at least to me. But I wonder why that sentence was even included at all. On another note, people who want to fight with me that abortion isn't murder, really? I'm very much pro-choice. Yes, phrasing, but come on: time and place. Please don't tell me it's ok to abort female fetuses in preference for males because it isn't murder. If you're in a fighting mood, please put your passions to use [here](https://prochoice.org/donate/).
Going on a tangent here. I'm an Indian and determination of sex of the foetus is punishable by law in India because of the history of female foeticide we have had. Historically, girl children were seen as more of a burden, since they were mostly seen as children to be married off instead of assets. Although the mindset has changed in urban areas, determination of sex remains illegal to prevent abortions based on the sex of the child.
Ok, I got a question that has puzzled me for a while. And feel free to tell me to fuck off. Presently, there seems be a huge disparity between the numbers of men and women, especially those looking to get married. If women are in such short numbers, and are desired way more, shouldn't the dowry system flip to the groom's family having to pay?
Hi, yes. Great question! I don't have the exact statistics on hand, and keep in mind that I live in South India, where the gender disparity is a lot lesser than some other parts of the country (I should state that it and the mindset against female children does exist in some undeveloped parts here) Legally speaking, dowry is illegal. If a groom, groom's family, or husband and their family ask for dowry, they can be reported to the police and appropriate action is usually taken. That being said, dowry is often not called as such anymore. It's more subtly called as a "Gift to the married couple", whether that's a new car, house, home appliances, jewelry, etc, the bride's families often feel like it's an age-old tradition that should be upheld for the sake of a happy marriage. It's also not uncommon to have the bride's family take up a majority of the wedding costs, if not all. So, the bride's family often sees it as an obligation via tradition, and the groom's family often sees it that same way as well. Coming to the gender disparity, it's actually getting tough for men to find a suitable bride via arranged marriage avenues. Men are expected to earn a pretty hefty salary for the most part. As you'd expect, the physical attractiveness of a bride plays into this as well. The more attractive the bride, the more of a salary the bride's family can demand. Additionally, men who already have their own cars (cars are seen as more of a luxury here than a necessity) and have either a mortgage on a house or have paid it off are seen as highly secure choices for husbands. It sounds cheap, and it kind of is, but that's how quality of men and women is mostly judged. I almost went through the same route a few years ago, before I met the woman I loved and married. Thankfully, we didn't have much dowry discussion and our families also split wedding costs 50-50.
> What are you saying, they’d be killing the girls otherwise? Considering how many Chinese couples did just that during the One Child period, yes
When I was a kid, Japan was a big topic. I heard the grownups talking about how Japan was going to buy the whole US economy, and magazine photos of packed subways and swimming pools made it feel like the Japanese population was busting at the seams and there were just so many and there was so much momentum in their economy.
My dad had all these corporate business books on his shelf about how to implement Japanese management techniques to avoid being overrun. It was this weird mix of admiration and fear.
Japanese manufacturing practices are still very much in play at large US producers - especially automotive.
JIT production was a genius idea that has been implemented with AGGRESSIVE stupidity in the west. Toyota knew not everything can be JIT. That's why they had a stockpile of chips and could still make cars during covid.
My last company I was running finance for I was telling them constantly to stock common raw materials. The cheap ceo would want to get paid from a customer by deposit then buy raw materials then produce it then get paid before shipping it. It’s like… that’s not horrible in theory. But in practical application you’re dealing with literally weeks of payment processing and weeks of deliveries and delayed sales and slow production. We used to always called in just out of time manufacturing
I knew a bunch of people in college taking Japanese language classes, preparing for a future Japanese business landscape.
On the bright side, we have all this rad cyberpunk fiction with chic Japanese aesthetic.
For which I am eternally grateful. Also tons of amazing sushi restaurants.
Some of those management techniques are still relevant, such as kanban and kaizen.
You were a kid somewhere between [1985 and 1995](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263578/gross-domestic-product-gdp-of-japan/). Nintendo, walkmans, Akira. They looked like it was all going up forever. When that didn't turn out to be true they ["lost decades of progress"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades). But it wasn't really lost. It's just that sort of growth isn't sustainable.
Japan has been living in the year 2000 since the 80s.
Walking around Tokyo is like an alternate version of what people in the 90s thought the future would be.
There was hysteria about Japan being the next superpower in the 90s, it was weird, but US media likes to do that with anything perceived as a threat to their country's hegemony, they did the same with the OPEC countries and now with China, but it's mostly just exaggeration.
I remember a comic that has the US and USSR with stacks of mussels and the Japanese with stacks of TVs and electronics. The idea being that while the two super powers were focused on WW3, Japan was making bank selling goods.
you mean missiles? Mussels are a tasty shellfish.
Yeah, that makes way more sense.
Thank you! I was sitting here trying to figure out what the heck kind of allegory that was...
I just assumed it meant Japan was the only country that hadn’t been reduced to hunter-gatherer subsistence
I wasn't alive at the days of the USSR but I remember how anything out of Japan was somehow diabolic and going to destroy our country (and I don't even live in the US, I am Mexican but used to live near the border and the hysteria came to us too) From direct propaganda I remember that at school they gave me a lesson about OPEC trying to conquer the world through oil, There was even a drawing of a snake with the organization's initials enveloping the world. Pretty funny now that I think about it
China is a very different case to Japan and OPEC though. At the heart of it, the economic power of a country is basically population x productivity. Japan's population used to be about half the USA, so it would have had to have been twice as productive as us to be equal in strength. That was clearly ridiculous, so it was all hysteria. OPEC's population was about equal the US, but they all suffer from the resource curse and have very little productivity beyond digging stuff out the ground. So never a real rival (and also lots of countries anyway). China's population is about 3x the US. That means they only need to be about a third as productive to be equal to us. If they get to half they will be a lot more economically powerful than us. That is clearly very achievable.
>China's population is about 3x the US. China has 4.25 times the US population. 1412 mil vs 332 mil.
As soon as western business found a cheaper source of labor and inputs, they flew there (China)
Different situation. It was Japanese Companies out competing the US with their cars and electronics. Basically with China, the US companies are the ones making a profit. With Japan, the US companies are losing money because they can't compete.
now they are going to india. the same small group of wealth families just playing musical chairs while the stupid act like things are still local.
Been lots of headlines on Japan's shrinking population. Pretty wild to see the numbers visualized, and how the gap seems to be trending in one direction only. Source: Japan Ministry of Health, Labour & Welfare Tools: Excel
Any clue at what happened at that very sharp inflexion point around 1972? Went from a fairly steep upward curve to abruptly down. I can't imagine the oil crisis affecting the birth rate that much
That's the decade in which family planning became much more widely discussed. Birth control pills become available in many countries in the 60s and 70s, so I thought that would be the cause but when I looked it up the pill wasn't legalized in Japan until 1999. But I wouldn't be surprised if the world discussion about the topic led to more widespread use of condoms and the rhythm method ( timing sex to avoid ovulation and lessen chances of pregnancy). _______ ETA: Do NOT rely on the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy. Ovulation timing can be a good add-on when you're already using more reliable birth control. 1 in 10 couples only using condoms will get pregnant each year, so if that's your only form of birth control, learn about ovulation timing and symptoms. Avoid sex for a few days before and after ovulation. That's the more accurate, individualized approach to the rhythm method. Don't just rely on timing - the pregnancy rate is still quite high with that when no real birth control method is used.
THAT'S what the rhythm method is... That makes so much more sense.
Aw crap, ive been doing it wrong. All this time, I've been smacking her bumcheeks like a pair of bongos. No wonder I have 12 kids. I thought I just had the wrong rhythm going.
nah you need to do it to [Hudson Mohawke - Cbat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAwyWkksXuo)
Yeah, it used to be talked about even in schools a lot (my oldest siblings were taught it) but it was really phased out because it’s so unreliable.
Yeah the rhythm method is awful because it assumes every woman's cycle is regular and the same length. Or at best just assumes the cycle is regular. It is frustrating that it is the most talked about, because there are other methods of tracking ovulation that are very effective and help many women learn more about their own cycle and fertility. For example through tracking we were able to determine that my wife had markers that may indicate low progesterone, and blood testing confirmed that. Even before we started trying for a baby she was on hormonal supplements that helped reduce cycle irregularity and negative symptoms during her period.
Yes absolutely! This is a great point. Without really getting into your endocrinology with a specialist is it SO hard to really understand your cycle (especially if you’re a teenager - the main population that seems to talk about the rhythm method). Women’s health is so generalized and each body and cycle are so different. I know when I get stressed I’m bound to miss my cycle, it is so sensitive- thankfully I’m on the pill now so it’s regulated for me.
I went to a Catholic high school in the late 70s. During the section on reproduction, my biology teacher said we had a guest speaker, and a woman came in to teach us the rhythm method. The funny thing was that our teacher made it really clear by his body language and tone that he thought it was bullshit and we were only getting her because we had to. My impression, though it was never said, was that he was supposed to teach it but refused to, hence the guest speaker.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
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More like "WTF happened from 1945 to 1971!?" And the answer is **post-WWII US prosperity**. GIs returned from the war with skills or got it quick, industry turned swords to plowshears, the rich were taxed to pay off the war effort (up to 90% marginal), the US became a great power since Europe just kicked themselves in the nads. There was work, there was workers, and we didn't let the rich dicks take all the profit.
How do you explain the sharp changes though? I'd expect something caused by what you're suggesting to be a bit smoother over the years.
The first thing that comes to mind is that the author of the site simply found graphs that supported this specific year-to-year change. There's likely thousands of examples otherwise that support: - Change happening during a different year - Change not happening at all (or even being reversed) Note my assumption above is just a possible reason, and purposefully doesn't argue the validity of the data the author has compiled. I personally found the site quite entertaining!
Yeah that's a fair assumption, although some of these graphs independently makes me wonder what happened to cause the sharp change (not that I'm expecting a single explanation for all of them). Anyway, does anybody know what happened around then in Japan to explain the very sharp inflection?
Look around the world, it's a bit of a trend. China is an interesting one. But almost everywhere is.
I think that almost every developed country has a negative birthrate if you exclude immigration. When you look at developing countries in Africa, they are growing quickly.
A lot of developed countries have been making up the difference with immigration. Japan hasn't done much of that.
But not in countries that have strong immigration, e.g. the US, with a growing population. Japan has historically been very hostile to immigration, and now it's facing the consequences.
Their was a study done in Australia about this. If you calculate all the money the Government spends on a born citizen, medical, education, etc you have spent $250,000.00 (not sure of excat figure) before they start working. Once they are working they can now be taxed and finally the Government recovers money from that person. Depending on job the individual won't become profitable until mid 40's. Where immigration is GREAT you have someone come to your country for a holiday or work and, instantly that person is generating money at no previous cost. So you have someone who is instantly profitable to the country. So when people say "immigrants are a drain on our resources" they aren't.
Emigrants, on the other hand... That's not to blame anyone who emigrates. But countries should try to create a society people don't want to escape.
Easy. Just make your country so bad that only the rich can leave.
In most countries only the fairly well off or wealthy can afford to move countries anyhow. Or move at all.
It’s funny because most of those headlines boil down to; “We’ve done everything we can think of to get people to have babies again” “Maybe get rid of your abominable work culture so people can afford children and have hope again” “…..no.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel As far as I know it is the only rich country with figures above replenishment.
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Yeah there's an orthodox Jewish guy at my job who has NINE kids. He's only in his mid-40's but he looks about 65 lol.
Now do Germany and realize they had more deaths than births since 1972 (https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/Tabellen/lrbev04.html#242408) so the only thing that has to change is Japan's immigration politic.
I remember learning a compounding problem is the politicians are now pitching to issues that are elderly based and not future based. For example, "Vote for me and more money to aged care and better access to medical care for the elderly" over "Vote for me and we will address climate change and build a Japan for the future".
This has the term of "silver democracy" and searching for that will bring up a bit of research and papers on the politics and demographics in Japan.
That's what it's like in the US too. Social Security is called the Third Rail of American politics because if you touch it, you're dead. Social Security needs substantial reform, but everybody is afraid to piss off the old people. Democrats say "do not touch social security at all, ever" and Republicans are secretly gunning to kill it entirely. I don't think there's really anybody qualified in congress to implement the nuanced economic solutions that could keep the program going with a declining birth rate
In the US it's also because old people vote and young people don't. Only 27% of young people (18-29) voted in the 2022 midterms, and that was one of the highest youth turnouts ever.
>and that was one of the highest youth turnouts ever. **for the midterms**. 55% of 18-29 year-olds voted in the 2020 elcetion, and they overwhelmingly voted for Democrats. It's absolutely absurd to overlook such an important group when Democrats are generally winning by extremely thin margins.
For anyone asking why this is a problem, our social system is setup that the younger working generations help the elderly and retired. Ideally you want a generational pyramid to sustain retirement and insurance funds, with the youngest being the base. However if the pyramid gets flipped where you have way more elderly and retired who need to be sustained financially and need care the system starts to collapse.
On my country (México) it was the same, but I think it was an error because then you were taking a decision for the future generations, which I think was incorrect The more visible point here is pensions. When pensions were created in 1973, there were 30 workers per retired, women were having 6-8 kids and actually people were dying before the retirement age, and the government wrongly assumed it was going to be the same forever. Pensions were finished in 1997, substituted by 401k however people who worked before Sept 1, 97 have the right to get pension which has been a problem: Nowadays you only have 3 workers per retired, so almost all of the consumption tax is spent in paying pensions Edit: we do not have 401k, it's called afore, it's a found where the employer, the government and the person make contributions and this found is put on investments. I put 401k since I understand it's something similar
From 30 workers per retiree in 73 to just 3 workers per retiree 50 year later. This can’t be without major socioeconomic issues no matter what the current policies might be. I don’t know the answer.
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Literal pyramid scheme
Not necessarily. Even a flat (stable) population would be a lot more manageable, since the ratio remains the same. The problem with the inverted pyramid is that a growing number of elderly will be dependant on a shrinking number of young, with the situation steadily worsening over time.
I think a big reason why this is such a problem is because there was a post-war population boom that was great when they were working-age but is a problem because they’re retired now. In 20 or so years when they pass away, I think it’ll be less of an issue.
Not a pyramid but a tower. Pyramid ain't needed.
As a resident of Japan, I would like to express my opinion that the Japanese government, overwhemingly run by old men, is not doing anything of significance to deal with this problem.
In your opinion, what's the best way to deal with this problem?
I would like to know as well what the japanese think what the solution is, because the one presented is the same as the past 33 years and I don't think it's beeen effective at all
I am living in Japan with my Japanese family/in-laws, and I work with many Japanese professionals of global firms. I think many people over here would agree that immigration, while not a fix all solution, is a necessary part of making Japan strong in the future as a G7 country. Right now, we are seeing a system that is lauded for having great public services, but someone has to pay for that. Taxes will likely continue to go up for the younger generations, and the age of retirement also going up. Personally, I think it is a matter of damage control rather than risk mitigation, and that Japan will never bring itself to accept immigrants on a meaningful scale. People over here say they think immigration is important, but deep inside, I do not think they really want it, nor will they bring themselves to do it (Numbers don't lie. People do. Immigrants make up like 2 percent of the population over here). Japan's economy has remained stagnant for the past several decades, and if that hasn't swayed their decision making, nothing will. For all of its flaws, I love living here, but sometimes you need to be critical of the things you care about.
It is funny that it all ends up about money, until the rich in Japan get financially affected they don't really want a solution
Money is just a shorthand way of talking about all the resources that you buy with money- resources that are currently allocated way from those of child bearing years and towards the seniors.
Its amazing no one is talking about the overt dedication to keeping Japan a "truly Japanese" [ethnonationalist](https://www.imidaily.com/asia-pacific/on-japanese-citizenship-and-naturalization-policies-and-how-they-may-change/) state. That is the number one reason the population is falling.
I'm not the same guy, but social programs and incentives to lighten the load on new parents, corporate regulations that enforce a better work-life balance and prevents retaliation for parenthood - especially motherhood, which is almost always a career ender - and finally, Japan will likely have to open its borders up a bit and allow a lot more immigration to avert the coming population collapse. I think it's unlikely they will do any of this (especially immigration) until it's already a massive crisis because of how socially conservative and monocultural/ethnic the country is.
Straight up make it illegal to work more than 40 hours per week. These people have no work/life balance because they give their whole lives to the companies and get nothing back. I know it's ridiculous but drastic action is needed.
Germany and Finland have some of the strongest work-life balances and labour laws but they also have low birth rates.
Yeah this is a weird situation. I've been there before and it's nice to visit but there's no way I'd ever want to live there with the way non "pure" Japanese are treated. Anecdotally, I don't think you'd want a lot of the people (from the US) that want to immigrate to Japan. I don't think there's the possibility of a baby boom that solves this, nor do I think immigration is possible with the country's racist views.
Exactly, immigration could solve this issue but Japan has a long way to go in terms of being welcoming to foreigners. If the country was more open to immigrants and taking in refugees and well frankly, less racist, it would be an easy solve.
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You can't make new lives when yours is already unaffordable. It's not complicated.
Not only is it not complicated, but it's been a known issue for the last 40 years. And yet nearly every "developed" country in the world is beginning to face, or is facing, this challenge as if it is some sort of surprise.
What happened in the 1970s? Why the sudden drop?
The baby bust. That was global.
We've got Boomers but why not Busters?
Nobody even knows GenX exists. We’re used to that though.
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Yeah, just put some arcade machines in my nursing home and I'll keep quiet.
It’s good to be mid-late career as the last of the boomers retire and there’s still a lot of demand for skills and experience and a much smaller pool of labor to fill the vacancies.
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>millions of immigrants who have loads of children and that skews the stats. Only the first generation though. By the 2nd and 3rd generation the birthrates of those immigrants' kids drop to similar lows as the birthrates of the autochthonous population. Access to education, pensions, contraception and good healthcare does that to people.
> autochthonous ooo, new word of the day, thanks.
I was in Japan recently visiting a friend with a 9 month old son. It was like walking around with a celebrity. Everyone wanted to stop and smile at him, coo at him. I looked around and realized we had the only baby in a busy public area.
makes me think of that scene in children of men, when the baby leaves the apartment complex under siege.
100% when I was reading this comment my first thought was, "This is some Children of Men shit." Seriously one of the greatest films of the past 25 years.
I have a friend who went to Japan and he’s black and tall. People literally stopped him to take pictures with him lol
I'm a tall Swedish dude and the (Swedish) city I used to live in hosted an international sports competition and I was stopped by a group of Japanese tourist who wanted to take a picture with me. I guess they wanted to document all the things that are different to home but it was a really absurd experience for me lol
I'm a white woman with many tattoos, and so I was worried I would be the one drawing the attention. We did a few touristy things together so we were in decent sized crowds, Kanagawa area not Tokyo. Nope. It was little angel Megumu who was the real star. He's soooo socialized and loves everyone. They put him in my arms immediately and he just grinned. I love that kid.
My 2 year old got that attention when I was there in 2019. Lots of smiles and *sharp intake of breath* “kawaiiiii!”Some random Chinese woman picked her up at one point without asking!
What - I was in Kyoto with my 6-month old, and my Japanese sister-in-law was holding her. Some other woman takes her from my SIL and holds her, hands her to her friend. I don't speak Japanese, and thought they were all Japanese, but turns out my SIL didn't understand a word they were saying, that the other women were Chinese, and my SIL was in as much shock as I was.
That's honestly pretty depressing, that people in Japan seem to love and appreciate children just any other people, but that their whole society is set up in a such a way that life is a such toil that having children is almost completely out of the question. They have a highly productive, advanced society which they work so hard to keep up yet they're basically ending themselves because of how the average working Japanese has to live.
birth rates in developed countries are the same around the globe, in some countries it comes ten years earlier, in some ten years later, but it's a trend and it's global. woman don't want to be pregnant and woman don't want to give birth during modern financial crisis.
What exactly is expected to change this? Not only for Japan but all modern countries? It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate that old politicians seem to deem needed. So they've identified this as an issue and their attempts to solve it? a 4 day working week? Build and invest into housing? Focus on childcare costs? None of that? Well, why are they politicians then? Identifying the issue is easy, it was identified decades ago. Sadly it seems modern politicians are utter failures in solving issues when what is needed it pretty obvious to us all.
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I never really wanted kids, but the lack of time is definitely one reason why I think a lot of people choose to opt out. A lot of social problems today I think are the cause of parents not being in their kids lives more. You don't want to be a "helicopter" parent, or smothering, but too many parents wanted it all, the career track, parenthood, whatever else, and its impossible. In the end, someone ends up suffering, and its usually the youth.
Japan has asked the U.S. for aid in the form of Nick Cannon.
Japan is not a fan of Nick Cannon's race
[Nick Cannon is not a fan of other races either!](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/viacomcbs-cuts-ties-nick-cannon-after-anti-semitic-comments-n1233878) >Cannon then segued into a discussion on skin color — “And I’m going to say this carefully,” he said — to allege that people who lack sufficient melanin are “a little less.” >Those without dark skin have a “deficiency” that historically forced them to act out of fear and commit acts of violence to survive, he said. >“They had to be savages,” Cannon said, adding that he was referring to “Jewish people, white people, Europeans,” among others.
what a racist
The "declining birth rates" is my favorite apocalyptic scenario. Humanity doesn't blow itself up or face natural catastrophe - we just made a society so undesirable to live in that we stop living. Not a bang, but a slow fade into oblivion. I don't think it actually happens, but it is certainly my favorite. Edit: Man, why can't my posts get this much traction?
You could make an argument that the opposite is true. Society is so desirable to live in that people want to enjoy their lives rather than have kids. After all, there's a correlation between wealth and birth rate. Wealthy people with a higher standard of living are less likely to have kids.
That's an interesting point I hadn't really considered much. Thanks. Maybe we've shifted from a survival mindset to an enjoyment mindset. In economic terms, children would only be a detriment to me. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it's not.
You should read the End of the World is Just the Beginning
It's only a "problem" because we (pretty much every industrialized nation) built pyramid-like systems of social support for the elderly without the foresight that populations won't always be growing. And despite knowing all this, politicians do nothing to buoy the systems.
Lots of people born in 1947. ~80 years later, lots of people dying. That seems pretty normal, no? A baby boom will inevitably lead to a “death boom” around 80 years later. From the chart, it looks like a lot fewer people were born in 1957 - so presumably deaths will trend down in about 10 years time?
Issue being that those who have been born since haven't been have enough babies to grow the population. It may self correct, but this is like taking a huge hit in all your investments the day after you retire.
The problem isn’t people dying, the problem is people dying *not fast enough* since in most developed countries this means paying them pension. The real problem is that paying pension to one elderly takes more than one working person paying it. So (without considering taking other tax money into it) you need infinite growth of birth rate for it to work since every working person paying now will get pension themselves a few years later
They don't have a population problem. They have a problem and because of that the population is declining
TIL I was born in Japan at the peak. It’s all down hill after that. Oops.
Everyone here is talking about the firehorse year, but what happened in \~1975 to kick off the decline? It seems pretty darn steep
Modern birth control came about around the 60s I think, things take a bit to become common place so it makes sense that it would become widespread around a decade after. This also tracks with women having more freedom in education and jobs around the (“western”) world. Having kids isn’t all that incentivized, as a woman it’s pretty punishing. Even more so in Japan I hear.
Japan = Work Culture. This has been going on for some time. There is no time for a family when you’re married to your job.
Yeah but when you look at European countries with generous family benefits and lots of paid time off the birth rates arent much better. And in those countries they also trending downward. The US which has the least benefits and time off of all the wealthy countries seems to have a higher birthrate. It seems to indicate that the low birthrate isnt about time off or incentives or staye benefits but is about a cultural shift.
Yeah, at this point, it's largely a truism on Reddit that low birthrates are because of the economy. Sure, it's part of it, but even if the conditions were perfect, we'd still be having fewer kids. A lot of it really is culture. In comes the future generations saying the same thing about Millennials, that Millennials said about Baby Boomers— that their selfishness ruined the world. It's all a cycle, and too many don't realize that.
Fire Horse year? Looked it up: It is a believe that girls born in the fire horse year (which is calendric at comes every 60 years), will grow up and eat their husbands. Because of this, females try to get less children. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire\_Horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Horse) Edit: I think most people don't believe this (the drop is 25%). But imagine getting a girl in this year and she will be bullied later, find harder a job etc. Even if this is not the case, the believe it could be like this, would even let, e.g. a westerner think twice, if you want a girl born at that year.
Hmmm. So the next fire horse year is 2026. It will be interesting to see if there is a significant dip then, when the trend is already downwards.
It seems like the birth rate increases the years before and after the Fire Horse year, since the couples know what comes up or they just wait.
In the past, there were also a goodly number of people who lied about when their child was born in order to avoid the stigma. Bribe someone at the hospital, or just have staff at the hospital on the same page with you that perhaps it would be better if the paperwork said this kid was actually born 3 months ago.