Begging my population to have kids instead of doing anything to address the conditions that make it impossible for enough of them to have kids
Oh yeah
Move over material analysis, It’s idealism as politics time
“Hey, baby, the prime minister is telling us to have kids. That’s got me pretty horny. No, he’s not making any significant changes to help take the edge off that massive expense and responsibility, but who cares? I’ll put his speech on loop and turn it up. Let’s fuck.”
“Also if it helps he’s been dead for over a year.”
Japan is trying to change things. I think it’s just really far behind. While I was there, I remember government run/funded dating programs. The government names and shames companies that overwork their employees. But their definition of overwork is probably well beyond ours. The one-employer-for-life mentality is slowly eroding but it’s slow.
Work hours are long and grueling. Childcare is phenomenally expensive, and that’s assuming you can even find childcare, which is near impossible. Children are expensive. Cost of living is high. Cheating and domestic violence are rates are high. Women have no confidence that they will be supported or be able to provide support if they decide to have a child, and they are very right to think that.
Scarce resources avaliable for women who have children is the reason for the decline. You could never pay me enough to ever have a child in Japan.
Not mention, plenty of Japanese adults grew up being abused and/or neglected by their own parents while growing up in a pressure-cooker society. Maybe they’re thinking twice about bringing another human into the world because of that, as well?
They also have this fucked up idea that pain is an important part of becoming a mother so they don’t really offer things like epidurals. Yeah, no thanks.
I am not personally familiar with the Japanese medical system, but I would not be shocked if that were the case.
Add “treating women really shitty and unfairly” to the checklist.
Japanese permanent resident here.
Epidurals are very rare. They exist but they are not popular at all. Some is the belief that a “natural” birth is better. In some cases it is just availability of an anesthiaologist that is equipped to do one. Some people just don’t even realise it is an option. The only people I know here who have had one were non-Japanese residents.
I don’t think people necessarily look down on a mother who has one, it’s rare enough that nobody would even ask probably, but it’s just not a common procedure.
Human reproduction is an astoundingly bad deal reserved for the richest and most powerful who can outsources the endless source of problems briefs and complications that it is.
The only reason this continued for so long is that we were too stupid to realize not doing it was an option.
Idk man I really love my kid.
assuming you can even find childcare
I think this needs an ‘affordable’ thrown in. The free and cheap stuff is really hard to get into, but there are other, more expensive options (though out of reach of most).
plenty of Japanese adults grew up being abused and/or neglected by their own parents
Do what now? Source?
These links are not for the faint of heart.
https://metropolisjapan.com/the-controversy-of-japans-baby-hatch/
And this is only what gets reported. Rest assured, a majority of abuse is never reported.
Poverty is so much more prevalent for single mothers, as well.
Yeah, it was definitely up during corona. All domestic abuse was up then (and in a lot of the world).
For your first link, it states that the abuse found is more extreme, but the source they link to doesn’t work. I do remember the horrible story of that poor child from the news here. It then goes on to just give numbers with no citations or sources whatsoever. The whole publication also seems a bit weird.
Abandonment of infants is definitely a thing that happens and I’m glad that a baby hatch solution now exists.
I do agree that often abuse goes unreported and/or un-prosecuted (as do rapes and many other crimes in Japan). I just don’t see anything here stating that it’s on the scale I seemed to think you were saying.
Things for single mothers does need to get a lot better; making women more equal in society and actually enforcing the protections on their jobs and family leave could go a long way to this.
I’ve been living in Japan the better part of a decade. I’ve had friends from all walks of life. Some did open up to me about abuse (I was also an abused child for a good chunk of my childhood and have sometimes talked about it), but I’ve really heard no more here than in the US. There are two problems with this. (1) it’s anecdotal based on the experience of one guy in Tokyo and (2) what some people would call abuse, others would not making things even more sticky.
I do think that, whatever the scale of abuse, non-zero is too much and that should be addressed, but I also don’t think it’s some super-regular thing which is what I think you were intending to write,
Missing picture of Abe holding his stomach: “You had time to make a mother fucking blunderbuss, but not enough to fuck?!”
“You are the one who is fucked now, Abe-kun.”
Yamagami has enough fans now he definitely could, they just need to let him out.
“The only thing I’m interested in ‘fucking’ is the cult that runs at the underpinnings of this government”
-Yamagami probably.
His story is amazing. Radicalized by the equivalent of Japan’s alt right, then when he realized that’s who exactly grifted his mother to give away the family wealth, turned his attention to that.
Racialized or radicalized?
So, he fell for the alt-right bullshit, then later realized they were the grifters and scammers, not the filthy gaijin? That culminating in the assassination of Shinzo Abe sounds straight out of a revenge movie
I can’t find the article that mentioned his shift in political views, but he was a hardcore alt-right type before realizing that’s who swindled his mother.
Here’s an article in the Japanese Times. More or less, different publications all have the same story.
One thing that does change depending on when the article was written is Abe’s connection with the church and the church’s connections to the Japanese and South Korean governments. Police withheld certain details until after the elections and approval ratings for the party dropped after. Generally, people aren’t too happy with that and there was even push back about the government paying for Abe’s funeral.
How would they have time? They all work 15 hours per day
Hmm maybe during the commute?
I mean that’s when some get frisky.
According to some, ahem, totally legit drawn stories I’ve read, they do that a lot in trains
Okay what? Isn’t the average workweek length in Japan only slightly longer than in the West?
The official work hours, sure. All the unpaid, unreported overtime they have to do, nope.
Technically the work week is the same, not factoring in commutes. Folks who work in Tokyo often live in neighboring cities like Saitama and commute in.
There’s typically a lot of unpaid overtime though. There is the concept of “black companies” that force employees to work up to 100 hours a week. To some degree the government has been trying to crack down on it, and has met with some success, especially with the bigger international. My company is the Japanese branch of a US company, so we are a little better than most, but some of that still happens. I probably work about 45-50 hours a week on the clock on average, plus maybe 2-3 off the clock. I don’t live or work in Tokyo anymore, so my commute is fairly insignificant.
Thankfully the “you have to go out drinking with all of your coworkers after work” thing has mostly fallen by the wayside. Those events still happen, but it is way more acceptable to just…not go.
Source: I have worked in Japan my entire adult life
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine.
unplugs amazon dot
This “weakness” is the only thing that makes existence remotely tolerable.
Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you.
not so fast, Abe-sama. I have the power of Hexbear emojis nowThe fact you guys have The Blaster as an emoji is just
It’s a DOOHICKEY. Blasters are for starwars libs.
I stand corrected comrade. I admit I lack the technical expertise on doohickeys, I need to study more.
One day you too will know such arcane things, and everyone will like you very much.
What are the R’s and the I’s under the picture?
R’s : Replies to that post
I’s : No# images attached to replies of that post
Many thanks.
Abe was a fascist shit, he deserved it.
Gotta do the rest of the liberal party too unfortunately though.
Shinzo Abe was a clown and Japan’s abortion laws are draconian.
Oral contraceptives were legalized in 1999.
Bear children to feed into the soulless machine of neoliberal international capital ? No thanks Abe, I choose extinction. Humanity would have been gone long ago, we just didn’t realise we had the choice to not continue existing. Thank you inventor of abortion and contraceptive pill finally we can escape this horrible planet and cease to exist.
Haha there are so many emotions in that expression
Oh wow anti-natalists are back haha this is wild
Nihilism is actively encouraged by the ruling class
You ok bro?
“neo liberal”
There’s nothing “liberal” about forcing people to breed to protect corporations and their profits. That’s not what that word means.
Yes it does outside of USA
Given the context Interdimemsionalmeme provides in their comment, I think neoliberal makes perfect sense. Why bring another human being into a dying world where their labor will be exploited until they die?
Because in all of human history, the people who exploit workers are NOT liberal. They are the robber barons who run governments and corporations. Words mean things. So either you don’t know what “liberal” means or you are UP to something, trying to push some "everything bad in the world the fault of ‘liberals’ " nosense.
If u disagree with the term neoliberalism that’s fine but it’s a widespread and useful term that exists in common usage regardless as to what u think of it. If u haven’t read its definition I recommend u check it out! ☺️
To be fair “neoliberalim” is a really misleading name. It does basically just mean “proto-conservative” which can be really confusing if you don’t already know what you’re talking about
I guess it’s misleading if you don’t know history?
Words mean things.
Yes and neoliberalism means something that you apparently are too lazy to click a link to learn.
You should educate yourself instead of continuing to argue against using a word you can’t define.
I think it’s best that you take some sort of political history course before you start yelling at other people about how ‘they’re using liberal wrong’. Just because something has the word liberal in it does not mean it is in reference to certain democratic socialist ideologies; or god forbid you think that liberalism and leftism are synonymous.
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.
lmao. the politics understander has logged on.
@NutWrench @interdimensionalmeme, neo-liberal sounds better than f…ng nazis.
Nah, don’t think I’m going to be taking advice from a holocaust-denying nationalist piece of shit about anything. May he rest in piss.
I completely forgot this guy got blunderbussed straight to hell until now.
claims to be pro natalist
-1
A war crime denier says what?
