> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,451375,00.html>
> Identity crisis has Japan in turmoil
> Jonathan Watts in Tokyo/ Wednesday March 14, 2001
I continue to be flabbergasted at the low cultural level of foreign reporting of Japan. It's like, half the reporters simply repeat the LDP's ruling-class pap, and the other half dub in the sound-track of "Akira". They wouldn't dare do this to Switzerland. I'm very far from being a Japan expert, but here are the major howlers:
> The past few years have seen a rash of scandals surrounding
> bureaucrats who gave favours in return for trips to hostess bars,
> surgeons who killed patients by leaving implements inside their
> bodies, and police who continued with mah-jongg drinking parties
> rather than respond to urgent calls for assistance.
No, what's happening is that people are actually *reporting* these scandals, instead of hushing them up. The Nikkei Weekly ran a story on this, showing a steady rise in the index of consumer complaints over the course of the 1990s.
> Confusion and turmoil have been most apparent in education. Amid
> record levels of violent juvenile crime, teachers are warning of a
> breakdown in classroom disc ipline and falling academic standards.
Again, this is because people are *reporting* incidents which happened all along. Violence against women is still vastly underreported in Japan, for example. Life-threatening violence is pretty rare, though. The schools are better funded than their US counterparts and do a pretty good job, all things considered.
> Psychologists say that up to a million teenagers are withdrawing from
> society, holing up in their rooms where they feel more comfortable
> relying on their parents and playing with a computer than making
> friends and fending for themselves.
"Hikikomori" -- a phenomenon which happens to young people in their 20s: they vanish from society, holing up in their *own* apartments, surfing the web or whatever. Late capitalism sucks, you know? Not terribly different from what many young people in the EU and US go through: couch potato-dom, dorm rooms, raves, getting stoned, etc. But probaby a bit new for Japan.
> In recent years, however, they have put off marriage and children and
> been more inclined to divorce. As a result, Japan's birth rate has
> plunged to 1.34 for each woman, one of the lowest levels in the world.
> The gerontocracy of the LDP has been slow to realise that women's
> bargaining power has increased sharply because Japan needs them to
> make up the gap in the workforce and to have more children.
Italy's birthrate is even lower. And technology and brainpower drive productivity, not extra bodies. The real issue is, Japan badly needs an EU-style national welfare state, because firms are beginning to axe traditional company welfare programs.
On the other hand, it's always a delight to watch a repressive, patriarchal one-party state expire in splinters of self-inflicted agony. I just hope to live long enough to see something similar transpire to the US one-party state.
-- Dennis