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I live part of the year in Hokkaido which is losing population at the rate of 40,000 per year. I'm surrounded by abandoned schools and farm houses and I have to say the overall effect is a feeling of returning to nature. At night you can't hear a single artificial sound. Wildlife is increasing and there are no concerns about some construction company moving in and building hundreds of homes where fields and forest once were -- which is the case where I live in the U.S. during the school year. All in all I'll take depopulation over growing population any day.
I live part of the year in Hokkaido which is losing population at the rate of 40,000 per year. I'm surrounded by abandoned schools and farm houses and I have to say the overall effect is a feeling of returning to nature. At night you can't hear a single artificial sound. Wildlife is increasing and there are no concerns about some construction company moving in and building hundreds of homes where fields and forest once were -- which is the case where I live in the U.S. during the school year. All in all I'll take depopulation over growing population any day.
Hell is living in a rustic, serene haven in the countryside and waking one morning to the sound of bulldozers ripping out the forest next door to build another soulless housing development because population growth demands it.
It's all fine and dandy to throw around platitudes about returning to nature, deciding that less is more, retaining culture, etc. But this population crisis in East Asia wasnt borne of any sort of grand mindfulness, and the results will be painful before they're positive.
Living in the depopulating countryside in Japan is an interesting experiment that few in modern times get the chance to experience. I have plenty of experience on the other side of the equation in places in the U.S. or Taiwan with relentless population growth: forest and farm land being bulldozed for housing; increased traffic; higher stress; soulless suburbs/apartment building sprouting up everywhere, crowds where there were none before . . . .
So far though my experience in the trenches of the "depopulation nightmare" have been anything but negative. As I've watched as another farmhouse goes empty or a formerly cultivated field goes fallow the consequences are the Yezo sika deer become bolder and more numerous, there's less traffic on the nearby country roads, standing outside at night with my Taiwanese wife who still can't believe how many stars there are in the night sky . . . .
Eventually unbridled population growth is going to have to come to a halt one way or the other because the earth's resources are finite. We'll either have to figure out a way to implement steady state population ourselves or it will happen on its own the hard way.
Only environmentalist nuts without any understanding of (or regard for) economics and sociology would think it's a good thing for a developed country to experience dramatic population aging/decline. Countries such as China, Mexico, and India can better cope with small (key word) population declines as they still have a large proportion of rural poor (relative to the total population) that can be converted into more productive and higher earning labor (and the consequent loss of agricultural productivity can easily be replaced with increased agricultural mechanization).
Japan needs an annual week-long Shinto fertility festival. Revelry, libations, and baby-making!!! Strong developed nation economies make for a stronger overall global economy.
Just wondering why you think this way. Eventually, we will run out of resources. You must be an economist or else a short-term thinker. Someone else on this forum from New Jersey thought we should encourage population growth in the empty parts of the West. This won’t be practical because of lack of water, high percentages of public lands, and no employment. Some of us prefer a less populated world. You stay in your tiny apartment cubicle. I will enjoy my rural acreage.
No, they don't have arranged marriage nowadays.
Other Asian countries have higher marriage and birth rates because they are still interested in marrying and becoming parents. They goto matchmaking activities to meet the opposite sex if they are not currently dating.
Japanese people are changing, less people are marrying and becoming parents than the past.
Quote:
Originally Posted by keraT
Don't they follow arrange marriage like other parts of Asia? shouldn't that take care of the problem of not having significant others and procreating
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