Japan's Population Falls At Fastest Rate Since 1968

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Japan's population, excluding resident foreigners, fell at the beginning of this year at its fastest pace since comparable figures were kept in 1968, highlighting the demographic challenge to economic growth. As of Jan. 1, the number of Japanese people fell by a record 308,084 from a year earlier to 125,583,658, marking the eighth consecutive year of declines, government data showed Wednesday. The number of births fell 2.9 percent from the previous year ago to 981,202, the lowest since comparable data became available in 1974. People aged 65 or older accounted for 27.2 percent of the total population, the highest ratio on record, while the ratio of those aged 14 or younger fell to a record low of 12.7 percent, the data showed. The number of registered foreign residents increased to 2,323,428, up 6.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the data.

Comments

Re:This is good news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans don't think of these things as common courtesy - that was a generation or two ago.

While there's definitely some truth to this, a large part of it is also that Japanese tend to be much passive aggressive. So, the whole subway groping phenomenon is so pervasive that basically nothing is done about it. And those who want to raise awareness? They use kawai imagery because even anti-groping messages have to be cube.

The real issue with Americans is they're generally so very provincial. They tend not to have personally experienced foreign cultures and don't think much about multiple ways to do things. This is a major flaw because the whole American Melting Pot concept is based on conscious awareness, not mindless obedience from lack of other known options. Plenty of cultures other than the Japanese can highlight this, it's just that this one was on-topic.

Talk about pot calling the kettle black. Japan is massive provincial, xenophobic, sexist, and generally peaceful based upon a system of mindless obedience. The American Melting Pot concept is not base on conscious awareness as much as constant exposure which happens in cities but not most of rural America. This does not translate into wholly self-centeredness but there's definitely a lot more of it and more awareness of it in American tourists--consider how few Americans leave the country and see how much that creates a huge bias.

In any case, the Japanese crave cities like a lot of people crave cities: it's the best place to have a sustainable career with a substantial income. It's why the East/West coasts in the US have so many people. The main difference is that in the US the vast majority of the rest of the space is wide, open space. In Japan, it's mountains. It's little wonder a greater percentage might cluster around cities that have been heavily leveled/terraced. The other major point, of course, is having 125 million people in so small a space,
  regardless.