Japanese society's attitude to women and immigration.

political analyst

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/01/asia/japan-demographic-crisis-population-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

As is stated in that article, Japan is still a patriarchal society in which married women are still expected to shoulder the majority of the obligation to care for the elderly, despite government efforts to get the women's more husbands more involved, and is still conservative towards immigration, despite the demographic crisis, which is the main point of the article.

Why did the occupation of Japan by American and British Commonwealth forces in the immediate aftermath of World War 2 not make a difference to the prevalence of those attitudes in Japanese society?

Boggles

Were women not expected to shoulder the majority of the care in 1940s America and Britain?

Pretty sure they were.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058338535/japanese-societys-attitude-to-women-and-immigration

They only occupied it for 7 years. You can set up institutions in that time frame but you're not going to remove complex ingrained social structures in such a short time span.

BagofWeed

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837498#Comment_121837498

The occupation may have ended after 7 years but Japan is still under the thumb since the war. It has never even completed a formal peace treaty with the USSR/Russian Federation due to the interference from the US and Russia actually was willing to return two of the Kuril Islands to Japan twenty years ago. Her constitution was drawn up by the US thus prostitution for example was made illegal.

joseywhales

Why is it described as grim? A giant old folks home is a bit boring but I wouldn't call it grim. Their economy will suffer sure. I think it's an interesting view of our future, as the most developed nation reaches end stage development before us. Might actually help us to plan for it.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837592#Comment_121837592

Given that women were traditionally forced into prostitution, eg as "comfort women" in Japan, is that a bad thing?

TomTomTim

Why did the occupation of Japan by American and British Commonwealth forces in the immediate aftermath of World War 2 not make a difference to the prevalence of those attitudes in Japanese society?

Because they don't have to, and maybe, just maybe, they know better? This is the hight of Western arrogance; "why haven't they followed our great ways?"

The world doesn't look up to the West anymore, if they ever did, yet many of us are still shocked when we see that in clear terms.

whisky_galore

No matter how many years a non Japanese has lived in Japan, has citizenship, learned and can speak perfect Japanese, married a Japanese person; they will always be marked down as an outsider.

silverharp

Japan will be an interesting story about how to adapt to a smaller population, they will have no problem adapting to robots and AI to manage manual type work or automating higher education jobs. It seems like a country that will be much nicer to live in and better for the environment if the population was halved.

A bit like west Kerry so.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837772#Comment_121837772

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837592#Comment_121837592

That wasn't some charitable offer by Russia. Accepting their offer of just 6% of the disputed territory would have meant giving up Japan's claim over the rest of it. That's why they didn't accept it.

I'd be curious to see a source for your claim that they were strong armed by the Americans though.

Witcher

Jesus you make some amount of inane threads OP.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837737#Comment_121837737

The West is the worse apart from the rest of them.

silverharp

start of a crime epidemic?

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1763025952299462984

Brussels Sprout

we, on the other hand, are closing oap homes to accommodate mass migration.

Our oap homes are literally being propped up by migrant workers (along with our hospitals)

DavyD_83

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058338535/japanese-societys-attitude-to-women-and-immigration

Yes, it is truly baffling why forced occupation and oppression by foreign white invaders has not endeared them to the Japanese.

By all rights, it should have made the Brits (and by proxy us) appear incredibly sexy and wise to the natives.

For Forks Sake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837772#Comment_121837772

Much like Cavan in that regard

foxsake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837772#Comment_121837772

and rightly so . they're not japanese

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121838975#Comment_121838975

The first 70 years of our independence were an economic basket case. Young people left in their droves, to go and do menial jobs in other countries - never to return in many cases.

The state leant heavily on religious orders to prop up its state institutions. That was of aid to the state but often it had devastating long term consequences for everyone involved.

Yeah let's all go back to those halcyon days shall we - just because you can't stand to see a few brown faces in this country.

(btw I wonder how many re-regs you're on now, Mr brand new account)

Potatoeman

How is their situation any different from Korea or China, both also have declining birthrate too?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837772#Comment_121837772

Sure that happens in de wesht or any part of rural Ireland when a Dubliner or whoever moves over.

beachhead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058338535/japanese-societys-attitude-to-women-and-immigration

Apply the same to south Korea as the closest example in Asia

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837772#Comment_121837772

Kind of like rural Ireland in that respect.

beachhead

Yes,the gaijin

Notmything

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121838343#Comment_121838343

While almost never engaging in their own threads.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837859#Comment_121837859

A bit like west Kerry so.

I was just going to post here to say just like many parts of this country then.

As others have said, being under Western controll for 7 years is never going to change a culture that is a 1000 or more years old.

I've not been to Japan yet but it is next on my bucket list. From my reading it is quite a strange place, but extremely interesting too. One of the lowest crime rates in the world, and a healthcare system that is second to none.

Qaanaaq

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837772#Comment_121837772

Pretty much every village in Ireland too

beachhead

Good sources --- the mainichi newspaper has an english version. GaijinPot if considering working there. Tourist ---- The InvisibleTourist. The not so nice things ---- JapanSubcultureResearchCentre. Food --- ramenadventures and many many more.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121841808#Comment_121841808

You told me in person you flew from Shanghai to Tokyo?!? And told me what to expect when I got there, that it is lovely, people are very polite, it is very clean and very safe. All of which I found to be true. I’m genuinely puzzled.

edit - here it is, in a text actually

Sometimes I think my memory is going lol.

Emblematic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121841082#Comment_121841082

"just because you can't stand to see a few brown faces in this country."

The old racist card.

I was on a tour to Japan around this time last year (a bit later, into April) and as I found it very well functioning, and was treated with great courtesy and respect by locals. I was able to walk out around Tokyo in the darkness without the slightest bit of concern, and the only incident was a man offering to hand me over his umbrella in the rain!

You could describe them as “racist” if you consider that they do keep big groups of Chinese tourists in hotels separate to other foreign groups or Japanese tourists. There’s a very good reason for this as a certain cohort of them, particularly an older uneducated cohort from outside the main cities, simply do not know how to behave. I experienced this in a short cruise from Shanghai about 2012, which called to south Japan and South Korea. The only good thing was none of them were drinkers so they didn’t get any worse of an evening and stayed mostly in the casino,

Del2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121837639#Comment_121837639

The comfort women where not Japanese. We forced lots of our "fallen women" into mother and children homes or exported them to other more tolerant countries to have abortions.

mikethecop

Ya we should totally try to enforce western standards and norms on other cultures and in other parts of the world.

in fact why bother adhering to their laws and customs if and when you are in their country's , after all I'm sure yall know better

🤡🤡🤡

jmayo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121838937#Comment_121838937

Why bother have some foreigners working in nursing homes when you can let some other foreigners just stay there for free courtesy of the tax payer.

We are always been told how our health system would collapse without foreigners.

As another poster pointed out the health system is currrently a crock of shyte.

As for Japan why do some people see an aging shrinking population as something awful.

It is the best thing for the world, it is the best form of environmentalism.

If only most of the shyteholes of the world would follow suit we might stand a chance of really saving the planet.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121842453#Comment_121842453

They weren’t Japanese - they were mostly Koreans and Chinese ie conquered people. The women were taken by the Japanese and forced into prostitution by the Japanese army for Japanese soldiers.

I’ve no idea what point you’re making by bringing in M&B homes - were the young women forced by the nuns into prostitution afterwards??

Potatoeman

One issue the UK found when issuing visas to nurses was that they brought family members with them that had a high level of welfare dependency, then add family reunification where they bring elderly family members that also need care home space and it’s back to the initial problem. It’s incredibly disingenuous to claim foreign workers are the solution when these have been the results in other countries. It was only a few month ago that foreign healthcare workers were protesting to have families issued visas here but those families are more burden on an already overstretched system.

Modern Japanese society works, but I heard a lot about their former societetal from our Irish tour manager who lived there in the 70s, and she said that although she overall enjoyed living there it was not a bed of roses and was far from hygienic. Men would typically be walking along the footpath, drop their trousers and defecate on the path unashamedly and then walk on as if nothing to see there. She said many men considered it unnecessary to hold it in until facilities were reached, and of course it led to a lot of disease & sickness. One of the emperors took it in hand to create new social norms by way of education and enforcement, and within a decade or so society had changed.

The Japan that is so clean today was not always so, and indeed I am old enough to remember that a lot of lesser quality stuff available in Ireland back in the 60s & 70s had the then stigmatising logo “Made in Japan”

L.Ball

Nothing a few hundred thousand economic migrants with vastly different cultural attitudes won't fix.

20silkcut

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121842578#Comment_121842578

I’d imagine a shrinking population is a major concern from a security standpoint. Without an army a country is wide open to occupation. Not all countries are going to demographically decline at the same rate you can be 100% sure certain countries will take advantage of these differences as time passes. More and more countries will desire access to Nukes in the future to offset these concerns.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058338535/japanese-societys-attitude-to-women-and-immigration

Japan never had the neo liberal trend in politics that Western Europe and American had so it is a given it will not have a neo liberal outlook on migration.

jmayo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121842700#Comment_121842700

I would have said that Japanese stuff by the 70s was getting pretty damn good.

Their motorbikes were already well on the way to ruling the world.

Remember all those Honda 50s around the country.

Granted their cars still rotted to shyte with rust problems, but so did Italian.

And unlike Italian, French, British and US they were well built and technologically offered way more bang for your buck.

German cars like Audi, BMW, Mercs were technological good, but often overpriced with everything an extra and their market was rich people.

VW cars were shyte relying on old Bettle until Golf arrived in 1974.

People often forget how Japanese manufacturers set the standards and changed the whole ball game for consumers.

By the 1980s they were the leaders in automotive and especially consumer technological goods like TVs, stereos, hi-fi and setting the standards with things like DVDs, walkman, etc.

The one area the Japanese never really went with was computers and laterally phones.

jmayo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121844742#Comment_121844742

Japan has never been invaded.

The Mongols had a go, but it didn't work out for them.

And the Americans knew it would prove very costly and the atomic bomb saved them massive casualties.

Also if a country is technologically very well advanced you don't need massive boots on the ground anymore.

Of course the Chinese would probably still favour massively outnumbering any opponent on the ground, but then they have that luxury.

Emblematic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121838905#Comment_121838905

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1763025952299462984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1763025952299462984%7Ctwgr%5E37007eed87cfb7b20d3e1930c7b712b30fde7de2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.boards.ie%2Fdiscussion%2F2058338535%2Fjapanese-societys-attitude-to-women-and-immigration

What strikes me most about this story is that the higher-priced coffee in a Japanese shop is just $1.25 with the smaller cup costing $0.75. The cheapest small self-service coffee in an Irish shop costs about €3 or $3.25.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121838343#Comment_121838343

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121841757#Comment_121841757

There's no need for that. I asked about about a current affair and I got answers. Isn't that the whole point of this site?

SoupMonster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121842598#Comment_121842598

Some comfort women were Japanese. The army advertised in newspapers and billboards for prostitutes to do their patriotic duty and volunteer to go to the front to provide comfort to the soldiers. Some may have thought it their duty, others may have been pressurised by their peers/bosses. (It's easy to imagine local government officials coercing a madam to pressurise some of her girls to volunteer or get closed down).

The percentage is likely to be quite small but the Japanese women were treated much the same as Korean, Chinese, etc. Listed as 'supplies' when the army was on the move, 4 men per hour for up to 10 hours a day, suffering higher mortality rate than a front-line soldier, and never speaking of their experience.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122011084#Comment_122011084

Yes I know some were in fact Japanese, but I don't think they had much if any choice in the matter either. The status of women in Japan was barely above that of slave to her husband and his family (as in China), and poor women would be even lower. It's not a mitigating factor for how the other comfort women were treated.

But you're correct that it might be better put as being a consequence of how women in general were ill treated, not just women of a conquered nation.

I suppose the difference is that the Korean women were captured from all levels of Korean society, and being forced into prostitution hadn't been one of the "expected" outcomes for many of them. And maybe that's why there's outrage - which is also tragic in itself, for all the other women whose underprivileged social origins meant they would never have had any other options and for whom there's no outrage.

bullpost

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121845085#Comment_121845085

Yep - And wonderful cameras by the 70s.

silliussoddius

There is an interesting class/culture called the Burakumin who seemed to be discriminated against until fairly recently, they sound a bit like the Cagot from Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin#:~:text=During%20the%20feudal%20era%2C%20the,%E8%80%85%2C%20'village%20people').

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121846948#Comment_121846948

What is the current affair? The demographic catastrophe over there is well known and you were going on about WW2. What's current here?

Hangdogroad

Some aspects of Japanese popular culture are distinctly odd. The obsession with schoolgirls that runs through Manga and some movies. Things like that Japanese cannibal who murdered a woman in Europe in the 80s and after his release became a celebrity back home, appearing on game shows and even porn films. Those weird gameshows that Clive James used to show clips of on his show.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122013228#Comment_122013228

I think they're very poorly placed culturally to take advantage of AI and automation. They still use fax machines and people are still buying train tickets face-to-face. Even Bus Éireann have online bookings now.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121845149#Comment_121845149

What strikes me most about this story is that the higher-priced coffee in a Japanese shop is just $1.25 with the smaller cup costing $0.75. The cheapest small self-service coffee in an Irish shop costs about €3 or $3.25.

That's real robbery.