771
Japan ‘on verge of no longer functioning’ after birth rate plummets to record new low
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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I love Japan, but I will say it has its issues that often get overlooked. Workplace culture is horrific in Japan and it contributes to their high suicide rates. There's even a word in Japanese that specifically refers to a person dying from being overworked. I know friends who immigrated to Japan, only to regret it because they saw for themselves just how harsh the workplace culture was. Japanese people have no time for their family. Something must change or this problem is going to get worse but given it's a highly conservative culture I'm not sure it's going to see changes anytime soon.
Jokes on you
America has higher rates of overwork and suicide!
Yeah but it's not exactly fair to compare the US to a developed country
Why is their workplace harsh?
Is it conservative because old people outnumber the young people and have for so long? You give a dominant demographic enough influence over time, they'll try to make the rest of society like them. Old.
Also, is it so old because Japan has a really high life expectancy? Or has that been taken into account?
It’s cultural. Japanese are less individualistic than the west. They live their lives that is more geared toward what will help the community and not just themselves. Less than hundred years ago they viewed their emperor as a living god. So back then the Japanese were indoctrinated to live their lives in service of the emperor. Basically how North Koreans treat their leader today, which is a cultural remnant from Japan since Korea was a Japanese colony. (That the imperial family are descendants from gods is an 8th century myth and was reintroduced during the Meiji restoration. Before the Meiji restoration the Japanese didn’t give a fuck about the imperial family)
So that cultural attitude still lives today in a watered down form. Instead of serving the emperor it’s about serving the community and country. And of course corporations can’t help themselves but to exploit that. That attitude has been fading with every generation after the war but it’s still so deeply ingrained that corporations can easily manipulate their workers.
It has two actually, karoshi and karojisatsu, death from being overworked and suicide from being overworked. Etimologically speaking, that gives you some idea of how big the problem is, kind of like the old adage about eskimos or inuits having six words for "snow".