[scythe]

What is concerning is this:

>Most people surveyed said they want to get married at some point.

This isn't delineated by gender, so I interpret it as meaning that Japanese men and women both want to get married -- but they aren't enough for each other.

>A booming industry surrounds Japan's growing condition of loneliness, a phenomenon at once quite particular to the Japanese, yet also a glimpse into a future where many people live atomized lives mediated exclusively through personal technology.

That modern philosophy tends to devalue (or rather not value) human relationships is the one thing I'm tempted to blame this on:

https://philosophyinseconds.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/the-...

But that is probably personal bias creeping up. Working hours are the popular explanation, but there is an incongruity: most Japanese claim to want to have relationships, so if they thought working hours were the problem then why haven't they complained? And how could they fail to notice something so obvious? If housing prices are the problem, how does this occur when Japan's population has been in decline for forty years?

I've heard of this phenomenon (and similar ones in Western Europe) and I pick up and discard economic explanations like bottles of some alcoholic beverage. But the alarm in the back of my head says that our culture is the problem, and it just happens to be popular in Japan. If that's the case, things will get worse, not better.

[clydethefrog]

Is it wrong for me to see that devaluation of human relationship in your linked thesis as Marx's theory of alienation without the capitalist critique?

>The theoretic basis of alienation, within the capitalist mode of production, is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny, when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

[usrusr]

Housing prices are trivial to explain: urbanization is much faster than population decline. Housing in rural areas beyond the commute horizon (and outside of tourist zones) can be had for close to nothing just about everywhere on the planet, I'd be surprised if Japan was an exception.

This also explains why opening the doors to immigration is such an unattractive "solution" (quotes, because I refuse to consider taking a break from exponential population growth a problem) : immigration rarely comes without urbanization and even shrinking countries (or maybe especially them?) are still seeing growing cities, all the shrinkage is happening in the increasingly abandoned countryside. Thinking of this, it might not even be a new phenomenon: historically, non-urbanizing immigration was so rare that one would typically sideline the border-crossing aspect and just call them settlers, no matter where they came from.

[wott]

> Japan's population has been in decline for forty years

Uh? Japans's population has stabilised during the last 15 years, and it was growing for the previous 25 years (like +15 millions).

[Apocryphon]

And as hackers, are how are complicit in the creation of technology that either supplants human relationships, or morphs them into something less substantial than what existed beforehand?