When I first started traveling in Japan, the dilapidated countryside was very disconcerting to me, almost felt like I'd stumbled into some sort of back room. The more time I spent there, however, the more I came to appreciate the aesthetics of the lonely restaurants, the rusted steel-sided buildings, almost abandoned shrines, etc. Hard to say what exactly is so appealing about it, but it sticks with you.
I think the word “ennui” was almost invented to describe rural Japan. There is a mesmerizing, eerily graceful sense of decline.
In a lot of other rural places on Earth, even if they are in poverty, there is usually a decent amount of activity even if some buildings are abandoned. There are families (often very large ones with many kids), drunk hooligans, outgoing salt of the earth types.
Rural Japan in contrast is quiet, mostly elderly, and more culturally “refined” at least on its face. And if you go wandering around, even as a very conspicuous foreigner, because of the language barrier and general cultural introversion, the few people you do see will mostly politely ignore you or not initiate conversation. Similarly while buildings may be abandoned and overgrown with plants there is usually very little trash (not counting what was simply left there, think more like plastic bags and empty beer bottles from teens hanging out) and no graffiti.
Other places that may be obviously in decline have evidence of a future and continued habitation, even if bleak, from young people vandalizing abandoned places, families going about their day, and confused middle aged folks trying to ask why you are even visiting their place and if you’re lost. In rural Japan, especially if you don’t speak Japanese, it’s more like you are a ghost wandering around a place resigned to evaporate, whose remaining inhabitants stoically continue on their peaceful day to day.
The whole center part of France is like that. Just old people, half of the houses abandoned, no families, not always too run down because it's mostly stone houses that do not break down so fast. On my last visit I met an old (maybe 85?) Lady who told me that when she was young there were 2 shops in the town. Now there was about 30 inhabitants and all above 60, apart from the castle that was owned by some rich foreign family who came a few days a year. There is just no economic activity there, the only thing you have is services in the larger towns so that all the smaller towns around can get a doctor, some supermarket, oil station etc.
The land is not flat so not ideal for agriculture, you're far away from everything so not great for a factory of any kind (plus not enough working age population anyways). They used to have a thriving cheap wine production 100 years ago before the grapes died and everyone left.
Good news is you can get houses nearly for free.
There's an amazing (and depressing) blog called Spike Japan that's all about this aesthetic, with a special focus on the Bubble of the 80s and the detritus it left behind:
Ah, I remember reading Spike Japan! It has some pretty amazing writing but hasn't been updated since 2014. Still worth a read if you're interested in this sort of thing. Also makes me wonder how things have changed since then.
It reminds me of the forest passage concept described by Ernst Jünger.
He was writing about sovereignty within one's own consciousness and I'm not referencing this particular context in this case (although they probably are related) but more generally how "the hinterlands" provide a place away from the beam of focus that a society maintains.
Almost by definition these places feel forgotten but once you get over the unnerving sense of separation and isolation from everything, your imagination seems to recover some of its creativity. That creativity then fills in the gaps visually to create an aesthetically pleasing setting even if it didn't feel that way at first.
IME it’s not just the quiet and calmness. There’s few children and families (mostly elderly folks), what few people there are mostly keep to themselves and won’t initiate conversation with you, and abandoned places are left to degrade without being vandalized or littered with trash. There are roads and shrines that are still maintained but most likely empty when you visit. There’s nothing, and very little even “regular abandoned stuff” like broken glass or boarded up windows, to make you feel on-edge or unsafe.
I find it wonderful that they are learning to live with a nice successful society that is not in a state of constant exponential growth, and they've resisted doomers and deranged neoliberal calls to keep massively expanding population. Truly a leader in sustainability, a shining beacon to the world for what is actually possible as opposed to what "experts" (aka shills for billionaires) claim to be the case.
I'm not "romanticizing" anything. I think you are just repeating talking points that have never really been challenged and made to stand up to scrutiny.
> They have a massively ageing population, which is the true problem.
The true problem is exponential growth resulting in exponential destruction of the environment, no matter how much you fiddle with the factors. People act like if we (by some unlikely miracle) get a handle on CO2 emissions that it will all be smooth sailing from then on. The sad reality is that pollution, destruction of species and habitat, and depletion of non-renewable resources, until now has been driven almost entirely by factors other than climate change.
> In 2060, over 40% of the population will be pensioners requiring payouts, according to the japanese health ministry.
That sounds good, good thing they have been transitioning to a sustainable society and economy rather than stacking the pyramid ever higher to delay the inevitable. You know global population is expected to level by that time then fall, right?
> And yes, they have low birth rates and no population growth (whether via immigration or otherwise). This is actually going to bite them at some point.
This is what the pyramid schemers (the "experts", the banks, the billionaires, the neolibs) have been crying wolf about for decades. Sure it isn't simple, but they are managing it. And it will bite everybody pretty soon. What would be nice is if, when it bites, we haven't driven societies and the environment to the absolute limit into a brick wall before that, but instead let populations in highly consuming countries naturally peak and decline, and manage that gracefully.
An ever shrinking population of productive people (percentage-wise) is going to have to provide goods and services for an ever growing population of people who can no longer work.
It’s a huge burden. Taxes will be higher - which will have all the associated consequences.
The assumed burden is higher because you are trying to let the young to the shoulder the burden of the old. In Japan(or any other country tbh) the return of the tax values to the young is vastly smaller than the old. Immigration is not gonna solve this problem, that's just delaying the ponzi scheme or push the burden to the other country anyway.
What if we tip the scale to young more and treat them fairer? What if we start moving some of the services to the young instead of the old?
The only way to tip the scales is to have a baby boom. When populations were youthful and there were very few elderly, democratic societies did not have pension programs. Was that because people were ignorant, selfish, etc? Or was it because the constituency for pensions was small?
Actually my rhetorical question is only half wrong. People, young and old, are selfish. They are however not at all ignorant about who butters their bread. If you want to increase spending on the young, then you need more young to vote for that.
If anything the growing ranks of the elderly guarantee a greater share of public spending will go towards them. From a growth perspective, that's a vicious cycle. From a fairness perspective... well it kinda makes sense that larger cohorts should get more spending in a democratic society. I get there's a lot of nuance, but this is the gist afaict.
> Older generations, who benefit most from fiscal redistribution (via taxes and transfers), are significantly wealthier than younger generations. Wealth poverty is significantly lower for older generations. Moreover, the wealth ratio of older to younger cohorts is relatively high in Japan compared with Germany and Italy, though lower than in the United States. The evidence thus points to significant wealth inequality across generations.
Where do wealthy young people come from? You mean the one who inherited the wealth from their parents? Or do you mean income tax? Well the income tax is usually far higher than capital gain isn't it?
Speaking for myself, the motivation for such thoughts mostly stems from treating wealth as a reward for work. Which is not crazy, it's similar to the labor theory of value. Or if you prefer, incentivizing work means more work will get done, and work always needs to get done. There are valid reasons from a number of perspectives to valorize and reward work.
And the elderly largely don't work, because they can't anymore.
Shifting services means the elderly will get poorer. Which given the high wealth level they have in developed countries relative to the young is not a catastrophe. However it would be a huge adjustment to expectations downward, since the elderly would have the rug pulled out from under them. Whereas the young haven't yet had a chance to adjust their expectations up since they haven't had money yet. Hence the political settlement.
For a prosaic example, in many US states funding for public universities has been cut to pay for public sector pensions in the past thirty years. This has shifted educational costs to the young in exchange for maintaining the benefits of retirees. This is an example of shifting services from young to old.
Frankly, shifting money around might not do anything.
The actual amount of goods and services produced will be lesser and/or be stretched thinner.
The only real way to combat it is to import young people from places with a mostly young population and getting them productive to make up for the productivity shortfall.
I thought I did the opposite of ignore it, which was to address it directly. I acknowledged it was a difficult thing to deal with but that almost all countries will have to soon anyway, and I also also rejected the assertion that it is the "true" problem.
Japan has PPP per capita income more than twice as high as China, 5x India. The idea it can't possibly pay more to take care of its elderly and infirm otherwise its society will collapse is up there with the most ludicrous wall street craziness I've ever heard. And they've already been ousted as shysters, mind you, because they've been repeating the same thing for a generation now. Because what they are really scared of as I said is people waking up to the fact that their pyramid scheme isn't the only way to do things.
Seems to me that by the time we reach a global crunch, countries like Japan that will already be a generation or two into addressing this problem and restructuring their societies and economies to cope without ever increasing population will be in a far better position than those continuing to push unsustainable growth to defer the inevitable.
> most ludicrous wall street craziness I've ever heard
I have heard many more ludicrous things. Japan is already heavily indebted and as relative per capita productivity will decrease significantly while while taxes increase there won’t be necessarily that many incentives for young people to stay in the country further exacerbating the problem.
> their pyramid scheme isn't the only way to do things.
Any suggestions?
> better position than those continuing to push unsustainable growth to defer the inevitable.
Or far worse.
> without ever increasing population
Who said anything about ever increasing population? Why are you even saying that?
The problem is a severe decrease in population accompanied by a similarly severe increase in average age.
I enjoyed your comments, but my biggest point of contention would be your declaration that “banks, billionaires, and neoliberals” have been crying wolf. I find that it’s mostly MAGA and similar who have been crying wolf or downplaying the threats from climate change, demographic changes, and other related elements. Banks for example hedge risk to make money. Billionaires - which ones? Maybe we should tax them, etc.
I'm not quite sure what MAGA and similar is, or really concerned about the power or influence the lunatic fringe might weild. High level "experts" and "officials" from neoliberal economic and political institutions like the the IMF have been saying these things for a long time.
And it seems to be often times very pro-climate action positions that take this contradictory position that population must continue to increase. I don't know what to make of that other than either they don't really care about climate change, or they want commoners to have a dwindling piece of the pie while the top end continues to get richer, but either way they don't seem to really care about environmental impact of humans.
I agree with much of what you say, but I think you overestimate the effect reducing population would have on the environment.
It's one of the slowest ways to reduce our carbon emissions. If by 2070 population (in some country) is 30% lower than today that's a dramatic change. But the effect on the environment (land use, carbon emissions etc) is likely not more than 30%, and that's not much!
By 2070 most developed countries in the world are supposed to have net zero carbon emissions. That target is not going to be significantly easier to reach with 30% lower population.
> I agree with much of what you say, but I think you overestimate the effect reducing population would have on the environment.
I don't think I estimated it anywhere, so I don't think I am. And in fact I was not just talking about CO2 emissions and climate change, to the contrary I explicitly said actually that climate change is one of a long, long, long list of massive environmental problems we're facing. That's the thing, even if we do "solve" climate change somehow, we're not remotely in the clear.
Reducing (or just not growing) population makes everything easier. CO2 emissions. Land required for food, lithium and other minerals and metals required for cars and computers and batteries and buildings, farming and housing footprint, clean water. Everything. No other measure is as staggeringly effective in reducing the human footprint on the environment as not increasing population.
> It's one of the slowest ways to reduce our carbon emissions. If by 2070 population (in some country) is 30% lower than today that's a dramatic change. But the effect on the environment (land use, carbon emissions etc) is likely not more than 30%, and that's not much!
It's compounding and it certainly is an issue. US CO2 emissions peaked 50 years ago if population was stable.
