As The Japan Times reported, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga created the role in early February, taking after the U.K., which created its own such role in 2018.
Please read the second paragraph of the article before this thread turns into weird orientalism.
Is it Orientalist to point out that Japan and South Korea have both modernized rapidly under capitalist economic systems with strong Western influence, and both seem to have really unhappy populations?
Like, the region has some problems. There’s a lot of overlap with other developed nations, but also some unique circumstances and challenges.
Is it Orientalist to point out that Japan and South Korea have both modernized rapidly under capitalist economic systems with strong Western influence, and both seem to have really unhappy populations?
It’s Orientalist to fixate on Japan as a though its “loneliness culture” is some kind of aberration from the western capitalist mean.
The article opens and closes with tags that suggest this isn’t uniquely Japanese, but the headline and much of the body of the article seem to call out Japan as uniquely bad.
Not to mention
The pandemic has worsened feelings of isolation globally. In the U.S., the Clark County School District in Nevada partially reopened schools in response to a surge of student suicides during the pandemic, with the number of student suicides doubling over the previous year.
The whole thing still feels like treating “barn-door-itis” long after the horse has escaped. We really are just turning into an empire of eulogies, at this rate.
