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.
I mean america would/will just deal with this by making it illegal to be lonely
Japan rated the highest in terms people aged 60 or older who felt they had no one to turn to in times of need, with 16 percent of people saying so, compared with 13 percent in the U.S.
It’s not really that different in the US
“Minister of Loneliness” is peak liberal application of theory, bandaid solutions filtered through unnecessary institutions.
I don’t think you’re wrong but I don’t think this is any worse than the American, conservative response which is deny that people are lonely and then say even if they are it’s not the gubbermint’s business to fix it.
Geez it’s almost like literally working people to death gives them little time to bond with people in a meaningful way.
YaaAAAaayY CaPiTALIsm RoCks GuYs :agony-consuming:
Japanese neoliberalism must be hell.
Of course it is, its neoliberalism.
But that said, the leadership is so old and entrenched they would probably produce the same results even if they were trying to create a social democracy.
Abe was seen by some as being somewhat of a populist radical because he wanted to increase taxes, public spending, and get women into the workforce.
It seems like it’s a common problem in every stable society - old people get the reigns, freeze the next generation out, and double down as things get worse. Even neoliberalism wouldn’t be as bad as it is (granted, it would still be pretty bad) if there was a mechanism to churn people out and replace them at fixed intervals - we might get libs who at least understand how the internet works, for example.
Japan actually used to have forced retirement at 65 for this exact reason, to prevent new salarymen from getting stuck in middle management as fossils ran every company into the ground. Now it’s been turned into an optional retirement at 70, and Abe (who is 66 himself) wants to push it to 75 as the number of seniors forced to work because their pensions don’t pay enough anymore increases.
Unfortunately, the old people have found a way around this by retiring to become behind the scenes power brokers. Kind of like Obama in the last election, except more geriatric.
