Hey everyone, hope you are well. I’m curious about subcultures in Japan. I feel that current mainstream culture is simply not sustainable leading to various social issues like low birth rates for example. So I’m wondering what could, maybe, replace it. Otherwise pretty soon Japanese language and culture might fade into obscurity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/10w7nym/subcultures_of_japan/
2 comments
I’m confused, what do you mean by subcultures and what does that have to do with the birth rate?
Also there are countries that have 5-10 million people with vibrant languages and cultures. Japan would not be the same, but would remain.
Hi there, your question got me thinking, so apologies for my long comment!
personally I would question your premise here. It’s not clear to me that mainstream culture is unsustainable at all, or even what that means. Do you mean that you think a really major cultural revolution in Japan in the near future is inevitable? It’s also not clear to me that it’s the culture that is the cause of the low birth rate (as opposed to shear economics for example). I also disagree that Japanese language and culture would fade into obscurity- even if the population halved it would still be one of the major languages of the world and Japan would still have one of the major economies of the world. Finally, very large groups of people can’t really just pick and choose what the dominant culture is, it comes about more organically than that – at the very most governments and influential groups can try to nudge it a particular direction, but often with limited success and unforeseen consequences. If it were that easy we could wish away a whole lot of social ills that we currently battle against and often lose to.
I think it’s pretty noteworthy that the Japanese government and several large companies have been trying to influence the work culture to be less extreme with work hours and more open about mental health issues and work-life balance, but these are incremental nudges at best. Coolbiz summers or 10pm shutdowns are not going to cause a cultural revolution or change the underlying economics. If the main place of employment remains big cities, but real estate prices mean that young couples can only afford 2-3 bedroom housing if both partners work, and if childcare remains expensive and difficult to find, then a large number of young couples will continue to choose to have fewer children than they otherwise might have – that pattern can be found across several countries with very different cultures.