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Japan’s population drops by nearly 800,000 with falls in every prefecture for the first time
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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It’s probably a good thing in the long run. Like how the plague in Europe actually gave the serfs more rights. Since it gave the workers more leverage since there was more demand for workers than they were in supply.
Japan is overcrowded. Sure villages are bleeding dry, but in the cities people live in tiny apartments that cost too much. And lots of people do very meaningless soul crushing jobs for little pay, jobs that are already automated in the rest of the world. Like even a job that can be replaced by a simple sign. Seriously when I was in Japan I saw people at the station that were just pointing passengers towards the exit. And it wasn’t even an emergency situation, just a regular workday.
Sure a shrinking population is bad for the economy, but for the people it will mean that housing prices will go down and pay will go up and they will have more rights in the long run.
That's because in Japan, people like people showing them the way. In a society were social contacts are... Seldom, these small things remind them there are other actual people. And I get the sentiment and I'm pretty young in comparison with just over 30. Making that exact job anything but meaningless.
I mean similar to how in the Western world we like to sit down at a table and have food brought to us, when we really could just get up and get it from the counter ourselves.
Service industry is exactly that. Serving people. Which can be expressed in lots of different ways in different cultures.