18-Nov-18 World View -- Cuba to pull thousands of doctors out of Brazil after right-wing Jair Bolsonaro wins election

[FishbellykanakaDude]

...

You do the research. Tell me what you come up with.

..........D'OH........!!!


..I just KNEW you were gonna say that!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

[FishbellykanakaDude]

..(T)he estimated population of Japan in 1600 ranges from 11 to 22 million, then a rapid population growth took place during the early Edo era to bring Japan to a country of about 30 million inhabitants by 1721, though more precise total population estimates remain arguable. The rapid population growth likely ended by early 18th century, then Japan's total population growth became almost zero during mid to late Edo era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph ... estoration

1600ish: 16-ish million (beginning Edo Period)
1721: 30 million (Mid Edo Period)
1873: 30 million (end Late Edo Period and beginning Meiji Period)

..so it kinda sounds like something happened a bit before 1721 to massively "stabilize" the population until after 1873 when it started growing again.

Perhaps that "ongoing stabilizing event" was the "genocide" of the period? A "stretched out" (elongated) genocide! Hmmmm...

[John]

Actually that's a really good point. Japan's population today is
flat, which is the subject of the article that I just posted. Maybe
what happened then is the same thing that's happening today.

[FishbellykanakaDude]

Actually that's a really good point. Japan's population today is
flat, which is the subject of the article that I just posted. Maybe
what happened then is the same thing that's happening today.

Of course it's a good point, as it's coming from.... Oh,.. I get it! This is a test of my egomania, isn't it!?

..well, I'm not fallin' for that, then. No Siree... <chuckle!>


My question would be, "How does a population seeming 'voluntarily' limit it's pop growth without 'war' per se?"

What the heck changed in the society around 1721-ish?

[John]

Actually that's a really good point. Japan's population today is
flat, which is the subject of the article that I just posted. Maybe
what happened then is the same thing that's happening today.

Of course it's a good point, as it's coming from.... Oh,.. I get it! This is a test of my egomania, isn't it!?

..well, I'm not fallin' for that, then. No Siree... <chuckle!>


My question would be, "How does a population seeming 'voluntarily' limit it's pop growth without 'war' per se?"

What the heck changed in the society around 1721-ish?

Why is it happening in Japan today?

[jmm1184]

I've been spending a lot of time these days studying China, Japan and
Korea in the 1800s, and the lack of obvious conflict in Japan between
1600 and 1868 continues to be puzzling. So I'm wondering if there's
some paradigm unique to Japan that has to be understood.

There's a current debate going on today in Japan about a proposed law
to bring in a few thousand low-skilled foreign workers to do farming,
nursing care and construction jobs that Japanese workers don't want to
do. This is an important problem in Japan because the aging
population does not have enough younger workers.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Japan ... gn-workers

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/06/asia/jap ... index.html

This is being hotly debated in Japan, and one of the main reasons that
some people give for opposing it is that Japan has always been an
island shut off from the rest of the world, with its unique shared
customs and shared culture, and newcomers would not fit into that.

So let's assume that Japan had crisis wars in the 1600-1868 period
like every other country. How would those wars be different from
crisis wars in other countries?

Xenophobia and nationalism are often defined in terms of things like
race, skin color, appearance, language and religion, things that are
set at birth and cannot be easily changed. But these things are all
the same for Japanese. The only thing that separates Japanese would
be political beliefs, things that can be easily fudged or even
changed.

So that would eliminate things like genocide and ethnic cleansing as
motivations for crisis wars. What's left? Clashes over resources --
land, water, and so forth. And wars over those kinds of resources,
when genocide and ethnic cleansing are not involved, would not be
recognized by historians in the same way that other crisis wars are
recognized, and so reading histories of the Japan 1600-1868, it would
be impossible to identify crisis wars in the same way. In fact, how
would historians characterize such a war, if they couldn't say
something like "the French versus the Germans" or "the Protestants
versus the Catholics"? They'd have to use some other euphemisms.

In summary: There were crisis wars in Japan in 1600-1868, but we have
to look for them in different ways

Hmm, I think you hit the nail on the head, so to speak. I'm hoping to have time within the next few weeks to investigate the issue of peasant rebellions in Japan - because the Tokugawa Era was not without violent conflict, but none of the peasant rebellions threatened the prevailing system.

In regards to how population was controlled, one thing that is interesting about the Tokugawa Era is that there were a number of famines that seem to have devastated certain areas, though never all of Japan.

Going off of this, its possible that the solution to the "Japanese" problem, may also solve another sticky issue with Generational Dynamics, which is the Irish famine of 1845-1849. A famine shouldn't act as a crisis war, yet in the case of the Irish famine of 1845-49 it did, unmistakably so.

But I digress - I firmly believe that the key to understanding the timeline of the Tokugawa Era lies in analyzing the peasant rebellions - the only incidence of collective violence in the histories that I have access to. I think part of the problem may be that Japan actually did not coalesce into one timeline until the Meiji Restoration - that would also explain the constant level of violence during the Warring States Period - another era that is unusual for Generational Dynamics by providing the opposite problem - a society constantly at war for 133 years. But, if there were multiple timelines going on the in the Sengoku Period (which I highly suspect there are), then its possible that because Japan still ran on different timelines peasant rebellions remained localized, and thus never coalesced into the equivalent of China's Taiping Rebellion for Japan.

One reason I suspect the battle of Sekigahara was not a universal crisis war for Japan is because the unification of Japan under Oda Nobunaga in 1582 reads very well as a crisis war. Yet so does the Japanese invasion of Korea, which segways nicely into a climax with the Battle of Sekigahara. So its possible that we have at least two timelines going on.

This also potentially solves the issue of the Shimabara Rebellion - earlier you had written as a crisis war, yet the horrific violence carried out could read as a crisis war as well - it was certainly genocidal in nature in the sense that Christianity was almost entirely eliminated from Japan in the period of 1637-1638, and that crisis war would be right on schedule if it follows from Oda Nobunaga's unification of Japan (1582-1637).

All in all, a very interesting puzzle to solve!

[FishbellykanakaDude]

...What the heck changed in the society around 1721-ish?

Why is it happening in Japan today?

Ah...!

..ok, more research.... just a moment... hang on... googlin' "why is japan's population declining"... blah blah "https://www.tofugu.com/japan/population-decline/",.. mmmmm... "declining birth rate",..

.."Why is the birth rate in Japan declining? Several factors:

*) Women are marrying later.
*) Women have more options besides homemaking.
*) Young professionals in Japan have been family-averse for the past 20 years.
*) Unmarried women are less likely to have kids. Marriage is still the most socially acceptable way to have children. ..."

...mostly women's fault,.. blah blah blah...

.."birth rate below replacement rate, and dropping..",.. ok,.. blah blah...

.."longer lifespan means stress on the producing youth"... yeah,.. ok...

.."people die eventually, even old long lived people".. sure,.. seems sensible,...

So,.. what were "women" (and the "men" who loved them) doing REALLY "wrong" in Japan starting in 1721, or thereabouts!? Too many "Samurai" wannabes? Too many ultra-finicky "Japanese Princess" wannabes? Much MUCH more seppuku?



But,.. "The Bright Side"!

[John]

The question is: why is Japan's population declining?

You've given some coincident factors, but none of them explains why
girls aren't getting laid, and boys aren't getting girls pregnant.

> *) Women are marrying later.

Why are they marrying later?

> *) Women have more options besides homemaking.

Women have more options besides homemaking in almost every
country on earth. What makes Japan different?

> *) Young professionals in Japan have been family-averse for the
> past 20 years.

What made them family-averse?

> *) Unmarried women are less likely to have kids. Marriage is still
> the most socially acceptable way to have children. ..."

That's true in a lot of countries. Actually it's even true in
the United States. What makes Japan special?

There seems some anti-aphrodisiac element in the Japanese culture
that's causing girls not to have sex, or at least not to get
pregnant. What is it?

And after you figure that out, do the same group of reasons apply
to the 1721 time period?

[Guest]

ANSWER: Japanese men treat women like shit.

[John]

> ANSWER: Japanese men treat women like shit.

According to feminists, that's true in all countries. How is Japan
different?