(no subject)

[timelets]

The Japanese can solve the COVID-19 problem

“I often got phone calls from (people) in other countries asking, ‘Do you guys have your own special medicine or something?’” Aso said at an Upper House finance committee meeting on June 4.

“I told these people, ‘Between your country and our country, mindo (the level of people) is different.’ And that made them speechless and quiet. Every time,” Aso boasted.

Mindo is a word often used by politicians and others to invoke Japanese nationalism and ethnic superiority and can refer to things like culture and social manners.
...
“We have kept the fatality rate very low, and it was done just by asking people to (minimize their infection risk). People in other countries can’t do that, even being forced,” he said.

“I guess everybody (in Japan) just took it and sweated it out. There were no fines, no violations,” he said. “I believe the Japanese should be more proud about that.”

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13432875

but they can't solve the fertility problem.

Japan’s fertility rate, or average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to in her lifetime, dropped to 1.36 in 2019, going below the 1.40 mark for the first time in eight years.

It marked the fourth consecutive year of decline, according to data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on June 5.

The fertility rate for 2019 slid by 0.06 point from the figure for 2018, significantly down from the 0.01 point level of the preceding three years.

The fertility rate of 1.36 put Japan far from the target of 2.07, the level needed to maintain the population.

By prefecture, Okinawa had the highest fertility rate at 1.82, while Tokyo reported the lowest at 1.15.


http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13436216

Why is that?

Comments

[timelets]

They don't want foreigners to "dilute" their unique culture, which limits immigration options. The Koreans have an interesting commercial solution: importing Vietnamese women to marry their men.