I lived in a successful major tourist region from its inception to maturity. You are incorrect in saying that it creates tax revenue: The Tourism sector generally gets tax breaks and subsidies, so it ends up eating up tax revenue to enrich whatever oligarchic structure or family dominates the landscape. Moreover, in any mild temporary crisi,s it risks collapsing and forces the government to bail it out by spending enormous amounts of money.
Tourism is like a tick that sucks away the productive forces and resources of a country - it diverts both budget (tax breaks, subsidies) and educated manpower away from actual goods and services production, provides sh*t jobs to those employed in tourism, causes inflation and CoL rise across regions and even the entire country. If you want to cripple a country's industrial and technological power, the best thing to do is to push tourism on it.
I think this is an important point that I am struggling to articulate. I actually like the fact that they "prefer to do things their way". When I was traveling there, it is clear that I stand out from my behavior. We might share the same skin color but I don't speak the language nor have the mannerism.
I don't fit, they don't know how to deal with me and that is fine. In fact, I would prefer it to be that way. I prefer Japan to be Japan. Of course there are societal issues that needs to be fixed but those are orthogonal to what I am talking about.
I honestly think the original culture is pretty much extinct. Very, very few of the incoming generation even desire to uphold and rekindle that culture. In fact, it is despised.
However, American culture has moved on (a lot) from that though. For several generations, it has been described as a "melting pot" or understood through the lens of The New Colossus mounted on the Statue of Liberty.
Do not pretend like liberals were on a different page than conservatives on that issue before the election. Support for Israel was happening under Biden and would have continued under Harris; Trump's the one who did a bait-and-switch with pretending he'd be more neutral until he got in. And conservatives have been called antisemitic by liberals far more than the reverse.
> American culture is immigrant centric.
What does this mean? Because to me, it means we don't have a culture and never will have one. What does immigrant-centric mean to people who are born not immigrants, besides getting out of the way for the next generation on its way in?
"Enrichment" is a buzzword for the insulated elite happy that they have new things on their lunch menu, somehow ignoring all the negatives that come with it.
If you establish a vast trading empire, and tell the often surprised new inhabitants of it that the empire requires their spices/ silks/ slaves, can you really be surprised that the more enterprising and adventurous colonised people gravitate toward the point of origin? Is it some sort of mystery that there should be more people from Algeria and Congo in France, or why there are so many Indonesian people in the Netherlands?
I feel a similar perplexity about many people in the USA making loud complaints about cultural adulteration despite a good quarter of the land having previously been part of Mexico and this being reflected in most of the place names (to take but one example). Some commentators object with an absolute straight face to hearing so many people speaking Spanish in cities with names like Los Angeles.
Because we had laws in place to prevent this but they were removed. Immigration is almost always bad for the natives but good for a few elites at the top. Mass immigration in the US plays a large part in the shrinking middle class and growing wealth gap.
I don’t know why you commit 2 paragraphs to discussing people being surprised when that has nothing to do with the recent demographic changes. They’re entirely policy issues.
> Some commentators object with an absolute straight face to hearing so many people speaking Spanish in cities with names like Los Angeles
Because for objectives we care about (safety, affordability, community) it was better when there were less Spanish speaking people.
It's simply that the wealthy benifit from increasing labour supply; this is the "enrichment" you get. Not an improvement in culture or conditions, an increase in wealth concentration.
It's entirely reasonable for a citizen in an English speaking nation to complain about other languages becoming common, as it is direct evidence of the migration policy that is doing them harm.
Migration is a policy issue, not some natural force like osmosis.
There's a whole discipline called social physics successfully leveraging models from physics, chemistry, and mathematics to analyze and predict social phenomena. Just as the behavior of flocking birds can be reliably modeled with a few differential equations, so can a great many social changes.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03701...
It's not a "colonial nation" that is being harmed by migration, it's working class people. Meanwhile the same classes that benefited from colonialism now benifit from the wholesale destruction of communities.
Every empirical study I have seen shows that high migration lowers happiness and trust. Does that align with your pseudoscience?
working class people
I've got a feeling you're not a socialist, though.
pseudoscience
FUD
And interestingly, the people who utter this ideology are usually from the natives - because fundamentally it's a type of narcissism - a kind of "I'll show you" or "I like you being hurt" that feels pleasurable or gives a sense of superiority.
Can't imagine this ever being tolerated within China and Russia though, perhaps that's why they're the current bogeymen.
Do you dare leave your bike outside unlocked in these cities?
Of course, being Japan, they also have a compulsory bike registration scheme and police can and do (not-so-)randomly stop people on the street to check that they're not riding stolen bikes.
The rest is just nostalgia, and that's fine. But realistically, a big piece of Japanese culture will be well preserved in the new culture that will emerge. As it is, we've stopped lamenting the arrival of Buddhist influence on the island, so too will other immigration influences.
some things are more important than just making line go up
Eventually they may even come to view the westerner, evidenced by their minds in such a shocking condition, as a fundamentally grotesque thing, and go full closed-country again - especially after their power wanes. Certainly one case would be more beautiful than the other!
To hell with these multinational corporations that erect their sterile altars to unbridled capitalism, resulting in the mass homogenization of culture. A culture that caters to "everyone" caters to no one.
Kyoto was never going to be able to deal with the level of tourism that it's currently struggling with, though. My friends and I refuse to even stop there now - and I tried to get some friends who visited recently to avoid it in favor of some other culturally significant spots, but the TikTok trend seems to be incredibly powerful. I don't know if I have the words to express how that interaction made me feel, but it's definitely weird.
Any tips for somebody looking to visit Japan in the next year or so?
One option if you're looking to avoid Kyoto, but want something that still feels sufficiently old world, is Kanazawa. You can take the Shinkansen from Tokyo to get there; ever since this line was opened it also has its fair share of tourists, but it's way less popular than Kyoto and IMO very nice. Old Samurai town out on the western coast of Japan.
If you want history that's more somber, and you're already visiting Osaka, just take the Shinkansen a bit further down to Hiroshima. The atomic bomb museum there is IMO required viewing for seeing and understanding the impact those events had. The Nagasaki one was even more powerful of an exhibit, but frankly to go to Nagasaki you need to fly (a Shinkansen exists but it's not a fully connected route at this time).
I'm out drinking at the moment so I'm not about to write a novel, but whenever you go to book your stuff you can feel free to email me (should be in my profile) and I'd be happy to help figure things out. People should visit Japan - I don't ever want to gatekeep it; I just think people should avoid chasing the same beaten path. :)
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We tried going off the tourist path a bit, but since we didn't have that much time there, and know no japanese, it isn't super easy to do figure out where to go / what to do.
But isn't that why Japan ended up like this? Every country needs either immigration or babies, and Japan chose option C: neither. And now the decision has been made for them, a very high dose of immigration is required.
It's like ignoring a cavity and eventually needing a root canal.
Xenophobia is simply an unworkable idea, like eugenics and other discredited beliefs. Or at least it needs to be paired with a religion that encourages having kids.
Xenophobia was the default for nearly all of human history and core to nearly all successful societies. How is it unworkable?
At its core it’s the same idea as “trust is earned, not given”.
In an advanced society where the threat is depopulation rather than invasion, xenophobia is harmful unless you can find a way to convince people to have more children than is rational for them to have.
Ultimately, it's the same underlying xenophobia and racism you find everywhere else. It's easier for people to like people who are like them and harder for them to like people who are not like them.
In my opinion, people don't talk about how well America integrates other cultures enough. It's one of our defining strengths, even still.
>Ultimately, it's the same underlying xenophobia and racism you find everywhere else. It's easier for people to like people who are like them and harder for them to like people who are not like them.
Yes and this is completely normal human behavior, and in my opinion should not be completely outright demonized. I suspect one of the many reasons why europe is the way it is today in regards to this topic, is because we have repressed these natural tribal tendencies. And just to stir the pot; I wonder how welcoming and nice many of the e.g. majority muslim countries would to the non-arabs & non-muslims if they were to mass migrate to said countries. I think they would very much exercise and impose their 'xenophobia' upon these foreigners in certainly more tougher ways.
Expats can turn into immigrants, but one who "knows deep down they don't belong" is less likely to.
I get what you're saying, but I also marvel at how completely contrary this is to the "freedom of movement" ethics of the West. I mean, someone who holds this same opinion in Europe or America would be considered a Neo-Nazi.
First, Japan is an island nation, and historically a somewhat isolated one (due to weather patterns rather than distance). Islands are fundamentally different from continents, anthropologically, lexically, strategically.
Second, 'the West' has historically been very expansionist; because of its continental configuration, there have been many, many waves of migration and military conquest, and the development of global navigation and seafaring vessels during the Renaissance made for a centuries-long outward expansion.
Third, this sort of expansionism has being going on in the Asia-Pacific region over even longer timescales and there are very different discourses with many contentious points of view if you include Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other perspectives.
On general anthropology, maybe try JAred Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel or for a more academic take, Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization. For the history of Japan, Mason & Caiger's History of Japan is comprehensive without being a huge study commitment.
I am not sure what cultural erosion you speak of. I am sure Japanese culture won't be replaced by a cultural vacuum. Japanese culture has evolved for centuries, both under external influences and because of its internal dynamics.
Many modern beloved Japanese cultural assets were formed in such manner, as noted in this article: https://archive.md/2c1WI
I don't know what can be done about it though. Japan's economy is in trouble, and the tourist money helps and hurts at the same time. It creates tax revenue, yet inflates prices for locals. Japan's stumbling economy is a factor in itself of the tourism influx due to the weak yen.
In the next few decades I fear Japan is going to go through a difficult period of cultural erosion. It needs foreign workers and at the rate they'll be entering, they won't integrate to the level that the Japanese people want.
I'd like to think I'm one of the "15%" that the article describes - I go to great lengths to integrate despite not speaking a lot of Japanese. But deep down I know that I don't belong here, and that Japan would prefer to be a homogenous society without expats like me. And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that.