Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Japan is offering families who live in Tokyo 1 million yen ($7,500) per child to move out of the capital and into other towns and villages.
The new offer represents an increase of over 300% from the old offer of 300,000 yen. It will be introduced in April as officials try to revive areas with declining birthrates and aging populations.
The program is part of Japan's Infrastructure Development Plan for a Digital Garden City Nation, which is aimed at regional revitalization through the promotion of relocation to rural areas by means of digitization.
Those moving also have to meet one of three conditions: employment at a small or midsize company in the area they relocate to, continuing their pre-relocation work via the Internet or starting a business in their new area of residence.
According to Nikkei Asia, relocation support was provided to 1,184 families in fiscal 2021, rising from 290 in 2020 and 71 in 2019. Officials hope that the program will help reduce pressure on public services in Tokyo, which has a population of 35 million.
The government is hoping 10,000 people will have moved from Tokyo to rural areas by 2027, it added.
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Those moving also have to meet one of three conditions: employment at a small or midsize company in the area they relocate to
Social democracy at work. They want people to move there but won't even offer them a fucking job, the #1 reason people move anywhere by far
Come to the rural Japanese county side and work for old uncle who totally doesn't hold bigoted views, prayers to the emperor and waxes on about the good old days of Manchurian control.
On the other hand, the Japanese left used to be a lot more cool and militant and a lot of those comrades now have rural jobs because they got systematically blacklisted from major industries.
The dynamic in Japan is different in that there is chronic labor shortages instead of unemployment. This shortage is more acute in the countryside because wages are higher in the cities where larger companies tend to congregate.
Limiting the subsidy to workers of small and medium enterprises makes them more competitive against the larger companies. Though I'm pretty sure 1m isn't really that much of a difference in the long term.
“the kids these days being selfish and lazy!!”
They committed the cardinal sin of eating avocado toast once, and for that their bloodlines shall end with them.
Japan is weirdly split in its demographics. You step one foot outside of the major metro areas and it's suddenly countryside and rice fields everywhere.
Their countryside is empty. It's kind of nice though. I spent some time out in Shimane prefecture in the western part of Japan last time I was there, the second-least populated prefecture and it's extremely chill and the people are cool. Lots of cute 150 year old houses and there's a museum about sand out there. They have the world's biggest hourglass.
Tokyo Government really is paying people 1 million yen to fuck off.
Says they need to line up a job in the place they're moving to to qualify for the program, or be able to work from home.
Looks like the idea is to have people move to rural areas while still working online. The Japanese rural countryside is notoriously empty, underdeveloped, and elderly.
Japan in general suffers from chronic labor shortages, more so in rural places due to urbanization.
Not every rural place is automatically the American mid-west.
10,000 is a drop in the ocean for Tokyo, this seems extremely unlikely to have much impact at all on birthrates nationally or tokyo's public services.
There is an argued causative relationship between population density and birthrates though so I think the general idea of moving people out of the city and into lower density areas has merit.
:this:
I don't know how they imagine moving 10k people is gonna matter. I guess good for the folks who can get the 1m yen paycheck, but even on neolib technocratic grounds this seems like an insufficient goal
Didn’t Marx write about capital and labor moving into cities? I know I read it somewhere.
Japan is dying because of patriarchal norms and an insane work culture. Why would a woman want to start a family when they’re expected to quit their career?
It’s funny how Japan and the US are in sharp decline because of capitalism, but vastly different ways. The US is ripping itself apart and Japan is going quietly.
Joke or not but while Tokyo is definitely more liberal towards foreigners the rural areas are still mostly xenophobic, as obviously its populated mostly by the elderly or people that don't have contact with foreigners in the first place.
So yeah unless you have a thick skin and/or great social skills(good spoken Japanese also required) I would never recommend someone actually doing that. Unless you are realy realy poor and this would be a lifestyle improvement for you.
The Japanese government recruits mostly completely unqualified English teachers from abroad and sends them all across the country. The ones that go to the cities are considered lucky and a ton of the ones who get sent to rural locations burn out and break their contracts.
Xenophobia is one part of it for sure, but the sheer isolation of living somewhere where close to zero people speak your language is incredibly socially isolating.
:100-com: While I loved living in Japan I also absolutely hated it as time went on. I had decent Japanese and I improved substantially with immersion so I could talk to people, but living in a somewhat rural part of the country meant that I was like one of 3 white people in the city. Part of my problems were just the sheer cultural clash especially since I was an edgy 4chan teen at the time, but the isolation got rough. My host family was very overbearing and there was a huge fight when my mother sent a laptop over because they didn't want me to have any English exposure. That laptop let me finally talk to my mother for the first time in months though. Talking to people back home made me finally realize that I was in a relatively abusive situation. A lot of the students at my school treated me like a curiosity at first but wanted nothing to do with the actual me and would try to just get me to do stupid stuff which I would do hoping to fit in only to further ostracize myself.
And then I started the process of realizing I was trans which was absolutely wonderfully an amazing thing to start in a foreign country where Haruna Ai was a punching bag for jokes and my host family never properly gendered her.
I've never been to Japan, and I'm the most mayo person ever. But I've watched a lot of dubbed anime, so I should be fine.
So having experience as a queer leftist in the US rural south is seemingly helpful experience for once :lenin-heisenberg:
That's not enough, lol. The rural part of Japan literally empty and not industrialize enough. There's a reason why many go to the city where most of the job located.
Japan created the tech world that made everyone move into cities, let them enjoy it
Those moving also have to meet one of three conditions: employment at a small or midsize company in the area they relocate to, continuing their pre-relocation work via the Internet or starting a business in their new area of residence.
:volcel-kamala:
I don't see how reducing the population of the largest city/metropolitan area in the world by 10k people is going to be much help.
I think it's less about Tokyo and more about moving 10k people into other areas that might be lacking young blood for their local economy
Like the other person said, they can seed other areas with people which will attract more people. That's how all settlements, towns, cities are born.
Worth noting japan has a large comunist presence despite CIA paying the yakuza to supress it. Times like this you can see it.
Their communist party is basically socdem after decades of suppression. There's apparently a few newer small parties that are better and have some support
I think they hate them for rascist reasons more than ideological ones. Which they also do because japan is... not great... but still, plenty of shitty places don't have large active comunist energy that could one day improve stuff. America for example.
Very interesting, but I don't think they'll make a dent in the overall trend of people consolidating into the cities and the rural population getting older.
